TED TALK – DURABLE HOUSING FOR A RESILIENT FUTURE

About the TalkDurable housing for a resilient future. Around the world, natural disasters destroy thousands of lives and erase decades of economic gains each year. These outcomes are undeniably devastating and completely preventable, says mason Elizabeth Hausler — and substandard housing is to blame. It’s estimated that one-third of the world will be living in insufficiently constructed buildings by 2030; Hausler hopes to cut those projections with a building revolution. She shares six straightforward principles to approach the problem of substandard housing: teach people how to build, use local architecture, give homeowners power, provide access to financing, prevent disasters and use technology to scale. “It’s time we treat unsafe housing as the global epidemic that it is,” Hausler says. “It’s time to strengthen every building just like we would vaccinate every child in a public health emergency.” This talk was ... Read More

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scaling pathways

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How did Build Change get started?

Written by Elizabeth Hausler Strand

I started Build Change 10 years ago with the mission of reducing deaths and injuries from housing collapses during earthquakes.  It was the 2001 earthquake in Bhuj, India that inspired me – most people were killed because their house collapsed on them.  It is possible and affordable, even in an emerging nation, to build houses and schools that don’t collapse in earthquakes or hurricanes – it’s a man-made problem with a man-made solution.