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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
Table of Contents Foreword Global problems need global solutions The Global Strategy for Shelter (GSS) Basic principles of the GSS Building national shelter strategies Assessing shelter needs and resources Linking shelter objectives to settlement policies

Reorganizing shelter delivery systems Reviewing shelter policies Re-defining roles and responsibilities Stimulating action at local levels Broad-based training and incentives Creating enabling legal and regulatory environments Improving databases for strategic decision-making

Mobilizing finance for shelter delivery Financing infrastructure Financing housing Promoting investment in rental housing Targeting subsidies

Producing and improving shelter Managing urban land Delivering infrastructure Stimulating the building materials and construction sector

International action on the GSS The role of governments The role of international organizations The role of UNCHS (Habitat)

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ABOUT Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
HS/195/90 E ISBNE 92-1-131535-2 (electronic version)

Text source: UNCHS (Habitat) printed publication: ISBN 92-1-131109-7 (published in 1990). This electronic publication was designed/created by Inge Jensen. This version was compiled on 2 January 2006. Copyright 2005-2006 UN-HABITAT. All rights reserved. This electronic publication has been scanned from the original text, without formal editing by the United Nations. The description and classification of countries and territories in this study and the arrangement of the material do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries, or regarding its economic system or degree of development. Excerpts from the text may be reproduced without authorisation, on condition that the source is indicated. UN-HABITAT publications can be obtained from UN-HABITAT's Regional Offices or directly from: UN-HABITAT, Information Services Section, G.P.O. Box 30030, Nairobi 00100, KENYA Fax: (254) 20-7623477 or (7624266/7) E-mail: Habitat.Publications@unhabitat.org Web-site: http://www.unhabitat.org/

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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
Foreword The Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000, proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1988, constitutes an historic step towards harnessing the human, technical and financial resources of the international community, national governments, focal authorities, aid agencies, non-governmental organizations, planners and policy-makers, the formal and informal private sector and community-based organizations, towards the amelioration of the deteriorating shelter conditions of the poor and disadvantaged around the world. Efforts over recent decades to deliver low-income housing on a large scale through the establishment of national housing authorities have almost invariably failed because they did not take into account the many constraints, obstacles and crises which have hampered the growth of developing countries, and the fact that these housing agencies would only be able to draw on a very limited amount of national and external resources for the production of housing for low-income people. Unfortunately, this quest for large-scale housing supply ignored the fact that the high standard of housing designed, produced and even subsidized by housing agencies was beyond the affordability of the vast majority of low-income groups, and completely ignored the existence of the much larger and more efficient formal and informal, private-sector housing delivery system. The fact that the larger, lower-priced part of this delivery system was informal distracted government housing officials from the realization that the informal sector housing supply alone matched the affordability and scale of low-income housing demand in most countries of the developing world. Needless to say, the shelter problems of the developing world have continued to increase in the last decade. Despite the efforts of governments and international organizations, more than one billion people, mainly in the cities of the third world, lack shelter fit for human habitation. The staggering reality is that in the last decade of this century alone, housing, infrastructure and services will have to be generated for an additional half a billion people in the towns and cities of developing countries. How then can third world countries cope with a demand of such magnitude? Lack of resources and appropriately skilled personnel, coupled with legislative and administrative systems often inherited from previous colonial administrations are only two of the major obstacles that they face. Yet the most important drawback of all is the lack of strategic, consistent and sustained national and international approaches to meeting their national shelter needs realistically. This is why the Global Strategy for Shelter has been initiated.
Arcot Ramachandran Under-Secretary General Executive Director

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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
Global shelter problems need global solutions The right to adequate housing is universally recognized by the international community and constitutes the basis for national obligations to ensure that people's shelter needs are adequately met. Although national shelter delivery systems are primarily the responsibility of national governments, there are strong justifications for looking at shelter from a global perspective. Shelter is fundamental to people's physical, psychological, social and economic well-being in all countries. Whether in urban or rural settlements, shelter is the most visible expression of a country's ability to satisfy some of the most basic needs of its people. Wherever people's shelter circumstances are so inadequate that they fail to provide such basic supports to their lives, it is usually a clear indication that the society is on the verge of, or immersed in, economic and political turmoil. Inadequate and insecure shelter, wherever it may be, will lead to social and political instability and will hamper economic development. In this sense, global shelter conditions are closely linked to the achievement and maintenance of world peace and economic stability. In the context of global population growth and the Earth's finite resources, the way in which human beings are accommodated or sheltered is a major and integral part of the imperative to maintain a global environmental equilibrium. We have entered an era in which no country is isolated and secure from the impacts of the environmental conditions of its neighbours. All countries have a stake in each other's present and future well-being. Moreover, a strategy for stimulating adequate shelter for all is global by definition: first, because no country has completely met its people's shelter needs; secondly, because of the extreme differences found between countries and the grave shelter problems faced by the majority of them, there is a need for global responsibility and a global commitment; thirdly, because the shelter process reveals many trends common to different development and socio-economic contexts so that there is a common set of principles, criteria and approaches applicable to all national and subnational contexts, many of the individual lessons learned are universally valid. All countries are aware that their shelter production, improvement, delivery and maintenance systems are deficient in some way. This fact, coupled with the partial success in learning from one another in the past, has led countries to the perception that the pooling of global knowledge and the gradual development of national and global feedback systems can profoundly improve each country's shelter delivery system. Moreover, in countries with severe shelter problems, especially developing countries confronted with high population growth and rapid rates of urbanization, global support of national efforts is fundamental to generating meaningful and sustainable improvement to their shelter capacities. These lines of analysis underpinned the decision of the United Nations Commission for Human Settlements to propose the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000.

