There’s no place like home...

In this episode of Cities 1.5, David Miller and his expert guests explore the multifaceted global housing crisis, as well as its ties to the climate crisis and the health of people and planet. Featuring personal stories and case studies from diverse regions that range from Toronto, to Colombia, to Gaza, we hear how cities around the world are advocating for housing as a human right, and delve into innovative solutions like social housing conversions, resilient housing strategies, and the importance of equitable and community-informed decision-making. Emphasizing the need for comprehensive, mission-driven approaches, these conversations highlight the critical intersections of housing security, health, and climate resilience - and, the calls being made for systemic changes and proactive investments to protect vulnerable populations in municipalities worldwide.

Image Credit: Photo by T.H. Chia @ Unsplash

Featured guests:
Leilani Farha is the Global Director of The Shift, host of the podcast Pushtalks, and former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing (2014-2020)

Dr Elizabeth Hausler is the Founder and CEO of Build Change, and a global leader in the sector of planning for and creating sustainable and resilient housing - particularly in the Global South

LINKS:
Equity Needs to be at the Heart of Climate Action - Cities 1.5 podcast
The Global Housing Crisis: A Crisis Unlike Any Other - Urbanet
Housing Rights - UN Habitat website
Grenfell Tower fire report: who was at fault and what was landlord’s role? - The Guardian
First images of Jasper after 100m high wildfire hit – BBC
Affordable housing: A route to climate mitigation and resilience - C40 Knowledge Hub
Resilient Housing Across the Americas - Build Change YouTube web series
Destruction in Asheville Highlights the S

If you want to learn more about the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy, please visit our website: https://jccpe.utpjournals.press/

Cities 1.5 is produced by the University of Toronto Press and Cities 1.5 is supported by C40 Cities and the C40 Centre for City Climate Policy and Economy. You can sign up to the Centre newsletter here. https://thecentre.substack.com/

Our executive producers are Calli Elipoulos and Peggy Whitfield.

Produced by Jess Schmidt: https://jessdoespodcasting.com/

Edited by Morgane Chambrin: https://www.morganechambrin.com/

Music is by Lorna Gilfedder: https://origamipodcastservices.com/

Transcript

David 00:00 

[Cities 1.5 main theme music] I'm David Miller and you're listening to Cities 1.5, a podcast exploring how cities are leading global change through local climate action. [music fades out] 

[urgent music] There is no place like home. “Home is where the heart is.” “Home sweet home.” There are no end of expressions describing the importance of having a warm, safe, and comforting place to sleep, eat, and spend time with loved ones. But, for many people around the world, this remains a distant dream. [music fades out]  

[delicate, sombre music] The figures are stark. More than 1.8 billion people lack adequate housing. It's estimated that about 15 million people are forcibly evicted each year, with 150 million human beings lacking any kind of roof over their heads at all. The housing crisis is an issue that impacts many of us. For people who rent in rich, Global North cities, a lack of tenant rights, health issues from mold, unaffordable rent increases, and an inability to pay out-of-control energy bills are a fact of life.  

For lower-income city residents in fast-growing Global South cities, housing and informal settlements is often precarious, unsafe, and without access to running water and functioning sewage systems, which leads to serious health problems and vulnerability to extreme weather events. As the impacts of the climate crisis worsen, these vulnerabilities will only increase and our continuing dependency on fossil fuels rather than renewable energy, exacerbates this further. [music ends]  

[driving, pensive music] Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, millions of people in Europe living in old, draughty houses have had to make the choice to eat or heat their homes as the price of fossil fuels has skyrocketed. And, of course, these same fossil fuels also play a part in increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events. 

Only two years ago, we saw a catastrophic flooding in Pakistan which left a third of the country underwater with an estimated 33 million people forced to leave their homes, as well as suffer through unprecedented outbreaks of malaria, cholera and dengue. [music fades out]  

[energetic, upbeat music] So, what is the solution? Last season, we investigated how clean construction methods are vital to decreasing emissions and providing healthier buildings for people to live, work, and play in. In today's episode, we will be speaking to two guests who are challenging the status quo to fight for safe and healthy housing for all, and to better protect city residents against the worst impacts of the climate crisis. [music ends]  

[light, rhythmic music] Later, we'll explore how to create and modify housing in Global South cities, which are particularly at risk from the ravages of extreme weather and the health impacts that flow from it. But before that, we have a Cities 1.5 first, a returning guest all the way back from season one, who will update us on the global housing crisis from the perspective of housing as a human right. [music ends]  

Leilani Farha 03:45  

[rotary dial telephone rings] [clicks] Leilani Farha. I am the Global Director of The Shift and I'm in Ottawa, Canada. [receiver chimes, replaced in cradle] 

David 03:57 

Leilani, welcome back to Cities 1.5.  

Leilani Farha 03:59  

Thank you so much. It's a distinct pleasure to be back and in conversation with you, David.  

David 04:06 

Housing matters enormously because how we build it and where we build it and the kind of cities we build, if we have dense cities, they're far more energy efficient than sprawl-based cities. In North America and Europe, in particular, as we try to address the housing crisis, how we do it is going to have a massive implication for climate and, of course, for inequality and society. Maybe we should start with the issue of housing as a human right. It's a fundamental principle. It seems sometimes that those in the housing industry don't always get it.  

Leilani Farha 04:43  

There is no doubt that housing is directly related to life itself, so having adequate housing that protects you from climate-related disasters, for example or climate-related weather, housing that is affordable, so you're not fearful that you're going to be out on the street, housing that is a place where you can grow memories with your family, these are all the reasons that housing is a human right, because it's essential to human life, and we see that, what happens when people don't have housing, right? Homeless people have half the life expectancy of adequately-housed people.  

