Disasters cost $228 billion in housing losses every year

$228 billion is a staggering amount of money to find, but that’s exactly what communities around the world are faced with every year, to rebuild housing after disaster strikes.Highlighting the need for greater investment in stronger homes and better preparedness, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that millions of homes are damaged or destroyed annually “displacing families and deepening poverty”.Marking the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction, the UN chief 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 per cent of the direct cost of cyclones, floods, tsunamis and earthquakes. Difference between life and lossSpokesperson 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 per cent of those who had neither a household disaster plan nor confidence in t...