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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
The Global Strategy for Shelter (GSS) The Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000 (GSS) was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1988 to focus global and national attention on the enormous shelter challenges confronting countries generally and developing countries in particular, and to mobilize new modes of international and national co-operative effort to create access to adequate shelter for all by the year 2000. The GSS is based upon a number of perceptions about the direction of current shelter trends, the multisectoral nature of national shelter delivery systems, and previous efforts by national governments and international organizations to improve global shelter circumstances. Failure by national governments to confront, analyse and change the contexts in which people struggle for adequate shelter, and failure to co-operate internationally to enable an all-out effort to generate shelter to meet their population's needs, will bring global shelter problems to a point of no return. Immediate and sustained shelter action cannot be postponed. The year 2000 is a realistic deadline towards which action can be scheduled. Population growth and urbanization trends have a profound impact on people's access to shelter and this should be reflected in national policies that have an impact on national shelter improvement, production and delivery systems. Large sections of societies, particularly the urban poor in developing countries, should be assisted by such policies. Shelter is an extremely important sector in a national economy. If policies affecting national shelter delivery systems are strategically supportive, the shelter delivery systems can contribute to economic development and the resulting economic gains can feed-back into the improved performance of the shelter delivery system. If the wrong policies are in operation, both the development of shelter delivery systems and national development objectives will suffer. Past national shelter efforts in many countries have emphasized only structural standards and direct construction approaches to shelter as a consumer product. Such approaches have ignored the user value of housing, i.e., the fundamentally social and economic role of shelter as living and even working space supportive of, yet dependent on, people's livelihood and ability to pay. Because past national shelter programmes usually ignored or only partially understood the national housing market and shelter production system, they often did more damage than good to the shelter circumstances of the poor. Some of the international aid agencies, including multilateral funding agencies, bilateral aid agencies and international non-governmental organizations, have often pursued their own policies and priorities in their assistance programmes to client countries without due regard for the real priorities of those client countries and without any cogent co-ordination with the efforts of other external and internal actors in the shelter system.

The GSS calls for a combination of international and national efforts but, at the same time, it stresses that shelter goals can only be met by the individual efforts of each government acting in its own political, social, economic and cultural context.

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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
Basic principles of the GSS A fundamental principle of the GSS is that adequate shelter for all is possible only if it means affordable shelter sufficient to meet the particular climatic and cultural needs of the users in a particular place. Adequate shelter means adequate privacy, sufficient space and security, adequate lighting and ventilation, adequate infrastructure in a location with adequate access to employment and basic services at a price affordable to the user. There is no universal standard for housing and the projection of developed countries' space and structural standards on to developing countries has been a further complication of the latter's shelter problem rather than an appropriate solution. Country-specific modes of adequate shelter are called for because they are environmentally appropriate, economically attainable and therefore realistic. Another basic principle of the GSS is that national efforts to improve the performance of a country's shelter production and delivery system must be integrated and comprehensive. Shelter programmes for housing the poor can operate effectively only in the context of a national shelter strategy aimed at the delivery of shelter for all income groups. All too often, the discussion of shelter options for the poor has taken place in isolation from a review of the overall national shelter situation. Too often it is taken for granted that higher income groups can satisfy their shelter needs in the existing housing market. In many developing countries this is simply not the case. substantial numbers of families and individuals in different income groups occupy shelter below that which they can reasonably afford. What is needed, therefore, are national shelter strategies that address latent effective demand and that maximize the scale and options in shelter improvement and production. Only in this way can specific programmes aimed at assisting low-income groups, particularly those residing in slums and squatter settlements, be successful. The most important operational principle of the GSS is the "enabling" approach, whereby the full potential and resources of all the actors in the shelter production and improvement process are mobilized. For the most part, the governments' role will be to establish legislative, institutional and financial frameworks that will enable formal and informal business sectors, non-governmental organizations, community groups and households to make optimum contributions to national shelter delivery systems. Ultimately, an enabling principle implies that the people concerned will be given the opportunity to improve their housing conditions according to the needs and priorities that they themselves define. This community-participation approach is to ensure that shelter development programmes really connect to the social, physical and economic needs and potentials of target low-income communities in order to mobilize these as powerful additional resources for a sustained and affordable shelter development process. Directly related to this is the predicament of women in low-income settlements. Women are subject to special constraints in obtaining adequate housing and in participating in shelter development efforts at all levels. While some of these handicaps result from legal or social gender discrimination, others result from their severe poverty, their lack of education and training, and their double and triple burden as household workers and workers in the formal and informal sectors. As there are concrete and identifiable implications for women in all shelter-related activities it is necessary to enhance the participation of women in shelter and infrastructure management as both contributors and beneficiaries. At the same time, the multiplicity of actors enlisted by the enabling approach are motivated by many widely diverging interests. In order to motivate and co-ordinate those interests into co-operative modalities, high priority must be given to information and communications activities. Powerful information and communications programmes will need to be designed to bridge the gaps between government and the private sector, and between commercial interests and the day-to-day needs of communities. The enabling principle of the GSS also applies to international organizations in their co-operation with client national governments, but this does not mean that international agencies will have diminished roles. Rather, it implies that international action will have to be re-directed and focused on supporting the formulation and implementation of national shelter strategies, and in making known or transferring the results of this new type of approach. The GSS is realistic in that it allows for objective trends, realities and possibilities at a particular stage of development of a specific country. It is not a blue-print, but an evolving framework and feedback system for dynamic national and international action. Therefore, actions and their impacts need to be followed closely and evaluated continuously so that the GSS and individual national shelter strategies can be modified accordingly. Fortunately, the GSS has been launched at a time when communications media and information processing technologies can enable and support such a systematic approach.

