The build change guide to resilient housing: An essential handbook for governments and practitioners

This guide consolidates Build Change’s experience developing home improvement programs in 24 countries since 2004. It is designed to support governments, funders, and practitioners with comprehensive guidance and practical tools to carry out successful resilient housing programs at scale. Build Change’s work has proven that resilient housing initiatives can be transformative and produce permanent change: they can save lives, protect the vulnerable, create jobs, spur local economies, and provide a cost-effective and long-term solution to the qualitative housing deficit that countries throughout the world are experiencing today.

The guide makes the case for an urgent need to invest in improving the safety of existing housing, demonstrates that this work delivers results, and enables others to join us in our vision to make every home disaster resilient. The guide has been designed as an essential handbook for governments, practitioners, and funders of home improvement programs to successfully execute a resilient housing program or to enhance their existing one. It is both a summary of the Build Change philosophy and model, and a practical manual focused on the design of national strategies, operational and investment plans. The guide includes detailed examples and case studies from housing programs around the world, to demonstrate how our model is being applied across a wide range of contexts.