UN chief urges investment in resilient housing amid $228b annual disaster damage

UNITED NATIONS  –  Every year, natural disasters in­flict $228 billion in housing dam­age globally, prompting UN Sec­retary-General Antonio Guterres to urge stronger investments in safer, more resilient homes.

In a message issued to mark the International Day for Disas­ter Risk Reduction, the UN chief highlighted the damage and de­struction of millions of homes in which families are displaced and deepen poverty.

He stressed that “as climate and disaster risks multiply, building safer dwellings is the shared responsibility of govern­ments, developers, engineers and communities”. Echoing that message, the UN Office for Di­saster Risk Reduction – UNDRR – noted that damage to housing alone accounts for 43 percent of the direct cost of cyclones, floods, tsunamis and earthquakes.

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Spokesperson Jeanette Els­worth stressed that reducing the impacts of disaster depended on building resilient homes and households that had prepared for the worst.

“Among those people who had received an advance warn­ing during a disaster, only 27 percent of those who had nei­ther a household disaster plan nor confidence in their ability to protect themselves were able to act on that warning,” she said, citing data from the Lloyd’s Reg­ister Foundation World Risk Poll 2026. “By contrast, 83 percent of those who had both a plan and confidence in their ability to re­spond were able to take action.”

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Ms Elsworth noted that prog­ress in reducing disaster deaths over the last 11 years has not been matched by reductions in their economic impact.

All households should have access to risk information, early warning alerts and the resources they need to protect themselves, she maintained, in a call to put housing resilience at the centre of disaster risk reduction efforts.

Governments, the private sec­tor and community authorities could do this by “building in saf­er locations, enforcing resilient building standards, retrofitting existing homes and empowering households with the knowledge and tools they need to prepare for disasters”, she continued.

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The UN International Orga­nization for Migration (IOM) helped 1.4 million people in 2025 across 39 countries with disas­ter risk reduction programmes, supporting nearly 1,200 com­munities. Maria Moita, Director, Department of Humanitarian Re­sponse and Recovery at IOM, said that for many people, the end of a disaster is “only the beginning of a much longer struggle to re­turn home, restore livelihoods and rebuild their lives”.

The agency also helped extend early warning coverage to more than 1.2 million people.

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Recent emergencies in Nepal, Venezuela and Colombia have demonstrated how planning for disaster and data gathering can have a significant bearing on re­covery. In Nepal, where devastat­ing flooding caused by a glacier collapsing in August affected more than 84,000 people and damaged approximately 7,500 homes, IOM assessments across 48 displace­ment sites identified 3,650 dis­placed people and 28 sites still op­erational. In Venezuela, following the June earthquakes, the agency assisted 50,600 people, providing temporary accommodation, es­sential supplies, health care and protection. Surveys indicated that more than half of affected house­holds identified housing repairs as a priority. “The lesson was clear: recovery planning had to begin early, before temporary displace­ment became prolonged,” Ms Moita stressed. In Colombia, an earthquake in August reportedly affected nearly 500,000 people and damaged more than 200,000 homes, leaving an estimated 20,000 families displaced in Cali.

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