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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
Building national shelter strategies A national shelter strategy founded on the "enabling" principle requires appropriate representation of the shelter sector in the central government as well as in national co-ordinating bodies charged with ensuring that all key ministries whose actions directly or indirectly affect the shelter sector are pursuing courses of action which optimize the development of the national shelter delivery system and so contribute to national development. Accordingly, the design and implementation of a national shelter strategy requires a broad institutional framework, considerably expanded from the types of housing agencies, ministries and corporations that have traditionally focused on self-contained housing policies for housing production without any regard for their policies' effects on other actors in national shelter systems. Rather than persisting in planning and implementing housing projects in specific locations for specific target groups these housing agencies are urged to play a leading role in stimulating and managing national shelter delivery systems that are sustainable and that can meet the national scale of shelter demand. Rather than measuring their effectiveness only in terms of housing units produced directly, they are being launched into a higher function of promoting the GSS at the national and local level, of organizing all the relevant public- and private-sector agents in the existing national shelter production and delivery systems to come together and collectively to formulate national shelter strategies that can gradually create new alliances and opportunities, remove legal and regulatory obstacles and introduce innovations to amplify shelter improvement, production and maintenance activities so that they are commensurate with emerging national needs. A shelter strategy should assess the needs and priorities for shelter development activities, should identify the resources available to address these goals and the most cost-effective ways of using them, and should set out the responsibilities and time-frame for the implementation of the various actions involved. A strategy should be seen as a step-by-step incremental process, aiming initially at a series of small immediate improvements for the disadvantaged majorities but gradually fostering a full shelter production system for the whole population. Scarce public resources should be geared mainly to removing obstacles hampering the use of non-governmental, private sector and community resources and to stimulating their full mobilization. The time-frame required for each action component, and the order in which actions will need to be implemented, will depend on national priorities and capacities and should, therefore, be reflected realistically in the overall design of each national strategy.

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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
Building national shelter strategies
Assessing shelter needs and resources

The design of a national shelter strategy to the year 2000 should be based on an estimate of the size and composition of the national population during this period and of its spatial distribution. The estimated population during the strategy period provides a basis for calculating the housing stock needed for that projected population. When this figure has been calculated, it can be compared with the total existing housing stock, including formal and potentially adequate informal housing stock, to calculate the additional housing stock required. This increase, together with building for replacing formal and informal sector dwellings that may have to be demolished, will give the total resource needs for housing supply during the targeted period. These resource needs should be re-estimated regularly on the basis of new information on developments in the national shelter delivery system and changes in national demography. A comparison of estimated total resource needs for the period to the year 2000 with the total estimated resources that could be mobilized for housing improvement and production, should determine the standards and costs of dwellings, amenities and infrastructure viable to meet the scale of demand. National shelter strategies that are aimed at delivering housing amenities and infrastructure at standards that are noticeably over the affordable national average will squander scarce resources and consequently prevent access to improved shelter circumstances by poor households. This would be counterproductive to a national shelter strategy's main objective of improving the shelter situation of those in greatest need.

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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
Building national shelter strategies
Linking shelter objectives to settlements policies

As shelter is an integral part of settlements development, an important part of any shelter strategy will be the planning and management of urban and rural settlements. All too often governments in developing countries have restricted their policy options only to responding to problems after they have arisen with no apparent goal but to prevent cities from deteriorating to a "non-return" level. By any rational criteria, it is surely preferable for governments to anticipate and provide for future shelter needs in urban centres (even if this provision has to be minimal within existing resource constraints). Therefore governments should use the policy tools at their disposal to optimize the spatial dimension of shelter demand by guiding and influencing shifts in national settlement patterns. There are several strong arguments for according policy priority to small and medium towns. In the first place, they can reduce the rural-urban migration pressures on large cities, thereby enabling the urban authorities in such cities to cope more successfully with service and infrastructure management and planning. Secondly, the growth of small and intermediate towns would result in improved welfare in rural areas by providing access to markets and employment opportunities, as well as to services such as health care, education and communications. Thirdly, the predominantly poor rural migrants who settle in small and intermediate towns may not have to pay such high prices for housing as in a metropolis because of the limited demand for, and easier access to, urban land. Moreover, small-scale and low-cost solutions for such services as water supply, sanitation, solid-waste disposal and transport are usually easier to implement in small and intermediate towns than in large cities.

