Editor’s note: This post was written by Batool Hassan, with assistance from Aun Rahman
On Thursday, August 21, Acumen Fund Pakistan hosted a half day roundtable discussion on “Innovations in Low Income Housing: Local Challenges and Global Lessons.”
The roundtable convened a small group of 20 key stakeholders representing different areas within the housing development and housing finance sectors. Attendees discussed key challenges and issues facing low-income housing development in Pakistan. The roundtable also highlighted successful models locally and globally, key challenges to scale, and what steps are necessary at the private and public sector levels to facilitate on the ground movement in the affordable housing space.
The group included:
- Representatives from the State...
Asylum Statistics United Kingdom 2007 (Home Office, August 2008) [text]
Forced Evictions and the Right to Housing of Roma in Russia (Intl. Fed. for Human Rights, July 2008) [text via Refworld]
The Looming Crisis: Displacement and Security in Iraq (Brookings Institution, August 2008) [text]
Manuel pour la protection des déplacés internes (IASC, 2008; English version issued earlier) [text via...
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From the BBC:
So there you are, the boxes are unpacked and you’re settling in nicely to your new house.
The sunlight dapples through the majestic plane trees, a bird cheeps from its perch on a Victorian lamppost, a bicycle jiggles over the picturesque cobbles.
It all seems worth the stress and the mortgage. But what’s this coming into view? A cavalcade of fluorescent-jacketed workmen is marching up the street.
A chainsaw is applied to a trunk, spades flick cobbles out of the ground, and there’s a mournful screech as your lamp-posts are uprooted. The council has come to nick your street furniture.
Of course, as far as the law is concerned, this isn’t “nicking” at all. Cobbles and lamp-posts do not belong to the street. They’re items the...
Annotated Bibliography of New Zealand Literature on Migrant and Refugee Youth (NZ Department of Labour, 2008) [text]
Housing, New Migration and Community Relations: A review of the evidence base (ICAR, 2008) [access]
Multiculturalism, Citizenship and Identity: A policy and literature review prepared as part of ICAR’s Refugee Rights and Responsibilities project, funded by the Sigrid Rausing...
Comparative Overview of the Implementation of the Directive 2003/9 of 27 January 2003 Laying Down Minimum Standards for the Reception of Asylum Seekers in the EU Member States (Odysseus Academic Network, 2007) [text]
- Note: This report was formerly confidential but has now been made available to the public on the European Commission web site.
Don't Call it Shangri-La: Economic Programs for...
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Housing
This FT article about the shift of poverty in the US from inner cities to the suburbs is fascinating as a whole, but one part really jumped out at me:
One reason is that suburban housing stock is ageing and losing its appeal, and is therefore more affordable. “The housing is not built to last 60 years,” says Myron Orfield, a former Minnesota state senator. “They don’t age well and don’t gentrify - they are not beautiful old homes.”
This reminds me of Ed Glaeser’s claim that “American housing is the best in the world”. But it’s probably not even as good as what was being built 50 years before. As Christopher Leinberger observes:
This future is not likely to wear well on suburban housing. Many of the inner-city neighborhoods...
To follow up yesterday’s post on Baltimore, here’s Ryan Avent on what I think was a key mechanism in the precipitous decline of many American cities:
During the great suburbanization wave of the postwar era, policies discouraged or prevented black suburban homeownership at every turn. Whites moved into appreciating assets in the suburbs, building wealth while they constructed a segregated and elite system of services for themselves–especially schools–constituting an upward-mobility engine. Blacks were relegated to the cash-strapped center, denied the ability to build wealth through homeownership, stuck in failing schools, plagued by crime. You want to find the root of differences in racial mobility, suburbanization and residential segregation is a good place to start....
