With 100 million homeless people and billions living in substandard conditions around the world, the housing crisis is now at the forefront of global discussions at the G20. Participants at the debate “Production and management of data on the homeless population” emphasised the urgency of finding solutions to the situation.
Approximately 1.6 billion people live in inadequate housing conditions, lacking access to basic sanitation services, and struggling to afford their own homes. Each year, approximately 2 million people are forced to leave their residences. By 2030, 3 billion people -roughly 40 percent of the global population- will require adequate housing. It is estimated that 100 million people around the world are homeless.
The data comes from UN-Habitat (the United Nations Human Settlements Program) and reveals a dramatic scenario that has piqued the interest of G20 members.
The increase in homelessness rates in both developed and developing economies reveals how the multiple global security, politic
al, economic, ecological, and health crises have exacerbated the crisis of homeless people in temporary shelters around the globe.
Drawing attention to the growing number of homeless people and their impact on achieving global development goals, G20 Brasil organised the debate “Production and management of data on the homeless population,” which brought together experts and government representatives to discuss context-specific solutions based on the realities of member countries.
“Most countries around the world are in a state of poly-crisis. A housing crisis combined with climate change has a significant impact on the homeless population. It is a manifestation of the poly-crisis, but most countries have the means to solve it. Although reliable global statistics are lacking, homelessness is a global issue in all regions of the world,” said Balakrishnan Rajagopal, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing.
“Lack of access to adequate housing, gender-based and domestic violence, substance abuse
, discrimination, lack of decent employment, high energy costs, health care, rampant real estate speculation, a market with very strong power, limited access to quality education, and deficiencies in the mental health system and social protection systems,” Rayne Ferretti, UN-Habitat’s official in Brasil, listed as scenarios that lead people to lose their homes.
Marta Antunes, coordinator of the working group on Traditional Peoples and Communities at IBGE (the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), highlighted the efforts to develop a methodology for a census of Brasil’s homeless population. She emphasized that the Institute is collaborating with various organizations to address methodological and conceptual differences, which pose challenges in developing a national estimate for this group.
Jeff Oliver, from the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH), the US government body responsible for the agenda, recognises that the situation in the country is “life and death”. He revealed
that “Tens of thousands of people die every year because of the dangerous conditions of homelessness. And the life expectancy of homeless people is around 20 years lower than that of housed populations.”
The solution found by the country, said Oliver, is a multi-year strategy to prevent homelessness from occurring and to solve the problem quickly if it does. The plan includes among others: eliminating racial inequalities, producing data to support public policies; and fostering collaboration among governments, third sector organisations, and the business market.
Source: Emirates News Agency