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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
Reorganizing the shelter delivery system
Reviewing shelter policies

An understanding of the links between the multi-sectoral shelter production and delivery system and the economy as a whole is essential to the development of effective national shelter strategies. National economic policy-makers must be made aware that housing investment is productive and an important source of income and employment; that housing represents an important share of national wealth and is, thus, an important stimulus for savings and investment; and that public expenditures represent a significant share of public investment. The success of a national shelter strategy will depend upon a combination of effective macro-economic policies at the national level and a broad set of actions by a multiplicity of actors at all levels of government - in the formal sector, in non-governmental and community-based organizations and in the informal shelter sector - to increase production of housing and to improve existing shelter. The emphasis must be on the production of such quantities of housing that meet basic needs - land, basic shelter and minimal services - and the gradual improvement of existing shelter for the majority, rather than on the production of new high-quality housing for the few. In order to increase production and to improve existing housing stock, much of which is now of extremely low quality, national governments will need to become aware of the limitations of shelter policies (both implicit and explicit) that they have been following in the past, and to act decisively to improve them by the year 2000. Key strategic improvements will be needed in organization for shelter delivery, in finance mobilization and allocation, and in shelter production.

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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
Reorganizing the shelter delivery system
Re-defining roles and responsibilities

The reorganization of the national shelter delivery system will involve many different governmental agencies since, in a typical governmental structure, responsibility for the various strategy components is fragmented among a variety of ministries, bodies and authorities. As every government organizes its functions in a unique way, it is not possible to link the substantive elements of the shelter strategy to a standard list of relevant ministries. The first step, therefore, in preparing a strategy will be to identify all the agencies with an interest in any shelter-related component, starting with the governmental institutions that play a key role in overall national development and investment decisions and in economic and fiscal policy. Government roles will then need to be re-defined and made specific in order the better to complement each other, and to provide appropriate support for the key roles of non-governmental actors in shelter delivery, and to co-ordinate private and public sector efforts. In most instances, implementation of a shelter strategy will involve the re-definition and re-distribution of responsibilities to a variety of actors, ranging from individual households through co-operative groups and informal private producers to governmental agencies and ministries.

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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
Reorganizing the shelter delivery system
Stimulating action at local levels

There is also an urgent need to re-distribute responsibilities and resources among the different levels of government. A tendency towards decentralization to local levels can be generally appreciated, but, almost invariably, what are not transferred are the financial and human resources to enable local administrations to assume new responsibilities. Nevertheless, the decentralization process must flow downwards to the level of most efficient service delivery, project implementation and community involvement. The purpose of action at the local level is to increase access to basic resources for locally determined and self-managed programmes. Enabling actions will typically cover changes in the ways in which funds are allocated and used, the ways in which credit is generated and disbursed and, most important, the ways in which decisions are made and responsibility exercised. These are changes that only governments can authorize. Enabling actions with respect to tenure, services, credit and building materials will be particularly important. There is plentiful positive experience in all these areas, and there is considerable scope for experimentation. The problem of providing, operating and maintaining infrastructure facilities in developing countries has, over the years, grown beyond the capacities of most governments. Institutional weaknesses that have emerged as serious constraints to the infrastructure delivery process are: Too many ineffective agencies often with overlapping jurisdictions and competing interests and sometimes with mandates that are too broad to make an effective impact; Inadequate frameworks for encouraging and supporting community participation; Lack of motivation for efficient performance oriented infrastructure and service delivery. Strategies to overcome these problems include the following: (a) Streamlining local government Institutions and strengthening their organizational capacity to deliver urban services. Governments will have to review and re-define institutional responsibilities, create specialized units to plan and manage service delivery to poor sections of the population, and promote intersectoral and inter-agency co-ordination. (b) Introducing reforms In organizational structures and mandates to encourage community involvement. Governments will have to introduce reforms in organizational structures and mandates that transform bureaucratic institutions into ones that encourage community involvement and build up self-reliant and self-sustaining actions that promote community competence in planning, operating and maintaining infrastructure. (c) Increasing organizational efficiency. One possible measure is the use of performance agreements that allow private enterprises to provide some services under governmental supervision of quantity and quality specifications. Governments can promote increased use of small-scale subcontractors with low overheads and can. harness informal sector participation in service delivery. Governments can also encourage administrative practices and organizational arrangements that allow voluntary and non-governmental organizations to participate in improving services in poor neighbourhoods.

Finally, such programmes must be accepted by the community at large and supported by direct public participation at all levels. It is highly probable that in most developing countries all the mobilized financial resources of the public sector and of private business will be insufficient to meet all programme demands. Community resources can bridge the gap but only if the community is committed to, and feels responsibility for, the programme. The community must, therefore, be fully involved in decision-making on programme direction and priorities and should be assigned responsibility for tasks where there is a clear connection between input effort and output benefit. Identification of the community's most effective role is a matter for each individual national strategy to take up, but this decision should be treated as an integral part of resource mobilization.

