BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 19. Habitat for Humanity
International, non-profit organization, headquartered in the U.S.,
urges governments at the 13th session of the World Urban
Forum (WUF13) in Baku to place housing at the heart of its
development agenda, Jonathan Reckford, CEO of Habitat said in an
exclusive interview with Trend on the sidelines of the forum.


“Despite its foundational role in economic mobility, climate
resilience, and human wellbeing, housing remains strikingly
underrepresented in global strategies. Analysis finds that housing
receives less than 1% of Official Development Assistance, and only
2% of national climate plans show real ambition in this area.


Habitat urges Governments to place housing at the heart of its
development agenda by:


- Championing housing as a crosscutting catalyst for
development, recognizing its central role in driving economic
growth, improving health and education outcomes, and expanding
opportunities for women and marginalized communities.


- Committing to improving how housing is measured within
Official Development Assistance, ensuring that investments are
visible, comparable, and aligned with the scale of global need.
Current measurement systems obscure the true level of support and
limit effective planning.


- Working with counterpart countries to expand and replicate and
adapt proven housing solutions, drawing on successful approaches
already present within development portfolios and scaling
interventions that deliver measurable economic and social
returns.


- Ensuring housing strategies are explicitly inclusive of the
most vulnerable, while creating enabling environments for
partnerships with civil society organizations that can bridge the
gap between need and delivery. This includes prioritizing
underserved populations within national housing plans and
recognizing the role of NGOs in reaching last-mile communities,” he
said.


Reckford also spoke about how the organization views the global
challenge of affordable housing in rapidly urbanizing cities.


“We're still trying to solve the urban housing crisis with too
narrow a lens, focusing on new units and homeownership, while
overlooking the reality that most people rely on existing housing
stock, informal settlements and a wider range of tenure options. In
addition, a persistent barrier to scaling housing solutions
globally is not a lack of evidence or interventions, but a lack of
shared understanding. Across donors, governments, and
practitioners, housing is defined and measured inconsistently and
narrowly, leading to fragmented policy, misaligned investments, and
under-recognition of the full spectrum of housing needs and

The CEO noted that Habitat is introducing a Global Continuum of
Housing Adequacy to address this gap—offering a unified, globally
relevant framework that reflects the full range of housing
conditions, from homelessness to market-based solutions, and
explicitly includes incremental housing as a central pathway.
Habitat urges Governments and development partners to:







- Adopt a shared conceptual framework for housing, using tools
such as the Global Continuum of Housing Adequacy to establish a
common language that improves alignment across policy, programming,
and investment decisions.


- Recognize and integrate incremental housing into national and
global housing strategies, acknowledging it as a primary and
legitimate pathway through which millions of households access and
improve their homes, and ensuring it is supported through
appropriate policy, finance, and technical assistance.


- Apply structured housing diagnostics to inform
decision-making, using the continuum to identify system gaps, map
transitions between housing conditions, and prioritize
interventions that strengthen housing systems over time.


He went on to add that sustainable housing solutions cannot be
delivered to communities – they must be designed and led with and
by communities.


“The closer solutions are to local leadership, knowledge and
ownership, the more scalable and durable they become. We’ve learned
that scaling happens when you combine community leadership, local
government partnership, and enabling market systems. If one of
those pieces is missing, solutions often remain pilot projects
rather than systemic change. An example of this happened in Nepal.
An inclusive housing solution was built by strengthening the whole
housing ecosystem, not just delivering homes. The initiative
brought together government subsidies, philanthropic finance, local
markets and community involvement to support climate-resilient
bamboo housing for landless and marginalized families, while also
building supply chains, skills and policy recognition,” said the
Habitat CEO.


Reckford pointed out that Habitat has helped more than 65
million people build or improve a place to call home.


“And we’d be the first one to say that we cannot do this alone.
The scale of the housing crisis requires cooperation across sectors
to meaningfully address the housing gap. To strengthen
partnerships, we go back to our ask of governments when forming
housing strategy. The most vulnerable populations must be centered
in any strategy that aims to improve access to housing. Those same
groups must also the focus when creating partnerships with civil
society organizations. We stand ready to partner with any
organization or government that shares our vision of a world where
everyone has a decent place to live.


As a global housing organization, we are political but not
partisan. We’re political in that there is no example in the world
of improving access to housing without government partnership. But
we’re nonpartisan in that housing is a foundational issue in every
nation. As countries look for ways to improve access to housing,
we’re eager to partner and bring our expertise where we can help
inform government policy,” he concluded.