So, it's so fundamental to human well-being; that's first and foremost. It's so fundamental to human dignity. I mean, try to imagine having a dignified life, living on the streets or a dignified life, living in an informal settlement which some people would call slums or shanty towns, right? Very difficult to have a dignified life without running water, without proper sanitation, which is how so many people around the world—in fact 1.8 billion people around the world—are suffering homelessness and grossly inadequate housing. It's just central to being.  

And, I just want to drop one other thing in. Look at what's happening in conflict situations. We can point to Gaza, but we can point to many other conflicts. When people are driven from their homes, how vulnerable they are.  

David 06:18 

You've had the privilege of being the former UN Rapporteur. I know you know the stories of people and what housing means in very granular and real detail. It would be interesting to hear a couple of stories that have really touched your heart.  

Leilani Farha 06:38  

[delicate, sombre music] It's heartbreaking. I mean, the number of times people have said to me, "I just want to be treated like a human being," I think I can say that the people I speak with feel that they have been abandoned by their governments, and there is a feeling of abandonment. And they're not wrong. I think governments, the world over, have handed housing to the private sector and the private sector doesn't give a damn, and they don't care to know what their human rights responsibilities are, and even when told what their human rights responsibilities are, they don't care to meet them. And so, that feeling of abandonment is quite a real one, and based in reality. [music fades out]  

One of the most touching stories, I was in San Diego and I had been brought to a church parking lot. The church had opened up their parking lot to people who are living in their cars because if they park on the street overnight in San Diego, they get ticketed and, of course, they can't pay – they're homeless, they have no money, they can't pay the tickets. And then, that can lead to being jailed, right? And so, the church head kindly opened up their parking lot for overnight stays of people living in homelessness.

So, I walked into the parking lot and I saw this young African American girl perched over the hood of a car, and she was writing something, and it intrigued me... What could she be writing, and why was she writing on, you know…? So, I approached and I could see she was doing her Spanish homework, and I introduced myself. I was the UN Rapporteur at the time and I asked her if I could speak with her or her parent and she said, you know, it would be better to speak to her mom, who was sitting in the front seat of the car. 

So, I went around to the front seat of the car and I spoke to this woman who was playing with her three-year old child in the front seat, and there was another teen or tween, sitting in the back, reading – her head down, reading. The woman got out of the car and told me her story, which was she had been participating in a program for low-income people where she was working and, like, she got some kind of employment and she managed, through that, to have enough money to rent an apartment. Everything was going smoothly and then the program ended and she couldn't find a job. It was supposed to be some kind of program that would lead to full-time employment, etc., and she couldn't find a job, and she ended up living in the car with two young teenagers and a three-year old. 

And, what struck me was she had done everything right. She had found a program. She had enrolled. She had succeeded in completing the program. And, she still was living in these awful circumstances and she couldn't find any affordable place to live.

And, that is an experience I hear over and over. Students I've spoken with, doing everything right. They're going to university. They got themselves into the university, and they can't afford the rent in the city, and so they're sleeping on the streets. I've talked to students in Turkey and in Italy and here in Canada and in the US, living in shelters, living in their cars. They're doing everything right. They feel ripped off. They feel, like I said, abandoned.  

David 10:19 

I want to talk about that abandonment. There was a shocking report came out in the UK last week, I guess at Grenfell Towers, which is, for people who don't know, an apartment block that caught on fire seven years ago. Dozens of people died. It was horrific. People were told to remain in place. They followed what they were told to do and as a result, died, and it turns out, of course, that the cladding—the outside skin of the building—was actually flammable and caught on fire, and the report quite clearly shows that the systems of government that should have regulated this completely failed, and it's a horrific tragedy. But, to me, the report is very important because it just showed that, systematically, the parts of government that were supposed to be empowered to oversee the private sector here had been neutered, and that doesn't seem to be limited to the United Kingdom. That seems to be a global trend. 

I guess my question is, you know, if people are feeling disempowered, devalued, you know, are you seeing that as a trend in Western countries around the world, that governments are essentially abandoning people? And if so, how do we start to approach changing that dynamic?  

Leilani Farha 11:47  

[driving music] I’m so glad you brought up Grenfell, David. [driving music] I have previously been quite engaged in Grenfell, and for those of the listeners who've seen PUSH – The Film, which I'm in—it's a documentary about the financialization of housing—we have a segment in that film about Grenfell and I met with survivors of Grenfell. And, when it actually happened. I was in Calgary. I was in a hotel in Calgary and I immediately thought, "There's something not right here. There's just something not right." So, I started digging on the Internet that evening and found out that there had been many council meetings and meetings of residents where they had identified the cladding as problematic... before the cladding was put on the building. [music fades out] They had had meetings. They had told the council—the local council—that this cladding was not safe and no one listened to them. 

And I think that's what you're getting at – the disempowerment of people who are living in these housing circumstances. Whether it's unsafe cladding, housing that's, you know, clad with something that's unsafe or whether it's people living in homelessness, or whether it's tenants who can't pay their rent or whose building is being bought by a financialized landlord, and they're afraid they're not going to be able to pay their rent, the fact of the matter is, none of these people are being listened to in terms of their experience and what they think the solutions might be, and I find it extraordinary that I think we're actually having this – this a major crisis. It goes way beyond housing, right? 

I mean, I think our democracies... Like, I have to keep coming back to Gaza. It's very dear to me, personally. I'm an Arab Canadian and I have deep ties to Palestine, so I have to keep coming back to it. But, look at what's happened – 11 months of non-stop global protests. Are governments listening to the people? No. We don't have interactive governments anymore. 