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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
Reorganizing the shelter delivery system
Broad-based training and incentives

The mobilization of human resources to fill these roles effectively has several facets. It is obvious, first of all, that there must be a sufficient number of trained and skilled people to carry out a national shelter management programme. This means not only the top-level technical experts and administrators who will design and guide the programme, but the entrepreneurs, artisans, process workers and others who will produce and maintain or operate the physical output of housing and infrastructure, and also the members of the general community who will participate in the decision-making and implementation processes. This implies a very broad-based training effort carried out through a variety of institutions and employing many different methods, including the largest possible support of local training institutions. Curricula of professional and technical education programmes need to be updated and adapted to the changing needs of each country. Promoting links between universities, public and private shelter agencies, non-governmental organizations and community groups can help to keep programmes up to date. The in-service training needs of public sector administrators and professionals can be met through short courses, workshops and temporary secondment to performing institutions and agencies. Special types of in-service training are also needed for extension workers in the agriculture and health sectors to enlarge their scope of work by including shelter-related infrastructure and services. Small-scale local contractors, building material suppliers and other shelter-related entrepreneurs of the formal and informal sectors need training and technical assistance in accounting, budgeting, inventory control and other basic skills. Such training and technical assistance could be usefully combined with lending programmes through trade associations. Training should also be extended to community groups with a role in designing and implementing shelter programmes. The training of the participants in a shelter programme is a necessary but not sufficient condition for scaling up shelter production and more efficiently operating a shelter distribution system. The participants must be motivated to make the programme work or the strategy will remain only a paper design. For the private sector, some rearrangement of wage profiles, tax structures or other incentives may be necessary. In the case of the public sector, efforts will have to be made to retain experienced staff members through career promotion and through the enhancement of salaries and professional status.

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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
Reorganizing the shelter delivery system
Creating enabling legal and regulatory environments

Because a national shelter strategy is aimed at encouraging participation by all the agents - formal and informal - involved in shelter construction, its innovations should develop from the existing processes whereby housing is currently delivered, regardless of whether these procedures conform to existing bureaucratic procedures or legal restrictions. Although shelter policy in the past has usually refrained from a systematic effort to review the laws and regulations governing the performance of the shelter delivery system, new shelter strategies will need to consider action leading to legal and regulatory reform. Among the most important laws and regulations affecting the sector are those dealing with price control (rent controls, building and land price controls, and controls affecting interest rates and prices for financial services), property rights (tenure security, restrictions on private ownership or on transferability of property, tenant and landlord rights, and regulations affecting the enforceability of obligations involving housing as collateral), land use and building regulations. In many cases, public authorities have failed to understand the effects of laws and regulations on incentives and costs, with the result that they have increased the cost of housing, lowered the productivity of the sector, skewed inequitably the benefits of the housing sector and had a damaging effect on overall economic performance. An extreme example of the macro-economic costs of inappropriate regulation occurs when public regulation of private land development for housing slows down the provision of housing in response to rapidly increasing demand so that housing costs are driven up in a speculative spiral. In many cases, the resulting speculative bubble has the effect of diverting resources from other sectors of the economy, with little real benefit in terms of increased housing production. The review and reform of land legislation and building and infrastructure codes and regulations is a matter of highest priority. Their economic impacts must be studied carefully and they should be reviewed in a comparative framework, thereby enabling the adaptation of innovations from other countries where appropriate. Possibilities for creating special building codes and construction standards for low-income settlements, which can be upgraded over time, will need to be considered. In these efforts, legal advisers, national legal experts, officials involved in enforcement and legislators will need to co-operate. In this regard, it is noteworthy that, in several developing countries, governments are considering, or have implemented, measures to encourage informal sector construction, and have regularized practices such as "illegal" land sub-division, in recognition of their shelter delivery potential. It must be stressed here, however, that these reforms are not likely to take place without active public campaigns, organized and promoted by those with a direct interest in creating a regulatory environment that enables them to produce shelter efficiently.

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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
Reorganizing the shelter delivery system
Improving databases for strategic decision making

Unfortunately, over the past 20 years, it has not been possible to accumulate an organized and systematic information system concerning land, shelter, housing and other issues with direct relevance to policy-makers. Statistical data in the shelter sector are unreliable and often irrelevant and out of date. In order to implement shelter strategies, critical information requirements need to be available to decision-makers on an ongoing basis. Therefore, the development of databases on key variables affecting the performance of the shelter delivery system will form an important component of national shelter strategies. Such databases would enable the performance of the shelter delivery system to be reviewed regularly so that policies may be adjusted to respond to malfunctions or setbacks, and so that the effects of changes in policies and economic conditions can be ascertained. Information on key variables will need to be collected at regular intervals, preferably using cost-effective statistical sampling techniques, rather than comprehensive census studies. The sample methodology may be developed in co-ordination with the development of land registration or land information systems. These key variables may include changes in: The number of units in the different price ranges of the housing stock; Demand for housing due to population growth, migration and economic development; Housing prices, land prices and rents in different districts; Locations of housing and employment centres; Transport expenditures; Housing investments and rents; The availability and distribution of credit; Housing starts; The amount of land in residential use; Vacancies and the rate of demolition of existing stock through eviction and decay; Income and affordability: Public revenues available for infrastructure construction, maintenance and subsidies.

Given proper organization, training and basic computing facilities, such a database could be instituted within a relatively short period of time. A number of countries have already accumulated experience in setting up simple and effective databases that are helpful in monitoring the shelter sector on a regular basis, and in drawing important conclusions for strategic decision-making in the shelter sector. These experiences will need to be shared through technical assistance from experienced countries, through technical co-operation among countries seeking to put similar databases into place, and through national and international meetings that will seek to find common means of pursuing the formulation and effective use of information in decision-making in this sector. UNCHS (Habitat) will play a role in this regard, by ensuring the widest possible dissemination of the national data thus collected.

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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
Mobilizing finance for shelter delivery
Financing infrastructure

Public infrastructure networks - road, water-supply, drainage and sewerage, waste-disposal, electricity and communications - are used by all and cannot be bought and sold like other commodities. Because of their special status, they will need to be provided by public agencies, public enterprises or private enterprises granted certain public responsibilities. In centrally-planned economies housing production by central and local governments, public enterprises and co-operatives, is often hampered by lack of proper infrastructural networks which, in turn, limits the amount of serviced land available for shelter production. This artificial shortage of land which, in theory, is available for shelter construction, will need to be overcome through a planned programme of investment in infrastructure. In market economies, payment for infrastructure will need to be collected primarily from users and from those who benefit from the increased land values resulting from infrastructural improvements. Too often in the past, many infrastructural agencies have developed infrastructural networks independently, following a one-dimensional approach that has over-focused on the networks themselves and ignored the fact that these developments greatly increase the value of the adjoining land and structures. If different infrastructural agencies, particularly those concerned with roads, can integrate their efforts and focus on land development rather than on the provision of linear networks, the public sector, in many cases, will be able to recover the costs of infrastructure through the purchase of land, its development and its distribution. The most logical way to recover these costs is through the payment of user charges wherever possible, and through the direct and indirect taxation of beneficiaries, where the collection of charges is impossible. This will need to be an integral part of a co-ordinated shelter strategy. It will require granting rating or taxing powers directly to infrastructural agencies, so as to reduce the need to transfer funds from central budgets to finance the construction of public infrastructure. In most developing country contexts, local authorities will need to diversify and strengthen their mechanisms of collecting user charges and property taxes, as means of financing and maintaining infrastructural systems. Little consideration has been given to the financing of infrastructure as a private enterprise or community/co-operative activity. Yet, if money is borrowed for a business or community investment, there is obviously a strong incentive to establish realistic user charges, to pursue revenue collection and to operate and maintain the investment facility as efficiently as possible. There is probably considerable potential for, at least, the installation of small-scale infrastructural networks and their operation by suitably regulated non-governmental actors.

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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
Mobilizing finance for shelter delivery
Financing housing

Clearly, governments have an obligation to ensure that an appropriate environment is created for the mobilization of finance for housing. The objectives of such an effort are to promote and mobilize savings, reduce costs, improve the efficiency of financial intermediation, and assist the free movement of capital through the national economy. Housing finance reform, which is a key component of a shelter strategy, should be seen as part of a broad effort to reform and develop the financial sector. The cost of housing finance should be reduced to the lowest possible level that is consistent with sound financial and economic principles. This requires looking closely at the way in which governmental regulations influence the many components of housing finance. Among the components that make up the cost of financing to the ultimate user are the deposit rate, servicing costs, and cost of risk, such as risks of default, fluctuating interest rates, liquidity and prepayment. A credible housing finance strategy will have to be built around the twin concepts of self-help and personal savings. The traditional source of housing finance funds has always been personal savings and this has to be mobilized to its full potential. However, it must be kept in mind that the provision of housing is but one among many needs of the poor; therefore this has to be preceded by or run parallel to income-generating opportunities. On the institutional finance side, a housing finance strategy should be geared to bridging the gap between short-term borrowing and long-term lending. This can be achieved through a multiplicity of financial instruments, such as mortgage bonds, life insurance endowment contracts, and on a slightly different level, the use of pension funds and provident funds. In recent years, governments have often made it difficult for the housing sector to compete for funds, by establishing policies that have directed credit to sectors of the economy that were considered more productive than housing by fixing interest rates on deposits and by making lending rates of housing finance institutions unattractive. These measures made it difficult for the latter to compete for funds to make loans. Shelter strategies need to examine closely the continuing rationale for such policies and take appropriate measures that will mobilize additional savings, and float lending rates that will respond to the market and ensure financial viability. Governments should avoid using housing finance institutions as vehicles for housing subsidies, since there are other equitable and efficient subsidy mechanisms available, which do not threaten the financial integrity of lending institutions. Many housing loan arrangements, whether by financial institutions, or governmental agencies, community-based credit unions or co-operatives, suffer from default. Some beneficiaries of such loans renege on repayments despite penalty clauses in their loan agreements. The enforcement of eviction is in direct contradiction with the effort to house people properly, and in many cases, due to political considerations, eviction is difficult if not impossible. This calls for loan recovery mechanisms designed at the community level, by people who remain close to the borrowers. There will be a need to devise collection systems that reduce the risk of lending to the poor and, possibly, to supplement them with special welfare funds to assist those unable to pay in times of dire need, including, if appropriate, a system of collective financial guarantees. Shelter financing for low-income groups will also be improved if security and tenure of land are facilitated.

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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
Mobilizing finance for shelter delivery
Promoting investment in rental housing

In all countries, rental housing contributes a substantial portion of the existing urban housing stock. In some centrally-planned economies, most of the urban housing stock is built by State enterprises and is rented at extremely low rates which, in turn, limit their delivery and maintenance capacity. In centrally-planned economies, governments may be interested in making rental arrangements more efficient than they are now. Other countries will need to explore ways to promote shelter supply through the production of rental housing by the private sector, formal and informal. A potentially very important channel of financing will be small loans to owner-occupiers willing to build cheap rental housing through additions to their dwellings. In market economies, the growing demand for rental housing concerns all income groups and is determined by the modernization processes taking place in those societies. Many households, regardless of their income level, are not necessarily interested in buying a house. There are many reasons for this - expected mobility, reluctance to invest a disproportionate share of income or resources in a fixed asset or, simply, unaffordability. Low-income groups in developing countries are often interested in renting decent and affordable accommodation close to the location of their income-generating activities. The production of new rental housing units is often hampered by the unintended results of social legislation designed to help the weak groups of society, e.g., rent controls over the urban housing stock which, particularly in times of high inflation, often crystallize with time into unfair privileges for consolidated tenants and the exclusion of deserving households. A review of rent control legislation, in line with the general principles of the strategy on subsidy policy - compassion, equity and efficiency - will have to be undertaken in all such countries.

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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
Mobilizing finance for shelter delivery
Targeting subsidies

The primary principle of compassion implies that any shelter subsidy system must be seen as part of an overall strategy for meeting the needs of the poor and disadvantaged, and this requires balancing shelter objectives against those of other aspects of social welfare such as education, health and general income support. In taking such a broad view, fulfilment of shelter objectives may sometimes be accorded a low priority relative to other social objectives. Next, two principles of equity must be considered: first, that subsidies provide the greatest benefit to those most in need and, secondly, that those in equal need be treated equally. In order to ensure that these principles are met, subsidies should be designed so that they are transparent and measurable. It should be apparent to anyone who is getting what in a subsidy scheme in order to judge whether or not the scheme is fair. Finally, subsidy schemes should be efficient in two senses. first, that they deliver the greatest possible benefit to their intended beneficiaries, at the lowest possible administrative cost and, secondly, that they do not impose unacceptable social or economic costs on other people or institutions. Adherence to this latter principle is particularly important in light of the experience of many subsidy schemes in place, particularly those that have subsidized either infrastructural costs or housing finance for low-income households in ways that have jeopardized the financial integrity of the subsidy-granting organizations or, in too many instances, have led to their financial collapse. Shelter subsidies, encompassing both housing and infrastructure, need to be reviewed since, in most countries, little is known concerning their scale, distribution or impact. The design of shelter subsidy policies in many countries appears to be contrary to the principles described above, with little consideration of their role in an overall approach to the social welfare of the poor, with benefits accruing to high-income members of society and restricted to the few rather than to many equally deserving potential beneficiaries, with high administrative costs and with unintended consequences for those not receiving benefits.

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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
Producing and improving shelter All the components of national shelter strategies must be directed towards the production and improvement of large quantities of housing units and infrastructure to meet growing needs. To improve the shelter circumstances of large rural populations integrated rural development programmes should incorporate the improvement of housing, infrastructure and services as a fundamental activity. The inclusion of such shelter components would enable development efforts to focus on the needs of local people and their initiatives to meet them, thereby widening people's economic opportunities and improving their living standards. Directing resources to low-cost investments, planned and implemented at local levels would help to balance investments between sectors, thereby enhancing the social efficiency of economic growth. As noted previously, the bulk of new shelter demand between now and the end of the century will be in the urban settlements of the developing countries. In addition to this, these cities will need to manage the regularization and improvement of large, informally built settlements. This is a tremendous challenge and, at the same time, an enormous opportunity. The processes will be largely guided by urban infrastructure and transport development policy, which will need to be the highest priority on the agenda of urban managers. Sufficient supplies of land, public infrastructure, services and building materials, together with affordable standards, are the key to large-scale shelter delivery.

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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
Producing and improving shelter
Managing urban land

