Our Focus
The Working Group on Housing Policy and Practice in the Global South is dedicated to advancing housing and urban development research that highlights innovative practices, policies, and projects outside of Europe. We aim to critically examine both the shortcomings and positive impacts of these approaches. Through in-depth studies, we seek to uncover the root causes of failures and successes, fostering a nuanced understanding and drawing valuable lessons from experiences across the Global North and South.
We actively encourage participation from international researchers and scholars—both European and non-European—engaged in research outside European contexts. Our group promotes South-South and North-South exchange through presentations, discussions at ENHR congresses, and a dynamic series of webinars and virtual workshops held throughout the year. Our strategy is to cultivate a peer-to-peer environment that enables the cross-fertilization of knowledge, ideas, and experiences, nurturing a vibrant community and a forward-looking steering group.

Our Central Theme
Rapid urbanization in the developing world has not been matched by a commensurate growth in housing supply. This imbalance, driven by policy shortcomings, limited political will, inadequate housing finance, poor land management, insecure tenure, obsolete regulations, and chronic underinvestment in infrastructure, has led to a dominant pattern of urban growth characterized by informal developments, slum formation, stark inequalities, and precarious living conditions. This form of predatory and unplanned urbanization also sharply increases social and environmental vulnerabilities, particularly to climate change. Our work pinpoints these critical challenges confronting citizens and policymakers, providing a foundation for transformative research, analysis, and action.

Our Four Principles
The Working Group is built on a set of fundamental principles:
Housing as a Human Right: We recognize the right to adequate housing as defined in international human rights instruments ratified by over 170 countries. We view housing as more than just shelter—it is a development sector intrinsically linked to every aspect of a nation’s economy.
A Holistic View of Adequacy: When evaluating research, we understand that adequate housing for socially and economically vulnerable groups must be: affordable, socially adequate, well-located relative to jobs and income opportunities, physically accessible, and connected to basic infrastructure and urban services.
Housing at the Core of Sustainable Urban Development: The symbiosis between housing and sustainable, equitable, and inclusive urban development is central to our focus. This means examining the complex interplay between housing, land supply, infrastructure, finance, property rights, labor, and material supply chains.
Confronting the Global Affordability Crisis: We observe that globally, housing prices are outpacing income, rental markets are under strain, and households face severe cost burdens. This fuels informal housing, illegal land subdivisions, and unsustainable urban expansion, where urbanization often becomes synonymous with slum formation and social and spatial exclusion.

Our Evolving Sub-Themes
Our research agenda is structured around several dynamic sub-themes:
Financing Housing for the Poor: Exploring affordability and mechanisms to improve housing access for the urban poor, including diverse finance models, credit, subsidies, and financial aid. This theme investigates barriers, indicators like price-to-income ratios, and affordable housing solutions and its overall impact on economic development and urbanization.
Informal Land and Housing Markets: Analyzing the genesis and dynamics of informal markets, the strategies households use to access housing outside formal systems, and the barriers within formal markets. This research seeks to better understand the impacts of both formal and informal markets on housing production and affordability and overall city development and urban expansion.
Housing and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation: Investigating policies, approaches, and technologies for resilient housing. This includes assessing housing carbon footprints, exploring carbon-neutral solutions, and developing strategies for sustainable urbanization in the face of climate change.
Slums, Precarious Housing, and Homelessness: Examining the social, economic, physical, and environmental conditions in slums, informal settlements, and precarious housing. This theme unveils the deep-rooted causes of urban informality and explores slum upgrading, inclusive strategies, and urban regeneration.
Participation and Community-based Housing: Focusing on people-centered processes and collective housing solutions, such as cooperatives, self-help and mutual aid institutions, self-managed housing, condominiums, and community-based management.
Housing Standards and Technical Attributes: Exploring the physical, design, and spatial attributes of housing. This includes analyzing quality standards, social and cultural suitability, climate adaptability, and the critical nexus between construction solutions, price, affordability, and social appropriateness and relations to sustainable development and climate change adaptation and mitigation.