Where I think we have the most interactive governments is at city level, so I do hope we can talk about that because I do think city governments can be, and tend to be, more responsive to what their people are telling them. People living in homelessness, low-income people living in, you know, apartment buildings, they have no voice. They very rarely can affect decision-making, and that's what human rights is really about, right? So, you know, you have your human rights intact when you can affect a decision that's going to be made that's going to affect your life, right? And, most affluent people, there's many ways in which we, as affluent people, can affect the decisions that are being made that affect our lives. Low-income people, poor people, homeless people don't have access to decision-making processes and that's got to change.  

David 14:54 
   

Leilani, can you talk a bit about the intersection of housing and health?  

Leilani Farha 14:59  

There is a direct relationship between adequate housing and one's mental and physical health. So, in other words, if you have inadequate housing or you're living in homelessness, or you're living in housing precarity, you're unlikely to be having your right to health realized. 

But, even if you look at people who are housed, but, for example, heating is too expensive—energy poverty is a huge issue in Europe, for example—you know, you can't turn on the heat because it's just simply too expensive, I mean, people die in those circumstances. I actually was shocked by the number of older people who actually suffer real ill health and die as a result of being unable to properly heat or cool their apartment, depending on the weather. 

There is a doctor in Toronto named Dr. Andrew Boozary, and he practices social medicine. Canada touts itself as a country that has universal healthcare, and he says, "As long as there's homelessness, there is no universal healthcare," and I really love that understanding of the relationship between health and housing. I think it's probably under-- or misunderstood, the way in which housing plays on one's mental health.

I look at these tenants who are struggling to pay their rent—and this is across the world—and the fear and anxiety that they may lose their home and they know that, if they lose their home, there's nowhere in their community they can go. Like, if they can't afford the apartment they're in, they're not going to be able to afford any other apartment in their community, right? The relationship is symbiotic between housing and health.  

David 16:54 

[gentle music] You know, we've hit a couple of areas here that are highly relevant for cities, mayors, local government. If we're going to address the climate crisis, we need to welcome the housing that's going to come into our cities, not push it out into sprawl. In that context, the way that gets built really matters, and I don't just mean the way it's constructed. I mean, you know, whose needs it meets. How do we, as a society, have the private sector be more and more responsible for housing? [music fades out]  

Leilani Farha 17:28  

Lots of thoughts. When we think about what's driving climate change, we always think of fossil fuels. We think less about the built environment, but it's a huge contributor.  

David 17:39 

Oh, absolutely. 

Leilani Farha 17:39  

CO2 emissions, etc. And so, it's always deeply troubling when I hear city governments and national governments say, "We're going to build our way out of the housing crisis." We know that, even if it were true that you could do that, which I query that, but even if it were true that you could just build and solve the housing crisis, you're going to kill the planet if you did that. And, you're going to kill the planet even if you build really, really green and all this net zero and all of that. I'm not a scientist. I'm a human rights lawyer, but I've read enough to know that we cannot just resort to building to solve homelessness, people living in unaffordable housing.  

So then, it's like, "Okay, what are you suggesting? What could cities do?" Totally agree, we cannot allow sprawl to continue. We need to figure out how to use existing resources as existing resources, existing—excuse the expression—assets [chuckles] better and use them to actually meet need. There are a lot of people living in homelessness who just need a place to live. They don't need social supports. They just need a place to live that's affordable. And so, I'd love to see cities start being way more creative than they are being generally. Some cities are doing this already, but let's do audits. I've been saying this for a long time, and it never gets any traction so maybe it's not sexy enough, or I don't know, maybe I don't sell it well.  

David 19:10 

Well, if you say it really loud. [Leilani laughs] [louder] Let's do audits.  

Leilani Farha 19:18  

[laughs] Yeah. Let's do audits of what assets are available in every city. What's available? What social housing units are sitting in disrepair? What units are vacant? What Airbnb units could be regulated and controlled and turned into long-term accommodation? What micro condo units are not selling? Then, we could also shift to the private sector – other private sector assets, like I wonder why real estate investment trusts, that own tons of assets worldwide—apartment buildings, multifamily units—why a certain percentage of their existing portfolios couldn't be converted to social housing. Why not? 

And are cities willing to sit down and negotiate with these actors and really press them and say, "Look, I'm a city government; I've got this homelessness and climate crisis on my hands here," or, "my housing crisis and climate crisis on my hands, here. You have to be part of the solution in a real way," and really have... I mean, I know I've talked to the former mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, about this and she said that these are tough conversations. She was willing to have them, but they were tough. She said she was litigated against by Airbnb, for example, when she tried to have this kind of tough regulatory stance, but that's where cities have to go if they want to save people and save the planet.  

David 20:50 

And use public land, as well, for public housing. 

Leilani Farha 20:53  

Absolutely. 

David 20:56 

The audit is really powerful. [delicate, sombre music] You've outlined something that cities can do – engage people who don't have a voice, listen to them, meet their needs, empower them, and respect them, treat them with respect, try to grapple with the investor-led housing. Cities do have some regulatory authority there – use public land, do an audit, and work to find ways to repurpose housing that's not available for people today. Those are powerful things that cities can actually do. [music ends]  

Leilani Farha 21:33  

You know, I want to add one more thing, David. I work a fair bit with cities. I just don't get the feeling that they are approaching this with the vigour and robustness that is required to address the housing crisis. It's like I always get the feeling like they're kind of tinkering with policy here and there and like, "Maybe we'll do this," and, "Maybe we'll do that.”

I've worked with Mariana Mazzucato, who's an economist, and, you know, she has this missions approach, and she says that if we're going to solve the world's wicked problems, we need to take a mission approach like we're sending someone to the moon – a mission to the moon. She and I worked together, and we came up with a right-to-housing mission approach to solving the housing crisis, and it was, you know, framework, but at the heart of it was this idea that, if we're going to solve the housing crisis, it has to be all in – all our resources, so like you said, not just money – land, like I said, assets that are maybe privately owned, harness them, regulate them. And then, it also means bringing everyone to the table, and governments have the capacity to convene.  

