Market innovations for affordable housing
By 2023, an estimated 3.0 billion people is expected to live in inadequate shelter globally. A crisis that is worsened by a lack of attention and investment in informal housing markets.
Collaboration for affordable housing solutions
To promote and expand affordable housing markets, Habitat for Humanity’s Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter launched ShelterTech, the world’s leading platform for affordable housing innovation, which targets pioneering shelter entrepreneurs. The Hilti Foundation’s support for ShelterTech and the Terwilliger Center’s Shelter Venture Labs puts entrepreneurs at the center of a highly connected ecosystem of collaborative partners.
By supporting community businesses with services, grants, and investments to identify, develop, test and commercialize affordable housing technology products and services, we support the creation of long-term, sustainable business models. This, in turn, enables the solutions to be scaled up globally, ensuring that the families most in need have access to adequate and affordable housing.
One such solution, developed in the Philippines by Green Antz Builders, converts plastic waste into construction products. Thanks to a partnership with the Terwilliger Center and with the support of the Hilti Foundation, this eco-friendly social enterprise has been able to make its high-quality products accessible to lower-income households, enabling them to build strong, resilient homes.
Habitat for Humanity and the Hilti Foundation
Since 2012, the Hilti Foundation’s partnership with Habitat for Humanity International has helped more than 5 million people worldwide build or improve homes, by employing innovative, eco-friendly and disaster-resilient shelter technologies, improving access to affordable finance and transforming market systems. Our partnership is based on four pillars: Driving green construction at scale, creating inclusive markets for innovative housing products, building Public-Private-People Partnerships for holistic change in the housing sector, and opportunities for staff members to engage beyond business.
The Terwilliger Center
The Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter, a division of Habitat for Humanity International, provides low-income families with access to innovative housing products, services, and financing. Working with partners, the Terwilliger Center identifies breakthrough technologies, develops innovative models, and strives to bring new solutions to scale. Since launch, the Terwilliger Center has helped more than 27.8 million people access improved housing solutions, unlocked US$7.9 billion in affordable housing, and catalyzed US$64 million in new business for companies serving the low-income segment.