Everyone should have a simple, decent place to live

The Global Housing Need

Housing facts

• About 1.1 billion people are living in inadequate housing conditions in urban areas alone (United Nations Centre for Human Settlements)
• In cities of the developing world, one in four households lives in poverty
• Forty percent of African urban households are living below the locally defined poverty line
• An estimated 21 million new housing units are required each year, in developing countries, to accommodate growth in the number of households between 2000 and 2010. 14 million additional units would be required each year for the next 20 years if the current housing deficit is to be replaced by 2020 (UNHCS)
• About 100 million people worldwide are homeless. (UNHCS)

... In the face of overwhelming costs

• 1.2 billion people worldwide experience "income poverty," meaning they live on the equivalent of less than US$1 per day (World Bank)
• In Latin America, households need 5.4 times their annual income to buy a house. In Africa, they need an average of 12.5 times their annual income
• The highest rents are found in the Arab States, where a household spends an average of 45 percent of its monthly income on rent
• Real estate costs are highest in Asia and the Pacific, where one square meter of land for a serviced plot costs an average of US$3.10.

A Vietnamese woman stands outside of her makeshift house

What do we mean by "inadequate housing"?

• Worldwide, 1.3 billion people lack access to clean water (Global Issues)
• 2.6 billion people lack access to sanitation (UNICEF)
• Less than 20 percent of households in Africa are connected to piped water, and only 40 percent have piped water within 200 meters of their home
• In the developing world, 29 percent of cities have areas considered as "inaccessible" or "dangerous" to the police. In Latin America and the Caribbean, this figure is 48 percent
• Less than 35 percent of cities in the developing world have their wastewater treated
• In countries with economies in transition, 75 percent of solid wastes are disposed of in open dumps (UNHCS)

These conditions wreck lives

• About 11 million children under age 5 die each year from preventable diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria and measles (UNHCS)
• More than 110 million children of school age are not in school (UNHCS)
• Nearly 1 billion people are illiterate (UNHCS)