David 22:47 

Oh, yes.  

Leilani Farha 22:48  

Right? 

David 22:48 

Particularly mayors, by the way.  

Leilani Farha 22:50  

Exactly. So, use the convening power. And, the expertise at city level is really tremendous. I mean, I think it's probably—and Marianna and I both agree—like, well, you talk about public servants as if they're not knowledgeable and experts. They are experts. Harness that expertise in a real way. Bring in other experts, as well, but not KPMG and Deloittes that fit within that neoliberal model, right? They're just going to push... I mean, they benefit from all of this neoliberal stuff that they trot out, so bring in other kinds of expertise that might be missing from city level, but harness what you have. 

But, that bigger tent is so important and using any accountability mechanisms you have or establishing new ones as a city government is super important, so that you're constantly recalibrating the mission plan because you have these accountability mechanisms in place and you're saying, "Oh, we're not meeting our target, so let's recalibrate. What are we doing wrong?" 

Finland is a really good model. I mean, that's a national-level government, but when they decided to tackle their homelessness problem, they realized... They were doing quite well when they first started out, but they realized they weren't quite— you know, the Fins, they're perfectionists, so they weren't quite meeting their targets, so what did they do? They recalibrated their program. They realized, for example, that though they were starting to solve homelessness, people were still falling into homelessness because of low social assistance rates. So, they raised social assistance rates, right? That kind of nimbleness – cities have the capacity to be nimble like that. Federal government in Finland can, because it's a such a small country, but city-level, city governments can be nimble.  

David 24:36 

Fantastic. The mission-driven approach is just so clear and, really, you're saying, "Lead." 

Leilani Farha 24:43  

Yeah, lead. Exactly.  

David 24:48 

Speaking of leadership, The Shift and your work, you're leading globally on these issues of housing as a human right, equitable access to housing, how we solve the problem. So, what's next for you and for The Shift?  

Leilani Farha 25:06  

Well, David, I have a personal project. It is a Shift project that is huge and daunting and probably premature, but one of the things we're going to be working on is in conjunction with the Norwegian Refugee Council, of all folks, to look at what does reconstruction of Gaza look like from a human rights perspective? So, that is a massive, soulful piece. Let's put it that way. 

We're doing some really interesting work actually, with a group of cities interested in migrants and migration around what could cities do better in terms of migrants' housing. Even though that is often determined at national level, cities are really interested in getting this right, and so trying to work with a grouping of cities around that.

And then, pushing industry. I mean, there's just no doubt that industry needs to be pushed and cajoled and brought into the human rights tent. So, those are some of the things on the horizon.  

David 26:04 

Well, the Gaza work is incredibly powerful. I wish you every success. 

All right, final question – what does a good life mean to you, both for you, Leilani, but also in the context of access for all to decent and affordable housing? 

Leilani Farha 26:23  

The world feels very upside down to me. You have to remember I'm a human rights lawyer who uses international human rights law to guide my way, to allow me to engage in what I consider to be a kind of impartial way when I'm working with governments, right? It's not some weirdo set of values I'm using that I dredged up from nowhere. I'm using what have been internationally-recognized and committed-to standards to guide what I think housing policy should look like. 

And yet, we're at a moment in political and economic history where international human rights law is a joke, right? Governments around the world are just completely ignoring international human rights law. That, for me, is a scary place to be, because for me, human, wellbeing and a good life is tied to values, and I believe in the values that were promulgated through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I believe that. I believe everyone should have adequate housing, health, education, rights to free expression, you know, etc. I really believe that. That is what has animated me in my career for 27-odd years or whatever. 

I want a world where those principles are not just agreed to on paper, but are actually implemented by governments, by industry, and by everyday people in their neighbourhoods and in their communities.  

David 28:00 

[driving, pensive music] The values you just spoke to are collective values that the world agreed on. You're spending all of your time fighting to make those real on the streets every day. It's an incredible thing you do, and I just want to thank you for all of that work, and thank you for the podcast today, because things our listeners can hear, you’re uniquely able to connect those values to real things that can be done by real governments and by the private sector to make real change to make those values live. So, Leilani, thanks so much for being on and thanks for having the fortitude to keep pushing the stone up the hill.  

Leilani Farha 28:43  

Oh, it's a pleasure. It's always a pleasure to be in conversation with you, David. And, I'll just say one more thing about the human rights thing. Human rights are not something we earn. We have human rights just for being humans, and that seems to be forgotten, and I really want local governments to remember that. These aren't earned. They are what we are entitled to.  

David 29:09 

Thank you.  

Leilani Farha 29:10  

Thanks David. [music continues then ends] 

David 29:17 

[light, driving music] This episode of Cities 1.5 is produced by University of Toronto Press with generous support from C40 Cities. Want more access to current research on how city leaders are approaching climate action? We also publish the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy. Our mission is to publish timely, evidence-based research that contributes to the urban climate agenda and supports governmental policy toward an equitable and resilient world. The Journal serves as a platform for dynamic content that highlights ambitious, near-term climate action, with a particular focus on human-centred solutions to today's most pressing climate challenges. To read the latest issue, visit JCCPE.utpjournals.press or click on our link in the show notes. 

Elizabeth Hausler 30:15  

[rotary dial telephone rings] [clicks] I'm Elizabeth Hausler. I'm calling in from Littleton, Colorado, and I am the Founder and CEO of Build Change. [receiver chimes, replaced in cradle] 

David 30:27 

Elizabeth, welcome to Cities 1.5.  

