Why everyone needs a home

and how the XPRIZE is challenging us to fulfil this need.

Calyn Pillay
Nov 4 · 7 min read
Photo by Romain MATHON on Unsplash (Bo Kaap, Cape Town, South Africa).

In 2016, Jennifer Dean devised a working concept of ‘the virtuous hierarchy of housing needs’ as part of her research on healthy and socially inclusive environments. Jennifer’s hierarchy of housing needs is intended to apply to all societies and peoples, and seeks to provide a focal point for to support our ability to identify why housing is vital to us. This article outlines Dean’s hierarchy and couples it with the United Nations’ (UN) adequate housing principles. These two pieces of work form the foundation from which we seek to explore — what now? If we know housing is vital and we know what adequate entails, what next? How do we disrupt current housing trends to realise adequate housing? To scout the answers to this question this article draws on the XPRIZE’s Future of Housing Impact Map.

“When we consider housing needs in a ‘Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs’ perspective, we shift our thinking from a house as simply a physical dwelling to a more meaningful concept of “home”. At its highest level, a home, whether rented or owned, becomes a structure that supports occupants who have a strong sense of place, and who have the confidence to creatively engage in their community.” — Jennifer Dean.

Jennifer Dean in ‘Room for All — Simple ways that accessible, adequate housing builds the best communities’ articulated why we value housing by adapting Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Housing caters for each of the needs in the hierarchy in the following ways:

Safety and Security need: Quality and suitable housing that is not overcrowded or in need of repair contribute to an individual’s health, personal security and financial security. The most serious of crimes such as murder, rape, and robbery are rife in informal settlements where housing is largely unsuitable for human beings.

Love and Belonging need: There is a shift that occurs between housing as a physical object that provides physiological and security needs to a nuanced and meaningful concept of home, and more broadly, community. Physical homes exist in neighbourhoods, they facilitate our access to schools, work, and places to buy things to meet our other needs. Most importantly they are where our friends and family are — our communities.

Esteem needs: When a house is given positive meaning, it becomes a home. It is the place of family, connection, privacy and culture. For example, remembrance of a childhood home incites feelings of nostalgia, self-identity, rootedness, and attachment. Families who are evicted or lose a home often feel ashamed of this and there is a social stigma that stops them from asking for help earlier, when intervention may save them from homelessness

Self-Actualization need: This is the process in which an individual reaches their potential. While housing is not directly linked to this need, without a stable home (by having all the above needs fulfilled) it is very difficult for people to reach their potential.

What is adequate housing? not all homes are created equal.

“The Right to Adequate Housing,” Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2009, http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/FS21_rev_1_ Housing_en.pdf.

International human rights law recognizes everyone’s right to an adequate standard of living, including adequate housing. The right to adequate housing is relevant to all countries around the world, as they have all ratified at least one international treaty that includes adequate housing. In addition, several constitutions protect the right to adequate housing (including South Africa’s see Chapter 2 of Constitution, Bill of Rights, Section 26: Housing) or outline the governments’ general responsibility to ensure adequate housing. (UN-Habitat, Factsheet 21 on Housing).

What does housing look like in the world today?

We do this because we know that the solutions to the world’s problems won’t come from one person or one country or one industry’.We will only reach these solutions if everyone can make their voices heard. — XPRIZE.

They have identified six major housing challenges that require our disruptive innovation. I’ve summarised these six below.

The 1st aspect of our housing challenge is demographics

We are seeing the development of urban slums which a lack of basic services like electricity, clean water, and sanitation. In established suburbs, we are seeing an increase in homelessness.

Analysts estimate that the affordable housing gap for the urban households worldwide will grow from 330 million households in 2017 to 440 million households by 2025 to 1.6 billion people, more than a 30% increase.- XPRIZE

The 2nd aspect of our housing challenge is affordability

XPRIZE research finds some of the primary contributors to the inadequate supply of secure affordable housing are high costs, an overemphasis on home-ownership, and inappropriate government policies.

Emerging technologies offer the potential to radically improve housing stock by impacting the cost of building, the environmental efficiency, as well as the functions and experiences we have of our homes. However, we still need to leverage these technologies as solutions that accrue benefits for most of humankind.

The 3rd aspect of our housing challenge is adaptability

The 4th aspect of our housing challenge is resilience

The 5th aspect of our housing challenge is environment

The last four years were the four hottest on record, and winter temperatures in the Arctic have risen by 3°C since 1990. Sea levels are rising, coral reefs are dying, and we are starting to see the life-threatening impact of climate change on health, through air pollution, heatwaves and risks to food security.

Building homes is one of the most natural resource-intensive human activities, therefore we need to be thinking about the health of ecosystems and their ability to recover, as we find solutions to the housing challenges we face.

The 6th aspect of our housing challenge is technology

  • improve the cost of building,
  • environmental efficiency of buildings,
  • function and experience of a home,
  • equity in housing.

If we start innovating around the trends, we will stand a chance of ensuring the benefits of these technologies are experienced by all.

Who do we need to be to achieve adequate housing?

Do we want to live in a world with exponential inequity?

We need to be able to make an assessment about the trends and factors in our local context, then hold this current reality while optimistically look for opportunities to solve these challenges.

Will, you join us in looking at this issue with optimism and creating an abundant future in which every person has adequate housing?


Why we wrote this piece: For those of you who know our work in evictions in Cape Town, you might be confused about why we choose to write this piece. We believe it is worthwhile to look at trends shaping global housing needs and how they will continue to exacerbate local issues in housing unless, we disrupt them through innovation in tech, policy, and our societies. Evictions are a symptom of an unhealthy housing system. We know we (all of us) need to simultaneously work on the cause and the symptoms.

OpenUp

We build tools, open up data, and provide training that support active citizenry and help communities and government work together.

Calyn Pillay

Written by

is the Research lead at OpenUp (formerly Code for SA) in Cape Town. * Effective altruism * Human Rights * Parity

OpenUp

OpenUp

We build tools, open up data, and provide training that support active citizenry and help communities and government work together.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade