Isadora Bigourdan

To meet the housing challenge, developing countries need to create new housing production models integrated into a sustainable overall urban policy. They need to collaborate with the private sector and support the entire housing sector in an integrated manner to achieve this. Securing land ownership and increasing funding for sector are the key conditions necessary to encourage private stakeholders to produce affordable housing on a massive scale.
Public housing policies in developing countries – often supported by international funding agencies, applying formulas that have worked in the North – are struggling to meet the needs of rapidly growing populations. Housing generally remains accessible only to the better off, while the number of people living in substandard accommodation is growing by 25 million a year. Cities often expand haphazardly, with the majority of people living in informal settlements where sanitation and security are extremely poor.