Elizabeth Hausler 30:29  

Thank you, David. It's great to be here.  

David 30:32 

We're thrilled to have you. Can you just give a bit of background about you, of course, and about your journey, because I understand that you moved from an education in stonemasonry to becoming a leading expert in climate-resilient housing and, of course, the Founder and CEO of Build Change. I was just wondering if you could tell the listeners a little bit about your own journey, and then a bit about Build Change.  

Elizabeth Hausler 30:57  

Yeah, it's been a fantastic journey. We're actually celebrating our 20 years of impact this year. Build Change is a social innovator in the field of disaster-resilient housing. We've made over 1.3 million people safer through new disaster-resilient housing or strengthening existing housing. We've also worked on a few schools over the years. Some 270,000 buildings are better because of our work. This accounts for about $5 billion of housing assets that are better protected from loss in disasters. 

It was kind of a circular path that I took to get to this point. I grew up in a small town outside of Chicago. Neither of my parents went to college. My dad owned a small business in the construction sector. He built houses, more specifically the masonry part, so brick masonry facades, custom fireplaces, light industrial buildings. So, my sister and I both worked for him as bricklayers; that was our summer job during high school and college. It was great fun. And so, I've got this construction work in my blood, housing in my blood from my dad's work. 

I went to all public schools, University of Illinois, University of Colorado, and then ended up at UC Berkeley studying civil engineering, mainly earthquakes. I found myself doing really interesting work on how earthquakes affect the foundations in the ground below buildings, developed a thirst for travel, did some great research in Japan. We got to blow up the ground to simulate an earthquake, but it wasn't really connected to the people. I found myself asking, like, "How does this directly impact someone's life?”

Enter the Gujarat earthquake in 2001 in India, which killed about 20,000 people. I was just finishing up grad school. I went on a Fulbright Fellowship to understand, are people building back better? Are they rebuilding houses that will withstand the next earthquake? I learned so much in that experience, so much about engaging the people in the decisions about materials and architecture. 

There are great examples from Gujarat about how to enable homeowners to make the decisions. They used home owner-driven conditional cash, plus technical assistance. So, basically, that means, instead of providing someone a house, making all the decisions for them, you're enabling them to decide where are the windows, where are the doors, by providing conditional cash. By doing that, you're also requiring people to follow the building code, giving the cash grant in installments so that, if you don't follow the building code with the first cash grant, then you can't get the next one. 

So, it was a brilliant, brilliant learning opportunity. I learned so much about how to rebuild after disasters, how to not do it, the things that maybe didn't work for folks, and we, at Build Change, have since taken that model around the world.  

David 33:38 

So, that's very interesting lived experience, on your part, and that experience in Gujarat led directly to creating Build Change, I assume, or perhaps a bit circuitously to creating it? 

Elizabeth Hausler 33:52  

There's a lot of circuitousness in my path. Yeah, it kind of goes around the world a few times. But yeah, it did. I mean, I was so inspired by using a decision equity model and taking that model around the world, so enabling homeowners to make decisions about where are their windows, where are their doors, trying to shift the industry away from the old sort of sweat equity model where people were just given a house and expected to work on that house, and you do not really make the decisions, so enabling the people to lead, I was so inspired by that. 

So, I did come back to San Francisco where I was based at the time and was trying to find funding to get something started, but as I was sort of sitting in my apartment in San Francisco trying to figure out what to do, thinking about working in India, thinking about working in Iran—there was just an earthquake in Iran at that time, as well—the tsunami happened and the Indian Ocean tsunami devastated so many parts of Southeast Asia, East Asia, Indonesia especially, it became obvious we should go to work in Indonesia because of the massive amount of housing loss as well as the likelihood of more earthquakes there.  

David 34:56 

Can you speak a bit about why this matters, like creating resilient, climate disaster- and other disaster-proof housing. Why does it matter?  

Elizabeth Hausler 35:09  

[delicate, sombre music] Well, it saves lives, it prevents losses, it prevents homelessness, reduces trauma, increases health, protects wealth, creates opportunities for our businesses, creates jobs in the construction sector... I can go on and on about that. It saves embodied carbon. There are so many reasons. But, I mean, you're alluding to this – like, if you ask the people who have been through a disaster, you know, the folks that were in Sri Lanka, the folks that are in in Asheville, North Carolina, right now from Hurricane Helene, any person who's been affected by a disaster will tell you how important climate- and disaster-resilient housing is. 

I can list so many reasons but, to sum it up, my colleague, Noll Tufani who is Build Change's Regional Lead for Africa and Middle East, his favourite line is "housing is the ultimate protection for families". [music ends] Housing protects people, it protects assets, it protects lives, it protects children, it protects wealth, so we have to create an environment where everyone has a disaster-resilient home.  

David 36:09 

It's a really big issue in Canada. You know, we've seen incredible flooding in many, many places and, in our context in North America, often, if you're flooded and it looks like it can happen again, you lose your insurance, and if your house is your biggest investment for your family, it really matters. We've seen wildfires. You know, Jasper, Alberta, was burnt out. Litton, British Columbia was completely destroyed in 15 minutes by wildfire, flooded the next year or the year after, and then had a wildfire again. So, you know, your colleague's way of describing this is so spot on. 

I think this allies to, in countries like Canada and the United States and in Europe, there's a lot of public discussion about housing, access to housing, period, maybe less so about the kind of housing we build, that it needs to be resilient, but there's a lot of public discussion about access to housing. You work all over the world. Can you talk about how the work you do in the Global South with your colleagues, what are the issues there? You know, are there political conversations like there are in North America? Are there parallels between the needs of people in the Global South around housing, for affordable, safe housing to those in the United States and Canada? 

