Anaclaudia Rossbach, executive director of the UN Human Settlements Program (UN-Habitat), sounded the alarm over the growing global housing crisis, highlighting that more than 300 million people are currently homeless worldwide, in an interview released by China Media Group (CMG) on Friday.
From May 29 to 30, 2025, the resumed second session of the United Nations Habitat Assembly convened in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital. During the event, Rossbach revealed staggering statistics, while over 2.8 billion people worldwide currently live in inadequate housing, more than 1.1 billion reside in slums or informal settlements, and over 300 million people have no home at all.
Rossbach emphasized that in many parts of the world, especially in Africa, 62 percent of urban housing is informal, while in the Asia-Pacific region, over 500 million people lack access to basic water services, and sanitation needs remain unmet for over a billion.
She provided further insight into the complexity and visibility of global housing challenges.
"Many times the inadequacy of housing is invisible. So you have people living in overcrowded apartments or houses that don't really correspond to the minimum standards of a healthy environment, let's say so. But many times it's visible. You see people living on the streets almost everywhere these days. Imagine 300 million people homeless. These are the numbers that we have. Eventually there are even more because there is some under subreporting," said Rossbach.
"In the Global South in cities like Nairobi where we are or in Brazilian cities where I come from, you can see the slums, the informal settlements, the favelas and these generated situations that are very precarious, with lack of access to water, sanitation, electricity - the most basic services, and in many times not even recognized by the cities, by the countries and living really in kind of marginalized situation," she said.
Global homeless population tops 300 mln: UN official
