Housing and Finance in Developing Countries: (Routledge Studies in Development and Society)

Nearly one half of the world's urban population lives in poverty and about 800 million people occupy substandard housing. This 'housing crisis' has continued unabated despite over 20 years of research and policy. At the forefront of new policy initiatives, confirmed by recent conferences such as Habitat II in Istanbul, is an inititiative to afford greater priority to finance, yet, with the expediation that the provision of small quantities of finance to low-income households will bring real improvements to the quality and quantity of housing provision. This book explores the linkages between formal and informal housing finance drawing upon the lessons of NGO and micro-finance practices. Both public and private formal finance institutions have experienced great difficulty in lending below a middle-income client group, and are often reluctant to lend for the purpose of housing at all. This failure of formal finance to filter down to low-income households, and in particular to women, has led various NGOs and community groups to create and adopt innovative finance programmes, such as informal savings banks and credit rotating schemes. The authors critically assesses the impact of theses schemes, and evaluate links between gender, housing and finance. Drawing upon experiences in a wide range of developing countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia, Housing and Finance in Developing Countries includes contributions from academics and from representatives of NGOs and development organizations, from both developed and developing countries. It provides important insight to how housing provision is affected by accessibilty to finance, proving particularly valuable to thise studying within geography, urban studies and development, as well as to practitioners in NGOs and international institutions. Kwame Addae-Dapaah, The National University of Singapore, Alana Albee, Consultant, Inverness, Scotland, Robert-Jan Baken, Institute of Housing Studies, Rotherdam, The Netherlands,

Table of Contents:
List of figures, List of tables, Notes on contributors, Preface, Acknowledgements, PART I. Position papers, 1. From self-help to self-finance: the changing focus of urban research and policy, 2. Housing finance and non-governmental organizations in developing countries, 3. Housing finance in developing countries: a review of the World Bank’s experience, PART II. Formal and informal housing finance, 4. The political economy of formal sector housing finance in Jamaica, 5. From commercial banking systems to non-commercial banking systems in Mexico, 6. Formal housing finance and the elderly in Singapore, 7. Better a ‘hut’ on the ground than a castle in the air: formal and informal housing finance for the urban poor in India, 8. Affording a home: the strategies of self-help builders in Colombia, 9. Housing finance for refugees and forced migrants in Russia, PART III. Gender, NGOs and micro-finance, 10. Interpreting gender and housing finance in community practice: the SPARC, Mahila Milan and NSDF experience, 11. Gender and micro-finance in Sri Lanka: the experience of the Women’s Credit Union, 12. Informal finance and women’s survival strategies: case studies from Cameroon and Zambia, 13. A gendered perspective on formal and informal housing finance in Botswana, 14. Engendering finance: a comparison of two micro-finance models in El Salvador, 15. Housing finance and empowerment in South Africa, Bibliography, Index

Review :
'...this is an interesting and useful volume which achieves its first goal of bringing together diverse experience in a readily accessible form.' - Christine M. E. Whitehead, London School of Economics, Urban Studies Vol.37, No.9, 2000