Elizabeth Hausler 37:38  

Yes, there are a lot of parallels. There are some differences. In fact, some of the differences are becoming less. So, we're used to working in environments where people don't have insurance, right? So, insurance is too expensive, the insurance companies think the properties are too risky. In almost all of the 30 countries Build Change has worked in over the years—we're active in about 11 right now—so, the lack of insurance is an issue. It's a big difference, but as you mentioned, I mean the insurance companies are considering even more and more locations in the US and Canada and elsewhere more risky and pulling out of different markets. So, we're used to working in that environment. So, the best line of defence is a disaster-resilient home, right? 

So, if you don't have insurance, make it so the home is not going to collapse or be flooded in a disaster. So, that is one of the biggest differences. One of the things that makes our work easier is some of the countries we work with have a constitutional right to decent housing. The US does not.  

David 38:38 

There's a whole big discussion about making housing a human right in Canada.  

Elizabeth Hausler 38:41  

Yeah. 

David 38:41 

That's very, very interesting, the places you work in. Can you give a couple of examples of places that have that?  

Elizabeth Hausler 38:48  

Colombia is a beautiful one. Colombians have a constitutional right to decent housing and that's such a great starting point, right? Because there it is, in the constitution; it's coming from the top. Now, Colombia has had a subsidy program available for decades for folks who are living in vulnerable housing and informal neighbourhoods. When Build Change started working there 10 years ago, though, that subsidy wasn't flowing, and so we've done a lot of work to open up those bottlenecks, to make it so those subsidies are able to actually get in the hands of the people and result in disaster-resilient homes. 

But, that starting point, the fact that there's a constitutional right to decent housing, actually makes the process so much easier. I wouldn't say it's easy. It's taken us a good five years to get to the point where there is also a regulation that was signed last year that enables and legalizes the process for strengthening a house that's been built in an informal neighbourhood – first of its kind in the world, huge moment, signed by the minister of housing who's a woman. We have done so much work with our friends and partners in Colombia to unlock these subsidies and make them flow into the homeowners. 

In President Duque's administration, the government improved over 100,000 housing units. President Petro is attempting to improve another 400,000. So, we've also worked with multiple different governments on different sides of the aisle – left wing, right wing, whoever cares about housing [chuckles] and wants to invest the political will and the financing into making housing more resilient, we'll work with. So, there's a lot more to do in Colombia, for sure, but the fact that this constitutional right exists and the political framework and the motivation is there and the subsidy is there, for some folks, it goes a long way.  

David 40:35 

It's so interesting to me because I think, very often in Canada, and particularly the United States, we think we know all the answers and we're going to go tell them to the rest of the world, and it's the other way around, isn't it?  

Elizabeth Hausler 40:48  

In this case, absolutely. The Colombians are really leading the world in so many ways when it comes to housing, and not only improving existing housing, but they've done some fantastic work with new housing, as well, so there's a lot that the Colombian Government could share with the United States about how they've made it happen. 

We are facilitating some exchanges across some of our country programs. We've got some colleagues from Columbia who are sharing with our colleagues in Turkey. We've been working in Turkey for not nearly as long as Colombia, just since the earthquake from a year and a half or so ago. It's been fantastic to be able to facilitate these exchanges because, you know, going back to your original question, there are a lot of parallels. A lot of the challenges are the same, right

 In terms of the technical side, we know how to make houses disaster resilient, right? The engineering, the construction, the technical part. It's pretty straightforward. It's taken a lot to get to the point where it's straightforward, but we know how to do this now, right? We know how to make houses disaster resilient. 

The financing is such an important thing, and there are different avenues to facilitating financing. We have some partners, we have some countries where we work where there's a government subsidy available, others where we're using microfinance lending, others where there's a post-disaster and there's a lot of NGO and multilateral support, and so there's different mechanisms for financing for resilient housing, but that is a big part of what has to happen in order for houses to be resilient. People need access to the funding in order to make the houses resilient. 

And then, the policy side, there are bottlenecks. They're a little bit different in each nation, but they need to be overcome and we can work together to overcome them.  

David 42:27 

One of the challenges if we don't create resilient housing, there is big impact on public health, there's an impact obviously on the families who live there. Can you talk a bit about the impacts that a failure to do this can have, particularly given the increase in climate-related extreme weather events and other disasters, with particular focus on the impact on women and children? Are there groups that are noticeably vulnerable if we fail to do this? 

Elizabeth Hausler 42:59  

There are differential impacts on women and children. The latest, the stat that we always use is women and children are 14 times more negatively affected, 14 times more likely to die or be injured in a disaster than men, which is huge. [driving music] That's a huge difference – 14 times. And so, we think housing is a women's issue. We know housing is a women's issue. We know housing is more of a safe space for women, a financial asset, a place to raise kids, a place to run a home business, and time and again, we see women more negatively affected by loss and disasters. 

So,  women are a big part of Build Change's team. We live and breathe gender equity in all ways, from our team to our clients. 60% of our clients are women and it is a women's issue. I remember the very first houses we were building and actually, after the tsunami—you know I'm an engineer, I'm very data driven—I went out with my clipboard, I started interviewing all the homeowners about their experience to understand if they were happy with their house, and one of the homeowners just cut through everything I was saying and said, "Now I can sleep at night." This is a mom of a large family, and this is one of the most important things, you know. 

Housing is at the base of Maslow's hierarchy of human needs—housing, food, water, clothing, and sleep—and I see, over the years, this connection between decent housing and decent sleep. And, if you can't sleep, you can't thrive. So, housing provides that safe place where people can thrive, where they can sleep, where they can protect and raise their families, and where they can protect their assets. [music fades our]

David 44:34 

So beautiful and clear, isn't it?  