Today, Bill Gates' speech at Davos has thrown the spotlight on "creative capitalism" and an emerging groundswell of interest in market-based solutions and business models that can drive positive social and environmental change. The excitement around these ideas to create self-sustaining, scalable options for development at the bottom of the economic pyramid (BoP) is encouraging, and the potential for a snowball effect of increased action is huge. Yet all of the grand words and fanfare remind me that what is most riveting - what really seems to capture attention and combat ingrained suspicions (about "development aid" and about "capitalism") - are the actual stories of the models themselves. So, today I'd like to provide a brief vignette of pieces...
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Position: Consulting Assignment Location: Brazil Organization: The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, promotes open and competitive markets in developing countries. IFC supports sustainable private sector companies and other partners in generating productive jobs and delivering basic services, so that people have opportunities to escape poverty and improve their lives.Description: IFC is looking to develop a commercially viable product offering that is based on the existing business model developed by a small-sized private company in Brazil. The business model integrates services aiming to formalize irregular settlements of poor urban communities as well as provide basic infrastructure and community engagement services to...
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Time to update your RSS feeds: Acumen Fund has launched a new, RSS-compatible web site (the site is a re-design of their previous effort). In addition to being syndication-friendly, the new site is rich with stories, photos, videos and lots of dynamic content. I like how they've organized things around their three pillars: capital, knowledge and talent. For more on this three pillars approach, check out my post from the annual Investor Gathering last week. While you're checking out the new Acumen site - be sure to read Jacqueline Novogratz's recent Pakistan and India journals, by the way - also add Immersion to your RSS feeds or bookmarks. Immersion is the title of the 2008 Acumen Fund Fellows blog. The seven fellows - with whom I met a few weeks back - are working...
Acumen Fund is currently seeking highly qualified applicants for the position of India Portfolio Associate.Location: Hyderabad, IndiaAcumen Fund is a global non-profit venture capital fund serving the four billion people living on less than $4 a day. Its objective is to create a blueprint for building financially sustainable and scalable organizations that deliver affordable, critical goods and services that elevate the lives of the poor. Acumen Fund invests debt and equity in enterprises delivering critical goods and services to the poor in South Asia and East Africa. read more...
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Acumen Fund is currently seeking highly qualified applicants for the position of Portfolio Associate.Location: New York, NYAcumen Fund is a global non-profit venture capital fund serving the four billion people living on less than $4 a day. Its objective is to create a blueprint for building financially sustainable and scalable organizations that deliver affordable, critical goods and services that elevate the lives of the poor. Acumen Fund invests debt and equity in enterprises delivering critical goods and services to the poor in South Asia and East Africa. read more...
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Neal Peirce wrote an article following the Bellagio summit in August expressing great enthusiasm for the potential that grassroots collective action and micro financing tools have for producing changes in urban slums. The thing that struck me most about Peirce’s article was his emphasis on the importance of community action and how much it resonates with my own observations from time spent in a housing project in El Salvador a few years ago - and how the only sort of "community action" inside the project was around the MaraSalvatrucha gang.(This article continues past the break; click "Read More" to continue)read more...
Each year, the Acumen Fund Fellows Program provides extraordinary young professionals with a unique opportunity to use their skills to effect real social change with our portfolio organizations in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, India and Pakistan, and to build lasting relationships with other like-minded individuals. Joining us in September 2008, Fellows will spend one year working with our team and with local entrepreneurs, gaining intensive experience in price performance, logistics, distribution systems, scaling and innovative technology. Fellows will learn and apply these skills while enjoying an unusual level of responsibility both at Acumen Fund and within our portfolio Applications accepted online from September 17 until noon on October 24, 2007.(Click below to read more)...
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Ashoka’s Full Economic Citizenship initiative (FEC) aims to create pioneering large-scale solutions for low-income populations by harnessing the joint power of businesses and citizen sector organizations.Ashoka seeks a team of entrepreneurial individuals to launch a country-wide “Housing for All” initiative in Egypt. This Egypt-based team, composed of a Program Leader, Program Manager, and Program Associate, will be part of a global team of business social innovators committed to advance profitable solutions to serve low income population. (Fluency in Arabic required – familiarity with the Egyptian context a plus) Click "Read More" to continue and download the job description (PDF).read more...
