A Safe Place to Live - Lima’s Urban Realities

Imagine, you are dreaming of a safe place for your family to live, but it takes decades to build a house.

As a global phenomenon, the housing situation of the poor is dramatic: An estimated 1.6 billion people live in substandard housing, and this number will almost double until 2030. Most of them will end up in so-called informal settlements, starting to build by themselves. In Lima, Peru, like in many other regions of the world, housing construction is a long lasting process, not a purchase. For low-income families in particular, construction costs are often more important than quality, which impacts the families’ safety and health. Alicia’s family is one of them.

That's why the Hilti Foundation started to support Habitat for Humanity's Shelter Venture Labs more than five years ago to drive systemic change in affordable housing and to improve how families build and live in informal settlements. Country-specific teams bring together private and public stakeholders to increase through entrepreneurial approaches the quality of owner-driven construction for better and safer homes.

For a comprehensive solution to improve building and housing for low-income families, the Hilti Foundation has now taken the next steps. Together with their partner Swisscontact and ten other leading housing organizations including UN Habitat, Habitat for Humanity, and Miyamoto International, they are discussing how they can join forces to transform entire ecosystems. "We believe that the only way to change low-cost construction is to include all aspects of the ecosystem, such as access to finance, access to materials, access to innovation, better regulation, skills training and awareness raising. This is undoubtedly what we at the Hilti Foundation want to achieve through our programs," says Joann Baar, Director Affordable Housing & Technology. 

Alicia is more than happy about her family’s new home: “To see it built, so many years later, has been a great pleasure. We always had plans to build, but we never could do as it’s supposed to be – until now.”