What does investing in a safer home mean when your right to remain on the land beneath it is uncertain?

Investing in a home means committing resources today in the expectation of greater security over many years. An uncertain lease, an unresolved claim to land or the possibility of eviction can undermine that expectation. Even where a household can afford some improvements, uncertainty may shape how much it invests and which improvements it makes. A family may own the building it lives in yet have little assurance that it can continue to occupy the land.

This uncertainty deserves greater attention in how resilient housing is planned, financed and supported. Advice on construction and calls to rebuild better must account for the conditions under which people make these decisions. Lasting improvements in safety depend on households having the confidence, resources and support to invest in the places they call home.

Barriers to safer housing and recovery

The consequences extend beyond a household’s decision to invest. Without recognised proof of ownership or occupancy, families may struggle to access housing loans or qualify for assistance. 

Yet documentation alone cannot make borrowing affordable. Experience from settlement upgrading in the Caribbean shows households relying on savings and remittances to improve their homes incrementally, with little evidence of land titles being used to secure formal loans for those improvements. Greater security must be accompanied by financing options that reflect how people earn, save and build.

The availability of affordable land also shapes where people build. A location close to work, schools and essential services may expose a household to flooding or unstable slopes. Moving somewhere safer can mean losing access to the livelihood that pays for housing in the first place. These choices connect the safety of individual homes to wider decisions about land use, infrastructure and public services.

After a disaster, unresolved land rights can become a further obstacle to recovery. Programmes that require formal ownership documents or permission to rebuild may be difficult to access for renters and people living under informal arrangements. Without provisions for these households, reconstruction can leave intact the insecurity that constrained their options before the disaster.

Turning land rights into lasting security

Secure tenure does not always require individual ownership. Long-term leases, protected rental arrangements and recognised customary or collective rights can also provide stability. What matters is whether people can rely on those rights and have the means to improve their living conditions.

In Somalia, the Saameynta programme brings together land access, housing and livelihoods. Through the initiative, 45-year-old Hamso Abukar Haji received a plot of land and permanent shelter in 2023. She subsequently added space and a fence to her home. With a secure place to live, she then opened a clothing business through a savings group and a business grant.

Her experience illustrates the value of addressing these needs together. A stable place to live creates a basis for planning ahead, while livelihood support helps households sustain that stability. Housing programmes should make these connections deliberately, ensuring that people whose land rights often go unrecognised can also benefit. This is also vulnerability reduction and resilience building in practice.

Making safer homes affordable

Secure tenure must be matched by practical ways to pay for safer housing. Governments and development partners need to address both within the same programmes. For households with very limited incomes, this may require grants or publicly financed housing. Others may benefit from affordable loans and technical support to improve their homes gradually. Assistance should reflect what families can afford without sacrificing other essential needs.

Bangladesh offers an example of how these measures can work together. Through a social housing initiative, public financing delivered climate-resilient homes for low-income households, while local governments provided 99-year leases, including rights shared with spouses. Public investments enable the cost of obtaining a safer home; the lease provides long-term security over the land. Addressing these barriers together makes safer housing a more realistic and lasting prospect for families.

Putting secure tenure into practice

As disaster risk practitioners, we have a responsibility to understand what stands between the safety we recommend, and the choices households can realistically make. Acting on that understanding requires us to work with land authorities, housing agencies, local governments and communities on three priorities:

• What we assess: examine tenure, affordability and access to services alongside physical damage and structural safety.

• How we design assistance: create workable routes for renters and people without conventional ownership documents, and connect construction advice with the means to act on it.

• What we count as success: look beyond completed housing units to whether households have reduced vulnerability and exposure.

These priorities should guide investment before disasters occur and carry through into recovery. They need clear responsibilities, dedicated resources and follow-up with households to understand whether support has made their homes safer and their living arrangements more secure.

Bringing secure land rights, safer construction and affordable finance together must become the standard for how we turn investment in housing into lasting protection for families.