Resources

United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) facilitated a structured written exchange between locally elected leaders and civil society to shape the action priorities for local and regional governments. The letters address housing, as well as food systems, conflict prevention, public health, climate justice, culture, finance, and the new essentials.

Future leaders from urban youth movements are embracing community-led digital tools to advance a vision for housing and urban governance that is inclusive and just. A series of online exchanges with youth groups convened through the Hub for Housing culminated in videos showcasing different strategies that young people use to bring about change. 

The multimedia journal and publications from UCLG's flagship research process bring together knowledge, practices and recommendations on how local and regional governments can and are placing care at the heart of more equal, democratic and sustainable societies, including how to advance housing as an infrastructure of care. 

At a time when the housing question is being reshaped by financialization, dispossession, displacement, and resistance across global contexts, this volume provides critical, accessible, future-facing language for housing scholars, practitioners, and activists working across multiple geographies and traditions of housing activism. 

Across Catalonia in north-eastern Spain, an alternative housing system is emerging. This article on The Conversation explores what can be learned from this experience to help address the European housing crisis. 

IIED, Instituto Pólis, União dos Movimentos por Moradia and partners from Brazil are conducting research about the Zero Eviction Campaign to learn from its strategies to stop forced evictions and to strengthen civil society’s capacity to use grounded evidence, influence policy, and advance housing justice.

Nairobi City County's urban development policies have sparked significant debate and concern among residents and observers alike. A glaring contrast in how different neighborhoods are treated, especially regarding housing demolitions, raises serious questions about the city's planning strategies and priorities.

The Eviction Impact Assessment (EvIA) Tool supports community-led quantification of costs, loss and damage resulting from a forced eviction / involuntary displacement in diverse contexts.

Fairville is an international and collaborative research project funded that uses participatory action research and the co-production of knowledge as strategies of spatial justice to address urban inequalities affecting cities, mainly in Europe but also in Africa. It has produced a pan-European manifesto for just and democratic housing in European cities. 

A repository documenting cases of forced evictions, displacement, and related abuses. It gathers testimonies, legal details, and contextual data to support advocacy, research, and accountability. The database helps civil society, policymakers, and communities monitor patterns, raise awareness, and defend housing rights worldwide.

From 2024 to 2025, urbaMonde, together with nine grassroots organisations from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, collaborated to systematise nine community-led financial mechanisms. The outcome is a comprehensive publication that highlights the history and functioning of these mechanisms, the main challenges they face, and the best practices that enabled their establishment and growth.

In a series of short videos, civil society and grassroots groups reflect on how climate change is impacting local anti-eviction efforts. The video collection is part of a research project to build a renewed action-research agenda against forced evictions in the era of climate change, facilitated by the International Institute for Environment and Development.

This synthesis report shows that not only are forced evictions a handbrake on urban resilience by increasing vulnerabilities of communities, but they also undermine carbon reduction targets. It is the product of a research project to build a renewed action-research agenda against forced evictions in the era of climate change, facilitated by IIED in collaboration with civil society and grassroots organisations leading anti-eviction efforts in Kenya, Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria and Chile. 

These documents are the outcome of a two-part dialogue on housing, climate justice and care organised by the Habitat International Coalition (HIC), Isandla Institute, and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). The documents aim to give visibility to propositions from civil society and housing movements with local and regional governments, employing the lenses of climate justice and care to advocate for more just and adequate housing policies and practices.

This chapter is from the publication 'Legal Empowerment in Informal Settlements: Grassroots Experiences in the Global South', and is co-authored by IIED principal researcher Nausheen Anwar. The chapter looks at the law in Pakistan as a double-edged sword, addressing its role in the violent imposition of state power, despite constitutional provisions that seek to enforce individuals' fundamental rights and hold state governing bodies accountable.

This new publication from Hub partners World Habitat and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) examines the enablers and barriers of community-led housing (CLH), advocating for supportive policies, financial access and partnerships to scale CLH as a viable housing solution.

It is based on over 100 sources and case studies from Brazil, Nepal, Malawi and Zambia.

This online session will explore community-led approaches to inclusive and climate-sensitive urban development, hosted by Cities Alliance, GIZ, IIED, and Slum Dwellers International (SDI). This event will celebrate many of the achievements of those living in informality, and serve as a platform for open discussions on how to build on these successes.

Habitat International Coalition are co-organising an international exchange of social and feminist movements for human rights related to habitat, alongside South African shack dweller movement Abahlali baseMjondolo. This international meeting will create space for in-person exchanges, learning, and solidarity among social and feminist movements working to defend land, housing, and habitat rights. This convergence continues HIC’s global convergence of social and feminist movements, following on from the in-person exchange in Argentina in 2023.

This collection features 14 case studies on community-led urban innovations, showcasing existing scalable solutions to create more just and sustainable cities. It draws on experiences shared during the ‘Global Peer Learning Series: Urban Innovation for Just and Sustainable Cities’, convened and hosted by GIZ and Cities Alliance in 2024, as well as the wealth of grounded cases in which Slum Dwellers International (SDI), the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), and others have been involved over the last few years.

This policy brief from Pathfinders at NYU explores how rapid urbanisation in the DRC capital Kinshasa is increasing inequalities. This report includes a brief history of Kinshasa’s urban development, and unpacks housing inequality contextualized in Kinshasa and how this relates to housing justice. 

Build Change has published a white paper linking housing justice to disaster resilience, and how it can address the disproportionate impact of disasters on the world’s poor. It proposes why integrating housing justice principles is essential for building effective disaster- and climate-resilience programs.

The Human Rights and Evictions Network in Chile seeks to prevent and stop forced evictions of informal settlements, promoting and coordinating actions to monitor, establish human rights protocolm, provide legal support and document forced evictions from a human rights perspective.

There are currently 87,000 unoccupied homes in the central region of the city of São Paulo. What would be the impact of fully utilising this housing potential? This study by Instituto Polis demonstrates that allocating idle properties and empty land in the central area of ​​São Paulo for low-income housing could contribute to fair energy transition strategies and climate mitigation and adaptation.

A series of policy briefs that elaborate on six key themes in housing policy, providing examples of innovative approaches and possible entry points to deliver equitable and inclusive outcomes. The themes are policy frameworks; governance approaches; participation; access to land; housing finance; and local building materials.