Up to 3.4 billion people lack access to adequate housing, and the shortfall is widening: UN-Habitat puts the global housing deficit at 288 million units in 2023, up from 251 million in 2010. The report’s central claim cuts against the usual reflex, that expanding supply alone will not deliver affordability.
The headline
About 1.1 billion people now live in informal settlements and slums, and a similar number face insecure tenure. Affordability has slipped worldwide: the house-price-to-income ratio rose from 9.3 in 2010 to 11.2 in 2023, and is far higher across Asia. Some 44% of tenant households spend more than 30% of income on rent. UN-Habitat estimates roughly 64 million people were evicted between 2003 and 2023, often through redevelopment, infrastructure and even climate-adaptation projects, and puts the annual investment needed for adequate, affordable housing through 2030 at 3 to 4 trillion dollars.
The counting story
The report is built on new UN-Habitat data, and part of its contribution is measuring things that were previously undercounted: a housing-deficit time series from 2010 to 2023, an original estimate of two decades of evictions, and standardized price-to-income and rent-burden ratios by region. Naming and sizing “hidden evictions” is the kind of move SDGCounting watches, because a harm that is not counted is rarely acted on. The data also anchors the report’s argument: because affordability, tenure and quality are separate measures, supply figures alone cannot tell you whether housing is actually adequate.
Why it matters
Housing sits at the center of SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and its target on adequate, safe and affordable housing, and it reaches into poverty and tenure (SDG 1) and climate, since buildings account for roughly 37% of global carbon emissions and about 60% of the buildings expected to exist in 2050 are not yet built. The report’s prescription is a “new social contract for housing” that rebalances governments, markets and communities, illustrated with working examples from Thailand, Brazil and elsewhere. SDG 11 is under in-depth review at the High-Level Political Forum this year, which is where this evidence lands.
Watch & read
- World Cities Report 2026, the full report (UN-Habitat).
- Read it on UN iLibrary, a durable alternative if the UN-Habitat page is slow to load.
- HLPF 2026 coverage, where SDG 11 is reviewed this year.
Figures are drawn from the report and UN-Habitat’s launch materials. The 288 million housing-deficit figure is UN-Habitat’s 2023 estimate; some secondary sources cite a slightly lower number.