Billion slumdogs 'to be halved'

Published by Jon Land for 24dash.com in Housing

Four leading housing organisations have launched a worldwide campaign to halve the number of people living in slums. At present one third of the world’s urban population – one billion people – live in slums.

Over the next few years, Homeless International, Chartered Institute of Housing, hact and the National Housing Federation will be campaigning to raise awareness of this issue and to bring a greater understanding of the challenges faced by slum-dwellers.

Speaking at the Chartered Institute of Housing’s Annual Conference and Exhibition in Harrogate today, Larry English, chief executive of Homeless International, said:

"There are 100,000 people moving into slums everyday. If trends continue, the world slum population is forecast to reach 1.4 billion by 2020. We have a huge challenge ahead of us but we can no longer ignore this issue and we hope the collective voices of our organisations will move governments across the world to take action."

The campaign also has a longer term ambition to gain agreement for a new target that no one should be a slum dweller.