Resources

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. 

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.

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 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.

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.

A report assessesing how local and regional governments are advancing the right to adequate housing to meet the UN’s housing-related Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets, describing the importance of local knowledge, and the power of grassroots organisations and local governments to translate the objective of adequate housing into positive action towards that goal.

In an effort to advocate for affordable housing and more inclusive cities, Think Housing competition sought innovative proposals for inclusive urban housing options that challenge the dominant models of urban development by reversing ongoing displacements of low and middle-income residents from the city. Teams of multidisciplinary practitioners and/or students were invited to articulate feasible proposals that respond to the imperative of inclusive housing.

This article argues that the everyday city-making practices of the ‘unsheltered’ are inextricably linked to the politics of bare citizenship. As those stigmatised become individualised, isolated and undermined, they also are deprived of being part of a collective experience and are deeply challenged to reclaim their agency as entitled citizens.

This Habitat for Humanity and IIED report for the "Home Equals" campaing shows that the substantial benefits from increased access to adequate housing not only improve the lives of those living in informal settlements but also affect entire societies.

How do global coalitions of civil society, non-governmental and community-based organisations, social movements and academics, make visible, defend and produce habitat rights? This conversation with the President of the Habitat International Coalition (HIC), Adriana Allen, examines HIC’s perspectives on the practices, knowledges and pedagogies for translocal housing activism through reflections structured along several themes.

This Resource Guide is the outcome of a Summer Institute on Methodologies for Housing Justice convened by the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy as part of the Housing Justice in Unequal Cities Network. The Resource Guide foregrounds innovative methods that are being used by researchers across academia and activism and explicitly situates such methods in an orientation towards housing justice. 

A publication arguing for a shift in South Africa's housing delivery model away from housing projects built by large private developers and towards proper support and funding for self-built housing. While quite technical in nature, the core argument that the state cannot withdraw its funding and support for housing construction as it moves away from direct provision is incredibly important in the South African context. By Isandla Institute & Centre for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa