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Community-led responses to the COVID-19 pandemic can be much more than just temporary relief efforts. Experienced networks and federations of the urban poor are valuable development partners and can deliver scalable recovery solutions that simultaneously address long-standing development problems and structural inequities in their cities. This briefing distils five key policy lessons from a 2021 action-research project in four Southeast Asian countries. Long-established community networks implemented projects that helped control the spread of coronavirus, increase food security, boost livelihoods, and make progress towards secure housing and land tenure. These projects have increased local institutional capacities and aligned with pro-poor urban development pathways. National policy and decision makers, municipal governments and international agencies involved with COVID-19 relief and …