Knowledge @ Wharton published an article on the living conditions of India’s rural poor, and on the shortcomings of central and state-funded government housing programs. The author, Abraham George, maintains that the primary reason for failure is an exclusive focus on providing low-cost shelter, without consideration for interrelated factors that determine actual effectiveness.However, it’s also important to realize that even a strategy that convinces government to build more “complete” housing may also fail. Ownership and active involvement in the building of a new community are some of the strongest mechanisms that exist to ensure the highest positive impact on quality of life.More consideration should be given to sparking and supporting locally-based, private initiatives that...
The Inter American Development Bank (IADB) recently hosted a video competition called "The Faces of Exclusion." The purpose of this competition was to expand beyond traditional research techniques in socio-economics; the IADB was particularly looking for documentary films that stimulate reflection on social issues. All IADB member countries were invited to participate. The winner was announced earlier this month, and is a very compelling video on the Prestes Maia building in São Paulo, Brazil, here's the video:Prestes Maia, a 22 story abandoned building in deplorable conditions in São Paulo was the shelter of roaches and rats. Since 2002, it has been occupied by hundreds of homeless families when they united and formed the Downtown Roofless Movement (Movimento Sem Teto do...
Many immigrants come to work in the US, and when they do, they usually leave family behind. Often, their primary objective is to make money and provide for their families back home. Some companies - like the Mexico-based multinational cement giant CEMEX - are taking advantage of this situation and are starting to productize remittances. Instead of sending cash to their families back home, immigrants using a program called Construmex send aid in the form of housing materials. Productizing remittances is a secure way for workers abroad to provide what they think its priority to their families. Some may recall a post by Thamel dot Com founder Bal Joshi about this very subject. We recently covered a news story on NextBillion talking about CEMEX’s Construmex program:Money transfers can be...
2007 Armed Conflicts Report: Preview (Project Ploughshares, 2007) [text]
Housing and Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced Persons: Implementing the ‘Pinheiro Principles’ (OCHA/IDD, UN HABITAT, UNHCR, FAO, OHCHR, NRC & IDMC, March 2007 (print), July 2007 (electronic)) [text]
Internally displaced in Chad: Trapped between civil conflict and Sudan’s Darfur crisis (IDMC, July 2007)...
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Forced Migration/Internal Displacement in Burma: With an Emphasis on Goverment-Controlled Areas (IDMC, May 2007) [text]
Global Peace Index [access]
No Forcible Return of Minorities to Kosovo (Amnesty International, May 2007) [text]
Nowhere to go: Forced Evictions in Mau Forest [Kenya] (Amnesty International, May 2007) [text]
Remittances during Crises: Implications for Humanitarian Response,...
COHRE, Global Survey on Forced Evictions: Violations of Human Rights (Dec. 2006) [text]
Joint Committee on Human Rights, The Treatment of Asylum Seekers (House of Lords & House of Commons, 30 March 2007) [text]
Lambert, B. and C. Pougin de la Maisonneuve, UNHCR’s response to the Tsunami emergency in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, December 2004 - November 2006: An independent evaluation, PDES/2007/01...
(updated 15 May)
A Comprehensive European Migration Policy (EU, May 2007) [text]
Forced Evictions - Towards Solutions? Second Report of the Advisory Group on Forced Evictions to the Executive Director of UN-HABITAT (AGFE, 2007) [text]
Human tide: the real migration crisis (Christian Aid, May 2007) [text]
International Human Rights Research Guide (GlobaLex, March 2007) [text]
Iraq...
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Addressing the Palestinian Refugee Issue: A Brief Overview (R. Brynen, May 2007) [text]
Denied Refuge: The effect of the closure of the Kenya/Somalia border on thousands of Somali asylum-seekers and refugees (Amnesty International, May 2007) [text]
Last Hope: The Need for Durable Solutions for Bhutanese Refugees in Nepal and India (Human Rights Watch, May 2007) [text]
Palestinian Refugees:...
