Coordinated action for creating climate resilient housing

Achieving affordability of climate-resilient housing should be a top priority for governments and all stakeholders related to housing and settlements. This should not be the responsibility of the housing sector alone since tackling these issues involves complex socio-economic factors. For instance, approximately one billion people currently live in informal settlements, primarily in urban areas in low and middle-income countries (Satterthwaite, 2020). It can be predicted a large portion of those are of sub-standard quality houses, i.e., built not abiding by the building code. They have poor utilities, such as an inadequate sewer system that will overflow during hard rain. There is a poor clean water piping system and, hence, massive groundwater use. Houses are in dense settlements, many of which are attached.

Those people live in vulnerable areas that are prone to various hazards. Fire and floods might repeatedly be experienced due to their living conditions. To add more severe, an earthquake might cause numerous houses to collapse and loss of life due to their vulnerable structure. Loss of livelihood is unavoidable since many houses are used as a workplace. The risk might be aggravated due to climate change.

The root of all those problems is poverty, in which people have little option about where and what kind of house they live. The more people stay in that community, the more people might feel okay with vulnerable houses and living conditions. Therefore, awareness campaigns for safer housing through seismic retrofitting programs or healthier living environments will have little effect. The demand might be low if a cost factor is incurred. Moreover, it should not be a single-house intervention but addressed from a community or settlement approach. Hence, the ecosystem that enables housing improvement should be created.

Affordable building materials for retrofitting should be available to replace poor building materials in local hardware stores. In many cases, hardware stores sell low-quality and unacceptable construction materials to sell it at lower prices. Provision of construction and retrofitting training to add more builders and enable house owners to work on their houses. Also, improvement of all utilities, such as clean water and sewer. All of these should have an impact on their income. To some extent, they should be able to work on house maintenance or upgrading. This enormous task needs substantial funding and coordinated action.

Coordinated action is needed because various stakeholders will work simultaneously on poverty reduction, disaster risk reduction, service upgrades, climate change, and adaptation. Unfortunately, those initiatives were implemented during the decade but not as integrated interventions. This integration will serve many interests at once and harmonize government policies. Moreover, it might strengthen collaboration amongst stakeholders, including house owners, to create resilient housing. 

Arwin Soelaksono