Elizabeth Hausler 44:36  

I think housing should be a bigger part of all these development agendas, right? Last week, in New York Climate Week, we, Build Change, launched a campaign to make housing its own SDG, housing its own sustainable development goal. Housing is not among the 17 sustainable development goals we have now, and of the subtargets within all the goals, housing is only one of them, right? So, of 169 targets, housing is one of those targets. 

So, I think we have to make housing a bigger part of all of these discussions – the climate discussion, poverty discussion, gender equity, safety, national resilience. Housing needs to be part of all of these discussions, and like you said before, some people are homeless, right? We're not really even talking about that, you know, with our discussion. We work with mostly people that have a house and who have lost a house or something like that, but there are so many people that need this basic human right.  

David 45:30 

Well, it's foundational, clearly. Build Change has published a Guide to Resilient Housing. Can you talk us through that and I'd be very interested to know the advice, particularly advice that might be relevant to city governments and others who have some regulatory or other authority or certainly an interest in ensuring safe, affordable resilient housing in their city? 

Elizabeth Hausler 45:52  

Yes, we do have the Build Change Guide to Resilient Housing available to download off our website. It's part operational manual and part compendium of case studies. So, it has, step by step, setting up a resilient housing program. It has a list of the key stakeholders that need to be involved. Housing is complicated. I mean, there's government, there's private sector, there's technology partners, there's building materials providers, so it's a complex topic. So, we outline the stakeholders. We also go into sources of financing, which I discussed before. 

It also has within it our Resilient Housing Ecosystem Assessment Tool, which is a starting point for many of the government partners that we work with. Like, let's look at where the housing is now. So, we feel strongly about meeting people where they are. Whether that's the homeowner or government partner, meet them where they are, look at their existing house or their existing housing program, and then grow from there. 

So, within our Build Change Guide, we have the Resilient Housing Ecosystem Assessment Tool, which looks at the policy environment, the regulatory environment, the financing environment, the technology building codes, basically all elements of resilient housing that are needed for resilient housing and where a partner is on their journey to getting to resilient housing for everyone, and then helps to make it easy to take the next step, right? So, like, you know, it can be daunting. Like, "Okay, what do we need to do to solve this issue?" And, it makes it easy to take the next step. 

It also recognizes there's so much work already being done, right? You know, we don’t want to come in and assume someone is starting from zero, whether that's a homeowner or a government partner. I mean, people are already on the path to resilient housing, so we want to meet them where they are and quickly unpack, what is the next step to make even more people have access to resilient housing. 

We have a podcast. Well, I think it's a webcast. It's more a video... It's more of a video interview series. We have a video interview series, Resilient Housing Across the Americas, but we've also been interviewing government leaders and learning about their successes and their resilient housing programs and how they can share their knowledge across our network. The website is buildchange.org. Then, you can find the Resilient Housing Ecosystem Assessment Tool that I talked about before, the Build Change Guide to Resilient Housing, this Resilient Housing Across the Americas video interview series. You can also find access to the Build Change Technical Assistance Platform. So, this is an end-to-end technical assistance platform that pairs technology with our subject matter expertise to scale resilient housing programs. 

You know, again, like I said before, it's complicated. There's a lot of stakeholders, you've got to assess a building, you've got to design a building, you've got to cost that building, you have to get a permit for that building. You have to find that financing and bring it in, you have to actually build it, you have to then report on, and this Technical Assistance Platform is designed also to meet people where they are, to be able to link in government systems, whether there's a government financing system or a permitting system, and basically supplement that with the tools needed to be able to make those programs scale, because we're going for scale here. 

The World Bank and other colleagues have put out numbers that indicate that 3 billion people are on the path to living in vulnerable housing by 2030 if we don't do something and if we don't move more quickly, so we've got to go for scale. It seems like we have to go house by house by house, which we do, but if we can make that house-by-house-by-house process more efficient and more scalable, then we're going to reach more people. 

David 49:17 

3 billion is daunting.  

Elizabeth Hausler 49:18  

Yeah, it's huge. 

David 49:20 

[driving music] And, you know, the predictions of people being on the move because of climate-related issues, including increasing desertification, is really daunting, as well – hundreds of millions in Africa alone, within countries, let alone between, and they're all going to be looking for housing. One of things you mentioned earlier was Asheville, which we've all seen recently terrible flooding there from Hurricane Helene. Terrible flooding elsewhere in the US, but Asheville's important, I think, because people sort of thought, it's up in the Appalachian Mountains. These places will be climate havens. They'll be safe. They aren't – clearly aren't. 

What lessons can cities and mayors in the Global North learn from Build Change's experience globally about how to create better and more resilient housing stock? 

Elizabeth Hausler 50:10  

Yeah, it's just tragic what's happened in North Carolina and nearby states because of that storm. I don't know. I mean, it's a huge amount of rainfall. I'm not sure what we, as a collective... We could have been more prepared for that level of rain, but there are still some things that could have been done and I think, overall, having a mindset of preparedness and prevention is the place to start. So often, it's just easier to wait till the disaster happens and then clean up afterwards, and I wish that we could all shift our collective mindset into preparing and preventing. 

There's another stat that I heard an update on when I was in New York for Climate Week and that was that, for every dollar we invest in prevention, we can save $13-16 in post-disaster rebuilding costs. [music fades out] When I started to hear these stats maybe 10 years ago, it was $1-7, so it's doubled, right? So, we can help prevent $13-16 of losses for every dollar we invest. So then, that also means it's even more expensive to have a loss. 

So, we've got it shift our mindset to one of investing now in prevention and saving money later, versus waiting for the disaster to happen. I am a big fan of Christopher Flavelle; he's a reporter for the New York Times. He covers these issues a lot. He wrote an article yesterday that listed out some of the decisions that North Carolina lawmakers have made over the last few years that steered housing into a direction of more vulnerability, things like not limiting construction on steep slopes, things like requiring homes to be elevated to prevent floods, things like slowing the adoption of building codes. 

