Curators: Ana-Mihaela Faciu and Alexandra Faciu
Westmount, Canada
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Why we recommend it: Where Housing Meets Climate stands out because it treats housing affordability and climate resilience not as parallel challenges but as a single policy problem with real financial consequences. Rather than advocating broad principles, the report draws on concrete examples from cities already grappling with these pressures, producing a report that is practical, evidence-based, and relevant to both public and private decision-makers. For investors and property owners, it offers a useful window into the policy direction of travel and the risks that increasingly accompany residential real estate. I found it thoughtful, pragmatic, and well worth the time.
Key takeaways:
- The report argues that housing affordability and climate action should not be treated as competing priorities. Many policies that address housing shortages can also reduce emissions, improve resilience, lower household costs, and strengthen social equity. Written for public sector leaders, but also relevant to developers, investors, planners, and financial institutions, the report draws on city case studies and practitioner interviews to identify scalable solutions.
- Both crises have reached a critical point. UN-Habitat estimates that 3 billion people will need adequate housing by 2030. The global shortfall grew from 251 million units in 2010 to 288 million in 2023, and cities must deliver approximately 35 million affordable homes annually through 2030. Europe requires more than 2 million new homes per year, while Africa’s deficit exceeds 51 million units. Affordability has deteriorated across advanced economies as house prices have far outpaced rents.
- Climate change is magnifying these pressures. The built environment accounts for 37% of global emissions, extreme weather displaced 45.8 million people in 2024, and 167 million homes are projected to be destroyed by 2040. Insurance costs are rising rapidly, disaster losses increasingly fall on households, and vulnerable communities face growing exposure to heat, floods, and wildfire. Affordability must therefore be measured as total cost of living, including transport, energy, and insurance. When transport costs are included, the proportion of affordable neighbourhoods falls from 55% to 26%.
- Ten approaches are identified for delivering affordable, climate-ready housing by creating new supply and optimizing what already exists across city, neighbourhood, and building scales: infill and densification, transit-oriented development, returning vacant properties and short-term rentals to the housing market, climate-risk-informed planning, brownfield redevelopment, neighbourhood revitalization, informal settlement upgrading, adaptive reuse, deep retrofits, and low-carbon construction.
- Three themes run across these strategies. First, better use of existing urban assets is consistently favoured over greenfield expansion. Returning vacant homes to the market, adaptive reuse, retrofitting, neighbourhood renewal, and informal settlement upgrading can often deliver housing more quickly, at lower cost, and with substantially lower embodied carbon. Second, success depends less on any single intervention than on the governance surrounding it. Densification requires zoning reform, financing, and affordability requirements; transit-oriented development requires long-term planning and land value capture; and retrofits require financial support and tenant protections. Third, displacement emerges as a recurring concern. Climate adaptation and neighbourhood improvement can raise land values and force out the lower-income residents they are intended to help, as climate gentrification in Miami and green gentrification in Barcelona demonstrate. Anti-displacement measures, inclusionary zoning, and tenant protections must be embedded from the outset.
- Conventional assumptions about financing are also challenged. Capital is not considered scarce; rather, the key challenge is aligning investment with long-term social and environmental value. Contributors propose competing solutions, including treating part of the housing stock as infrastructure backed by public guarantees, expanding cooperatives and public land banks, and strengthening tenant protections and development levies.
- The report concludes that cities should focus on long-term value rather than short-term profits, build within existing urban footprints, use risk-based planning, establish binding and measurable housing goals, coordinate policy under unified leadership, and regularly review outcomes. Success should be measured not only by homes delivered, but also by affordability, resilience, resident wellbeing, and protection against displacement. The central message is that effective housing and climate policy can, and must, be pursued together.
To access the publication click 🔗 this link
Ana-Mihaela is an architect with extensive experience in interior architecture, furniture design, new builds, conversions and sustainability, acquired through her own practice and with various architecture firms. Her work is driven by a desire to improve the human experience in and with her projects. She taught at the “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism in Bucharest from 2000 to 2012. Her Ph.D. thesis, “The Conversion: A Solution to Optimize the Built Space”, examined conversions across Europe and North America through the lens of sustainability, retrofitting and the circular economy, well before the subject became mainstream. She currently sits on the Board of the University Women’s Club of Montreal.
Alexandra is President of Alexandra Capital, an advisory firm providing consulting services in asset and portfolio management for real assets across Canada, the US and the UK. She is also the Founder of SAM Curated, the firm’s online sustainability and adaptability intelligence platform for the built environment. Alexandra and her practice combine practical experience with research‑based insights on sustainable investing, asset and portfolio management, valuation and next gen, drawing on current studies and on original research and content they publish regularly to deliver tailored advice to their clients. She is frequently invited to speak at industry conferences and sits on the RICS Governing Council.
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