Every entrepreneur has a story. Anyone with the wherewithal and acumen to start a business had to have something click at some point - a moment when they saw an unrecognized market opportunity and the perfect product or service to fill that gap. For Tommy Matthew, this moment came from watching villagers in India tie their cows up with rope made from coir. Tommy went on to found Natura Fibretech in his hometown of Bangalore - a company essentially based around taking a material commonplace to India's BoP and popularizing it in the national construction and housing sectors. Indians have for generations used coir (a fiber made from coconuts) in practical items such as doormats, rope and even mattresses. (This post continues past the break; click "Read More" to...
A right-wing think-tank produces another statistical hodge-podge designed to promote their favourite policies. Nothing new there. But looking at the rankings, I can’t help but notice that in the two supposedly most laissez-faire countries in the world, Hong Kong and Singapore, most land is owned by the state and most (Singapore) or at least a very sizeable proportion (Hong Kong) of the population lives in public housing (albeit not quite as we know it in the UK).
As Sock-Yong Phang says of Singapore, this isn’t quite Georgist land-taxation, but it does capture a good chunk of land rents. And the revenues from leases, which are pretty big, help keep the income taxes which Heritage focuses on so low and thus economic ‘freedom’ so high, as well as making public...
Ashoka Fellow Darin Gunesekera has succeeded in securing deeds to a brand new condominium to more than 670 families – 4,000 people - in Sri Lanka who formerly lived in a slum. Property and regulatory system reform has gained momentum in recent years, and this model suggests significant potential for adoption by governments and landowners worldwide. Yet the challenges of replicating this successfully completed project speak to the immense difficulty of untangling the complex legal and social barriers to property regulations in the developing world.In Colombo, Sri Lanka, the high cost of land forces low-income residents to squat illegally on public or private land. The squatter has physical occupancy of the land, but his opportunity cost is high because he cannot obtain services or...
If I’m not scouring obscure newspapers for BOP related stories, staring aimlessly off into space, clipping my toe nails, or thinking about integrating a word like phallogocentrism into a blog about microfinance, then chances are I’m adding new activities to Nextbillion’s activity database. If you have not checked it out already, I would suggest that you click here and learn about some off the most innovative enterprises tapping into BOP markets around the world. But if you’re like me and find it difficult to click on a link, then you can just continue reading this post, which describes some of the latest BOP enterprises doing work in Africa. read...
What happens when you give a smart economist a weblog and too much time on his hands? According to my comprehensive survey of one isolated example, it seems they will start to talk rubbish. That isolated example is Bryan Caplan, who tells us
The homeless are different from you and me, and it’s not because they have less money.
Right - it’s because they have less home. No, wait, according to Caplan
It’s because they are extraordinarily low in what personality psychologists call conscientiousness. That’s my theory, anyway. A quite watchable documentary on Showtime (and that’s high praise from me, I strongly prefer fiction) puts my theory to the test. It’s called “Reversal of Fortune,” and it’s got a simple set-up: The film-makers...
Changemakers is at it again. Loyal NextBillionites might remember that Changemakers is an innovation-recognition initiative of Ashoka, the award-winning social entrepreneurship incubator. CM runs contests awarding the best entrepreneurs in a given sector – previous competitions have included How to Improve Health for All and How to Build a More Ethical Society – and the winners each receive $5,000 cash prizes. Talk about incentives!The latest contest is called How to Provide Affordable Housing, and the contest organizers are eager for more entrants. To be eligible, an organization must be doing actual, on-the-ground work in affordable housing. Winners will be judged based on four factors: innovation, impact, strategy, and sustainability.read...
For a business idea that was just discovered on a "serendipity walk," there is no doubt that Centromigrante has made a giant leap by winning the grand prize from the prestigious MIT 100K Entrepreneurship Competition last week in Cambridge, Massachussettes. This is the first time a Filipino team has taken on this 100K race, a competition that might as well be compared to a marathon for its magnitude and prestige. An advantage arose for the Pinoy team when MIT decided to shift course this year and open 100K to a development track.
read...