So, it's interesting to read this article because, when a big disaster like this happens, you think, well, "Oh, you know, we couldn't have prevented this." But then, when you start really digging into the decisions that are made by political leadership, we could have put stronger building codes in place, right? We could have prevented construction on steep slopes. We could have required a more elevated finished floor height to prevent floods. So, all of these decisions are decisions that we can change, and it requires political leadership. It requires this mindset of prevention, investing now to prevent something from happening in the future.  

David 52:38 

I'm not an expert in the politics of that part of the US, but I am a bit of an expert on politics and I am absolutely certain that the reason those things happen is because the building industry there opposed the changes because they felt it was in their economic interest to build everywhere they could using the least-cost simplest model and the least-cost cheap materials instead of being smart. That's certainly what happens everywhere else. They'd be a remarkable exception if it wasn't. A bit of a depressing tale, but your solution is clear. Let's do the right thing first. 

What's next for Build Change? Where are things going from here? 

Elizabeth Hausler 53:19  

Scale. Yeah, scale, so reaching as many people as we can with disaster-resilient housing. Our vision is that every home is disaster resilient. It's a huge, ambitious vision. I would love for us to achieve that, but we've got to achieve scale, so we have to make it efficient so that the government of Colombia or the city of Bogotá or the city of Medellín can retrofit thousands of houses. The same thing in Indonesia, the same thing in the Philippines, the same thing in Nepal. So, putting all the pieces together – the policy environment, the financing, the technology platform, the skilled construction workers, putting all those pieces together so that many, many people can have access to a resilient house so that these programs can scale. 

So, we have Colombia, Philippines, Indonesia, our three main pre-disaster strengthening programs. We have multiple programs and post-disaster programs – Turkey, Morocco. So, we want to reach larger scale in all of these countries so that more people have access to resilient housing. We've recently started working in Africa—it's a new continent for us—in Morocco and Mozambique, two completely opposite ends of the continent, so working on response after the earthquake in Morocco in the Atlas Mountains to rebuild and retrofit damaged buildings. In Mozambique, it's a cyclone-resilient housing reconstruction retrofit program. 

So, we basically want to spread resilient housing around the world, and to do that, we've got to bring political will or encourage political will, bring the financing and have the technology underpin it all. 

David 54:58 

There's no question in my mind, and I'm sure our listeners, that you're going to be able to do that with your passion, your expertise, and being grounded in actually building housing. You really know what you're talking about, not just from your doctorate either. 

So, we always this season ask our guests a very simple question at the end. You know, in the context of your work and the conversation we've just had, what does a good life mean to you and what would you say a good life means for the people you're supporting to have better, healthier, and more-resilient housing?  

Elizabeth Hausler 55:33  

A good life starts with a decent, sturdy home. That's where it all starts, the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of human needs, so a decent, sturdy home. But, it also, to me, and I think to most of our clients, it also means safety and love. A good life means safety and love, so the home represents safety, safety from earthquakes, safety from storms, safety from break-ins, economic safety as an asset. [driving, pensive music] And love – a place to raise your kids, a place to have your family. When I read that question, I was watching my son's volleyball practice and he was having such a great day and enjoying it so much, and it fills me with so much joy. So, to me, a good life is one in which my son can thrive and be happy and safe and joyful.  

David 56:25 

So beautifully put, as was everything today. Elizabeth Hauser, I could listen to you and ask you questions for months. You're fabulous. Thank you for your leadership and work, which I think, sadly,  is becoming more and more important as we see the increased challenges happening rapidly, and at scales that only the most pessimistic predicted from the changing climate. So, thank you and thank you for being on Cities 1.5.  

Elizabeth Hausler 56:52  

My pleasure, David. Thank you so much, as well. [music continues then ends]  

David 57:00 
  

[energetic, upbeat music] Whether you live in Kingston, Ontario, or Kingston, Jamaica, the complex and multifaceted challenges of the housing crisis can seem insurmountable. A reliance on fossil fuels and the climate impacts they cause mean the need to create affordable, sustainable and resilient housing for all becomes even more urgent. But, as we've heard today, change is possible and local and national governments can follow the lead of our two guests to work together to deliver the housing we all have a right to. [music ends]  

[Cities 1.5 main theme music] We've all felt how hot this year has been. On the next episode of Cities 1.5, we're bringing in the science backing up that lived experience to explore what kinds of impact extreme heat has on our health, wellbeing, and future. I speak with C40's Head of Urban Heat Programs, Amy Buitenhuis, and Patricia Himschoot, Manager for Climate Change and Environmental Information in Buenos Aires city government.  

[Cities 1.5 main theme music] This has been Cities 1.5, leading global change through local climate action. I'm David Miller. I was the Mayor of Toronto, Canada, and I know, firsthand, the role cities can play in solving the climate crisis. Currently, I'm the Editor in Chief of the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy, published by the University of Toronto Press in collaboration with the C40 Centre for City Climate Policy and Economy, where I'm also the Managing Director. C40's mission is to use the voices and the actions of its member mayors to help the world avoid climate breakdown. 

[music continues] Cities 1.5 is produced by University of Toronto Press in association with the Journal of City Climate Policy and Economy and C40 Cities. This podcast is produced by Jessica Schmidt, and edited by Morgane Chambrin. Our executive producers are Peggy Whitfield and Calli Eliopoulos. Our music is by Lorna Gilfedder. 

The fight for a healthier world is closer than you think. To learn more, visit the show's website, linked in the episode notes. See you next time. [main theme music continues then ends]