A World without enough Homes

Somewhere tonight, a child will fall asleep on a floor made of compacted earth, beneath a roof of corrugated iron held down by stones. In another city, on another continent, a young couple will lie awake in a rented room they cannot afford, calculating whether next month’s pay cheque will cover the rent or the food, but not both.   In a third place, an elderly woman will sit in a tower block built half a century ago, its concrete walls blooming with damp, its lifts broken for the third time this year, wondering how a building designed to give her dignity has instead given her despair.

These are not isolated stories.

They are the daily reality for billions of people across every continent on earth. The global housing crisis is not coming. It is here. It has been here for decades. And unless we fundamentally change the way we design, build, fund, and deliver homes, it will define the century ahead.

According to the United Nations, approximately 318 million people worldwide are homeless. Not inadequately housed. Not living in substandard conditions. Homeless. Without any form of stable shelter. That is roughly the population of the United States, sleeping tonight without a roof

Beyond that 318 million, a further 2.8 billion people — over a third of the entire human population — lack access to adequate housing. They may have walls and a roof, but they lack clean water, sanitation, sufficient space, structural safety, security of tenure, or some combination of these. The home they have is not a home in any meaningful sense. It is survival, not living.

Of those 2.8 billion, 1.1 billion live in slums and informal settlements. Ninety per cent of those settlements are concentrated in Africa and Asia. In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, 62 per cent of urban dwellers live in informal housing. In the Asia-Pacific region, over 500 million people lack access to basic water services and more than a billion live without adequate sanitation. These are not statistics from a bygone era. These are the numbers from 2025.

And they are getting worse, not better.

The GUILD is an attempt to bring to the attention of as many people as possible to do something about it .. Not as a charity or some money making scheme, but instead aligning Developers, Governments, Ministers, Contractors, Funders, Social Programs, Individuals, Architects, Engineers, organisations and people like you, to start to find ways to help resolve this massive problem.

I will very soon publish a book on this which is long and intense and designed to be a go to publication for anyone who wants to better understand. Titled "A World without enough Homes". It will be free to download... Aimed at spreading the word and giving references to use, check for yourself, update and bring to the worlds attention something that we simply must address...

Join the GUILD here.

GUILD website