Together for the families to build their homes in a safe, resilient and sustainable way

The context

• Latin America and the Caribbean is the most urbanised developing region on the planet.
• More than 80% of its population lives in constantly growing cities, which register half a million new residents each month.
• Progressive construction means that homeowners progressively remodel and expand their homes according to their changing needs, which can take up to 30 years (Habitat for Humanity, 2019).

The alliance

CENAC (Centre for the Study of Construction and Urban and Regional Development), Habitat for Humanity (and its Terwilliger Center for Innovation), Miyamoto International, UN Habitat, TECHO and UNIAPRAVI, with the facilitation of Swisscontact, will be in charge of implementing this project in the Villa María del Triunfo district, thanks to the contribution of the Hilti Foundation.

Project goals

Implemented in Peru, the Progressive Housing project aims to establish a collaborative relationship in order to improve the supply of and access to adequate services, products and technologies that allow families to have better conditions to build or remodel their homes. 

This initiative, financed by the Hilti Foundation and facilitated by Swisscontact, will be developed in its pilot phase in the Villa María del Triunfo district. It will be carried out jointly by a group of organisations specialised in the subject, such as the Center for Construction Studies and Urban and Regional Development (CENAC), the NGO Habitat for Humanity (and its Terwilliger Center for Innovation), the Miyamoto organisation, the Non-Governmental Organisation TECHO and the Inter-American Housing Union (UNIAPRAVI), who together will focus their intervention on necks bottles that prevent families from living in safer and more habitable homes and value their properties. These bottlenecks will be addressed through the following components: 

1. Facilitate better access to housing finance
2. Improve progressive construction practices
3. Introduce innovative, sustainable and affordable technologies, products and services. 
4. Promote policy instruments to increase public investment

The project arises as a response to rapid urbanisation in peripheral areas, which, in many cases, leads to poor quality of construction. Houses are poorly constructed due to the lack of professional advice, the work of poorly trained builders, uninformed owners and informal tenure of the property, among other factors. Within this informality, progressive construction has been identified as the most common way for families to adapt their housing conditions to the changing characteristics of their homes.  

On February 7, a ceremony was held to sign the Memorandum of Understanding to implement the project. The event was attended by the representative of the Hilti Foundation, Johan Baar; the Executive Director of Swisscontact, Cecilia Rivera; the CENAC representative, Jorge Torres; the Director in Peru of the NGO Habitat for Humanity (and its Terwilliger Center for Innovation), Gema Stratico; the SMEs Associate Director of Habitat for Humanity International, Adriana Llorca; the regional representative of Miyamoto, Juan Sandoval; the Executive Director of TECHO, Karina Sánchez.

About the Progressive Housing project:

The project has been designed to be carried out within four years. A 17-month inception phase will be carried out in the district of Villa María del Triunfo. During this period, we will seek to validate that a holistic and multi-actor intervention is effective, demonstrating that a) the intervention of the members of the alliance in the same territory is effective; and b) the set of selected interventions has the potential to improve the quality of housing and the living conditions of beneficiary families.

The expected result is that families in the area actually have better conditions to build or remodel their homes, thanks to the interventions of the Progressive Housing project.