The profit paradox: reclaiming housing as a human right
The climate and housing crises are making homes less safe, less secure, and more expensive. Increasing extreme weather and rising energy prices are affecting millions of people, with low-income communities often hit hardest. Increasing profiteering and land holding compound these climate impacts, but there are many solutions that exist including those led by cities. This is why C40 and The Shift have partnered to produce a white paper on housing which addresses some of the multidimensional problems with multidimensional solutions.
Tragically, recent events highlight how vulnerable existing housing systems are to climate risks because of carbon intensive construction and because of limited housing resilience. Flooding in the Valencia region of Spain took more than 200 lives, impacting over 75,000 homes in 2024. Last year, wildfires in Los Angeles displaced 150,000 people and destroyed 12,000 structures, whilst Typhoon Kalmaegi obliterated parts of the Philippines, damaging 151,000 homes and displacing 562,000 people. In Nairobi’s Mukuru informal settlements, residents face annual climate-induced flooding that repeatedly destroys homes and communities.
Everyone needs a place to live. Access to adequate, safe and affordable homes is a fundamental human right, however, the commodification of housing and the business model that underpins it makes this right next to impossible to realise. Excessive profit-making from housing is the main driver of why and how we build housing, oftentimes untethered to real social needs or climate imperatives.
Housing is caught in a vicious cycle: it’s incredibly vulnerable to climate change, yet building more is warming cities and the planet. The construction industry drives over a third of global emissions, choking our cities with high-carbon materials that traps heat and worsens flooding. As temperatures and utility bills soar, low-income neighbourhoods pay the highest price. Living in poorly built, energy inefficient homes isn’t just bad for the planet—it’s a direct hit to people’s health and wallets.
Local and subnational governments are at the fulcrum of the climate and housing crises, particularly when it comes to securing adequate homes for those living in informality or experiencing homelessness. Cities face mounting pressure from housing shortages, rising material and labour costs and climate-related risks. High energy prices combined with increasing costs of construction materials are making it harder for renters and prospective buyers to find affordable, secure housing.
Housing and climate are frequently represented as competing priorities, but this framing all but guarantees inadequate responses to both challenges and leaves vulnerable communities at greater risk. Continuing with ‘business as usual’ will only deepen both crises, resulting in high carbon footprint, poor living and working conditions, and inadequate protection from major climate events.
The way forward: dignity and security for all
We present a new way forward: The Reframing Housing Construction white paper from C40 Cities and The Shift shows how we can achieve both clean construction and the fundamental right to housing. Grounded in 9 global city success stories, it is an effective blueprint for a resilient urban future in which cities are already taking a lead. For example, Bogota is prioritising retrofitting over demolition, preserving the existing self-built masonry homes and existing social fabric. Ahmedabad is pioneering the first heat action plan in South Asia, specifically targeting the heat-poverty trap in the city’s informal settlements.
These examples show that housing must be treated as essential infrastructure. That means an end to the commodification of housing, ensuring a solid foundation for human health, dignity and security. By leveraging clean construction principles, prioritizing existing buildings and low carbon materials, municipalities have the capacity to increase their affordable, sustainable housing stock in a cost-efficient and timely manner, insulating communities from both energy poverty and climate breakdown.
Transforming housing into an equitable and affordable climate solution requires the strategic use of municipal power with meaningful stakeholders and community engagement. That means weaving housing rights and sustainable construction into city governance, in any climate action that will have an impact on housing, and in any housing policy. It requires a toolkit of coordinated, ground-up approaches that – crucially – puts people at the centre of decision making. Neither housing policy nor climate action can succeed in a vacuum; those who will live in these homes must have a seat at the decision-making table.
In Europe the mayors of Barcelona, Paris and Rome co-lead the Mayors for Housing alliance . The plan that they and another 12 mayors presented to the European institutions this year demanded to have a say in the EU’s new legal framework on housing, to increase funding to develop social and affordable housing and to secure direct EU funds to cities for this task. The Belém Call for Action for Sustainable and Affordable Housing, launched at COP30 by UNEP and GlobalABC, calls on national governments to integrate climate action into housing policy, proving that the housing crisis is now global.
We stand at a pivotal moment. From Barcelona to Kuala Lumpur, from Bogotá to Vancouver, cities are proving that they can solve our housing and climate crises together. With Reframing Housing Construction, we invite every level of government and the whole value chain to take on this integrated approach and build a future where everyone has a healthy, affordable and sustainable place to call home. It’s time to scale innovation from pilot to mainstream policy.