Definition

Adequate housing requires the fulfilment of several essential criteria. It must ensure security of tenure, providing protection against forced evictions, harassment, and other threats. Housing should include access to essential services, materials, facilities, and infrastructure, such as safe drinking water, sanitation, energy, and waste management. It must be affordable, ensuring that costs do not compromise the enjoyment of other human rights. Housing should also be habitable, offering safety, adequate space, and protection from environmental and structural hazards. It must be accessible, taking into account the needs of disadvantaged and marginalized groups. In addition, housing should be well located, with access to employment opportunities, health care, education, and other social services, and should not be situated in polluted or hazardous areas. Finally, housing must be culturally adequate, respecting and supporting the expression of cultural identity.

Targeting

Persons lacking access to minimally adequate housing, i.e., experiencing homelessness, can be classified under three main categories, as follows:

• People without accommodation, usually in extreme poverty, experiencing human rights violations, who could be reached via implementation of social protection floor guarantees, i.e., health and income security (e.g. people sleeping in the streets, open spaces, public roofed spaces or buildings not intended for human habitation).
• People living in temporary or crisis accommodation who could be targeted in social housing programmes and other social protection schemes to support entry in the labour market (e.g. people staying in night shelters, homeless hostels, accommodations for those fleeing domestic violence (DV), camps provided for internally displaced persons/asylum-seekers / refugees).
• People living in severely inadequate and insecure housing (e.g, people sharing with friends and relatives on a temporary basis; people living under threat of violence: people squatting in conventional housing; people living in conventional housing that is unfit for human habitation; people living in extremely overcrowded conditions).

Key interventions

In general, measures to ensure access to adequate housing pursue several key objectives. These include preventing homelessness and avoiding its criminalization, as well as prohibiting and preventing forced evictions, including those resulting from unpaid rents, mortgages, or other housing-related expenses. Such measures also promote the upgrading of informal settlements and support sustainable urbanization. They seek to address discrimination, marginalization, and spatial segregation, while ensuring gender equality and tenure security for all. In addition, they aim to strengthen income security and improve access to basic infrastructure and essential services.

Key interventions to achieve these objectives include:

• Public housing services or social rental housing: governments can provide social housing alternatives to ensure individuals can access housing even when they are unable to afford it; they can be fully subsidised or offered at rates below market prices
• Reintegration and rehabilitation services: including mental health and psychosocial support.
• Housing benefits: providing housing benefits to groups affected by disasters or other vulnerable groups,  including to prevent evictions due to unaffordability (i.e, support to finance self-provision of housing regeneration/upgrade: housing programs targeting people on-the-move, i.e., refugees, asylum-seekers and IDPs).
• Taxation and tax incentive programmes: Tax relief for access to home ownership
• Rental interventions: include measures to improve affordability, security, and equity in the housing market. These encompass rent assistance provided to tenants or private landlords, as well as rent regulation policies, including controls on initial rent levels and subsequent increases. They also involve setting and enforcing minimum quality standards for rental dwellings. Additional measures include tax relief for rental costs, rent guarantees and deposit support, and regulations governing tenant screening to prevent discriminatory exclusion, particularly on the basis of income instability.
• Homeownership programmes, home savings schemes, and preferential housing credit schemes: aim to expand access to affordable ownership opportunities. These include the provision of flexible, low-interest housing finance to enable low-income households to build creditworthiness. They also involve subsidised mortgages and guarantees for homebuyers, as well as targeted subsidies to facilitate homeownership. In addition, mortgage relief measures can support over-indebted homeowners and reduce the risk of foreclosure.
• Energy poverty and climate-neutral housing: addressing the impact of high utility costs on low-income households, which can undermine both the habitability and affordability of adequate housing. Key interventions include targeted subsidies for low-income families to reduce energy expenses, as well as direct financial support to real estate developers to promote the construction of new energy-efficient buildings.
• Upgrading of informal settlements: improving living conditions and security for residents of slums and unplanned areas. Interventions include slum-improvement programs, financing for the acquisition of land and construction or improvement of homes for low-income families, and support to fund housing upgrades that enhance safety, infrastructure, and overall habitability.