Although Honduras is one of the least urbanised countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, it has one of the highest urban growth rates in the region. The effects of poverty in Honduras become increasingly visible in cities, where levels of poverty are lower than non-urban areas but very different in nature:

• With low and unstable income, many urban residents are not guaranteed decent housing, let alone access to resources to improve their homes
• With 16% of homes in the country overcrowded, a key indicator of housing-related poverty, acquiring a decent shelter is a major difficulty for Honduran families

Improving living standards to tackle absolute poverty

For low-income households that live deep within the poverty level, obtaining high-risk population status to be eligible for social housing assistance is difficult. Although the Honduras government has social housing programs in place, it focuses more on financing, constructing, and managing social housing rather than formulating housing policy.

Among components that need to be addressed to improve Honduras’s housing model are barriers against access to land that makes it difficult for Honduras households to gain access to decent shelter both commercially and publicly.

Solid Ground: improving access to decent homes

Our local office has increased low-income families’ access to decent housing, having served 20,000 families. We are committed to constructing and improving housing for the most vulnerable families, who often lack eligibility for government housing assistance programs.

Our local team works on changing legal and political frameworks of housing through advocacy to municipal, national governments as well as private organisations. To achieve their goal of eliminating land access barriers for social housing, they’ve established three main objectives, which include:

• Advocate for formulation of housing policies in 72 municipalities to eliminate barriers to access to land across the board
• Implement and evaluate the municipal policies in partnership with private organisation such as Red Visol and mancomunities
• Analyse impediments to land access for social housing to find solutions for inadequate housing

Campaigning activities

We will engage in a variety of advocacy activities to meet their advocacy goals. This effort will engage civil society members and municipal government representatives in the process of writing, promoting, implementing, and monitoring housing policy proposals.

To complete this task, we will organise and train interinstitutional commissions comprised of civil society and local government institutions. Our team will also participate in housing policy planning meetings, host informational presentations for local governments, facilitate inter-institutional commission meetings between civil society and governments, and hold awareness events on housing issues for the public.

We will participate in the follow-up processes by leading analysis and research about land access for social housing. In that effort, a final document about the impact of access to land and quality of social housing will be created to keep civil society organisations, municipal and national governmental institutions accountable for implementing policies to improve access to land for social housing.