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Diana Mitlin, International Institute of Environment and Development, UK
Community involvement in improving housing for low income families in Asian cities is changing approaches to funding – and delivering impressive results as well.
I was recently in Bangkok with the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR) to hear about the latest outcomes from the Asian Coalition for Community Action (ACCA) programme. The results were impressive: there are now projects in 215 cities across Asia and more than 49,000 low income families have been able to secure land and housing.
ACCA was established in 2011 to support community-driven improvements to informal settlements in ways that are relevant at the city scale. It enables the organised urban poor to be the primary doers in planning and implementing projects to secure land tenure, improve infrastructure and construct housing.
The design of the programme encourages local communities to work in partnership with their local governments and other local stakeholders. As such, it turns on its head the ways in which donors have traditionally distributed finance.
The two diagrams below show the old model of financing and the new model.
<img class="caption image-max300 caption-processed" title="” src=”http://www.iied.org/files/styles/max300/public/Mitlindiag1_new_2.jpg?itok=-waudabQ” alt=”Diagram showing the old model for finance” width=”362″ height=”235″>
Spreading the network
ACCA has supported activities in 215 cities in 19 countries. This rapid and extensive reach has only been possible because there are many organisations involved. While the programme is designed to encourage particular approaches and strategies, it has proved to be flexible enough to allow members of the coalition to adapt it to the diverse and complex contexts in which they are working.
Activities build on the work that groups have previously completed in towns and cities across the region, nurtured by community organisations and their support groups. And implementation has drawn on the combined experiences, mistakes and learning of previous years.
What are the results?
The coalition’s members have made a bold attempt to introduce visionary change in urban Asia, crafting more inclusive strategies to challenge poverty and inequality. The programme has just completed its fifth year, with investment of almost US$14.5 million. What are the results?
- 146 “big housing projects” (capitalised with $40,000 per project) have helped 49,356 low-income families to get secure land and housing. These projects have been realised in 127 cities – and in 70 of these, the communities were able to negotiate with the government and secure land free, or at minimal cost
- These “big housing projects” have also catalysed the creation of city development funds, which are now operating as new joint financial mechanisms in 136 cities with funds of $21.65 million. These bring together savings, and development assistance
- (with ACCA money being repaid by those benefi