Thirty Years of World Bank Shelter Lending : What Have We Learned?

Buckley, Robert M. ; Kalarickal, Jerry

Washington, DC:World Bank

关键词: ACCOUNTABILITY;    AFFORDABLE HOUSING;    APPROPRIATE HOUSING;    BANKING SERVICES;    BORROWING;   

DOI  :  10.1596/978-0-8213-6577-9
RP-ID  :  36217

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

By reviewing the Bank's experiencewith shelter lending, this paper seeks to address thequestion of whether the Bank has helped developing countriesdeal with the inevitable problems that arise withurbanization, particularly problems with the provision ofshelter. It reviews the Bank's performance, with afocus on identifying lessons learned so that current demandscan be more effectively addressed. In contrast to earlierstudies, however, this review focuses more on how thechanging policy environment has affected the structure ofBank assistance, rather than on how Bank assistance hasaffected the policy environment. This perspective is takenfor two reasons. First, in recent years, benevolent changesin the policy environment are helping to ensure that bettershelter conditions are provided to the poor in rapidlygrowing cities. However, despite the generally improvedenvironment, some serious and often long-standing obstaclesare impeding and, in some places, preventing progress. Theemphasis on the policy environment allows the Bank to givegreater weight to these constraints. Second, Bank shelterassistance is no longer an experimental program, as it waswhen the first review took place. Shelter assistance is nowa mature sector, with 278 loans (including InternationalFinance Corporation [IFC] loans). As a result, this reviewdevotes considerably more attention to the outcomes of theBank's shelter projects than did the earlier studies.Conclusions about shelter lending are by no means completelypositive, however. In particular, while the nature of thelending has evolved to embrace the private sector morefully, it has also moved away from the poverty orientationthat was for many years the core focus. If the Bank is tomake a meaningful contribution to the Millennium DevelopmentGoal of affecting the lives of 100 million slum dwellers,this trend will have to change.