Established in the aftermath of World War II, the World Bank's infrastructure and development projects include those that address housing needs after conflicts and disasters. To support these efforts, a comprehensive review of the World Bank's disaster recovery projects from fiscal 1980 to 2024 was conducted. By analyzing publicly available documentation, the study spans 83 reconstruction projects with housing recovery components. It found that they met 98.7 percent of their original targets for reconstructing or repairing units, financing the recovery of 2.3 million homes, or 32 percent of the total units impacted by the disasters. The analysis also indicates that results frameworks did not systematically measure factors such as the cost and quality of the housing solutions and the time to deliver them. It suggest that future housing reconstruction efforts consistently assess speed, cost-efficiency, and quality of housing delivery, along with beneficiary satisfaction. Additionally, the research highlights the importance of robust preexisting governance and market conditions for the performance of housing reconstruction projects. It proposes a new concept – resilient housing capacity – to describe these prior conditions, which can enable countries not only to Build Back Better but also Build Better Before. Given that resilient housing capacity takes time to establish, the authors contend that it ought to be a key policy objective guiding the design of housing policies and programs in developing countries, and they offer actionable recommendations to improve it.