Changing Lives

Mahila Housing Trust (MHT) is a techno-social organization that has been working for over 30 years in urban informal settlements across 41 cities in 10 states of India, impacting the lives of 17.3 million people. MHT organizes, collectives of vulnerable women, with knowledge skills and technology, partners with them, and becomes powerful ecosystem catalyst driving sustainable cities. Four broad portfolios of our work, include housing and habitat development, climate change, environment and participatory governance.

In recent years, as cities globally confront escalating climate risk, climate resilience has become a central lens across our work — from citywide cool roof programmes, strengthening housing and water systems against extreme weather, to to pioneering new tools for urban heat response. We support city-level heat action planning responsive to the needs of communities most at risk, and have developed a parametric heat insurance product to protect low-income and informal workers from income loss during extreme heat events.

MHT have also influenced large-scale policy reform, including delinking land tenure from service delivery, the State Slum Redevelopment Policy in Gujarat, instituting a cool roof programme in Ahmedabad, contributing to national guidelines for cooling centres, and a citywide strategy for water management and the revival of wells in Amalner.