In countries where land is owned or controlled by the State, the supply of serviced land should normally be able to meet needs, provided sufficient public resources (financial and human) are allocated, and provided there is the political will and commitment to achieve this. Most developing countries function with systems of privately held or communally held land, and managing the flow of land resources from those who own them to those who need them for housing construction is a complex task. The high cost to developers and Individual households of acquiring land for shelter through the formal sector, as well as the high standards for preparing that land, have made it very difficult, if not impossible, for the poor, homeless and disadvantaged to gain access to legitimate housing on legally acquired land. The land supply system for low-income housing has largely been an informal, private market activity, with governmental interventions in the housing market being largely ineffective or sometimes counterproductive. The result, in most countries, has been the proliferation of shelter on squatted land and informally subdivided land, with inadequate infrastructural services. In many countries, therefore, governments will need to recognize and strengthen the practical features of the informal land market, while providing the kind of administrative support mechanisms that would remove these undesirable features, for example, by introducing simple title registration systems. There is, however, considerable doubt that established informal processes can continue to meet needs (even if it were desirable to look on informal supply as the permanent de facto policy of government). Therefore, some form of intervention by government may be necessary. The type of intervention by a government in the land market will depend on the type of political system in each country and the variety of actors in the shelter construction process. Where land is owned by the State, the allocation process is clear, even if it is not simple: the problem being mainly one of efficiency in the allocation or distribution. Where land is privately owned, governments will have to consider an array of measures, from guiding privately-owned land on to the free market at one extreme, to full-scale land banking and public marketing at the other. Between these extremes there will be mixes of possibilities, depending on whether the target groups are large-scale commercial builders, house-building co-operatives, small-scale informal contractors, individual house-owners or builders or others in the production process. It is most likely that a system of administrative and financial incentives and sanctions, designed to make land available in the private market, would serve the purpose much better. Nevertheless, government should always retain the final option of becoming a direct supplier of land, if such a step is necessary, to stabilize land prices and maintain a balance between supply and demand. Appropriate land management tools need also to be identified to guide the use of land, including its efficiency, and the desired directions for settlement growth. A priority area for national policy action will have to be the establishment of efficient land-registration and land-information systems at the municipal level, and the introduction of administrative measures and legal reforms to promote the efficiency of land markets. Inadequate land systems, in general, increase the cost of acquiring and mortgaging land and, thus, the cost of shelter. In line with changes in land-registration procedures, public authorities should consider legal measures to reform land-tenure systems, with the aim of improving private investment in housing. Much of the shelter in the cities of developing countries is built by the informal sector, often on land with insecure tenure. In many cases, existing informally-built shelter represents the value of accumulated tenure rights through prolonged stay. Gradual shelter improvement, particularly in the case of low-income families, thus contributes to the maintenance of substantial amounts of land in low-income shelter use. Even dwelling units that are currently small in size and below minimal standards often occupy land in good locations and, thus, have an economic value that appreciates considerably when they are gradually improved. However, in many instances, where the tenurial status of the land has been regularized, improvements to shelter and the construction of new shelter have materialized. The replacement of squatter housing units with new legal ones in outlying locations may add financial and commuting burden to relocated families and may, thus, leave them poorer than before. It is essential, therefore, in formulating shelter strategies to consider carefully the role to be played by gradual shelter improvement vis--vis new construction. It cannot be assumed a priori that one is to be preferred to the other. The strategy should be to offer viable alternatives to squatting, but squatters already in place must be brought into the mainstream of the housing process through interim land tenure programmes that will quickly regularize their position and put them on an equal footing with other urban residents. In this process the authorities must, however, take into account the prevailing

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tenure system in squatter settlements in order to avoid counterproductive measures. Another category that will require special attention in some instances is made up of the residents of inner-city slums, whose tenure situation is often precarious and whose living conditions are drastically affected by the uncertainties of their relationship with owners or landlords. If these residents are looked on in the same light as squatters, there is an arguable case for governmental intervention to protect their tenure and encourage maintenance and renovation of the buildings they occupy. In such cases, individual titles might not be appropriate, but a form of co-operative or condominium tenure could probably be devised to meet the needs of the case.

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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
Producing and improving shelter
Delivering infrastructure

Shelter-related infrastructure is a natural concern of public policy in most developed and developing countries, and the benefits of investment in infrastructure are considerable, since the rates of return are high, household spending on shelter is often stimulated, and de facto security of tenure is established for many households in informal settlements through public provision of basic infrastructure. Infrastructure provision, particularly for low-income informal settlements can also improve general levels of health, thus reducing, or at feast, stabilizing public health expenditure. To begin with, the activities of public authorities must concentrate on the provision of infrastructure to meet the expanding need for serviced land for shelter, in particular, and other productive activities, in general. To attain the quantities of serviced land required, infrastructure will need to be installed at affordable standards so that the facilities can be provided to the scale required. Reduction in per capita (unit) costs for construction of basic infrastructure is clearly an effective means of increasing the scale of impact of available resources for expanding infrastructure, provided, of course, that systems meet acceptable performance and safety standards. Costs may be reduced in many ways. Of these, the adoption of inexpensive and resource-conserving technologies, and the use of locally produced materials and components hold the greatest promise. A wide range of appropriate and relevant infrastructure technologies are already available, but are not being employed because senior professionals and decision-makers are not informed about them, or are not proficient in their use. Therefore, a concerted effort is required to bring relevant technologies to their notice and to make corresponding design and implementation procedures a part of formal professional training. Infrastructural systems designed on the basis of conceptual simplicity and ease of installation, operation and maintenance offer the best prospects for durable service. Emphasis needs to be placed on strategies that promote the consideration of operation and maintenance issues as an integral component of project planning.

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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
Producing and improving shelter
Stimulating the building materials and construction sector

Currently, the delivery of shelter and infrastructure relies either on traditional technologies, which are often rudimentary and defective, or on modern technologies, which are imported at excessive cost, and are often inappropriate. The criteria for selection of a technology should include the affordability of its initial cost, the ability of local labour to utilize and maintain it, and the viability of adapting it to local needs for eventual replication. The first priority with respect to construction resources involves making use of indigenous materials and construction methods. This may require policies that support governmental investment in surveys and assessments of raw-material resources, feasibility studies for the exploitation of promising resources, technical research and development to evaluate, test and upgrade indigenous materials and products, promotion of products in the market place and studies of regulations and contracting methods to identify constraints to the acceptance and use of indigenous materials. Suitable action will have to be taken to promote local factors of production for construction notably, building materials, the construction work-force and basic tools. This may involve policy formulation or policy adjustment in several areas and it may involve the establishment of new institutions for research and training or the expansion of existing institutions and may, thus, involve the allocation of additional resources in these areas. Rapid expansion of the supply of basic building materials at low cost can be achieved by promoting the small-scale sector. By adopting recent technological innovations, it is possible to develop an entire building-materials industry exclusively based on small-scale production units. Hence, promoting small-scale production of building materials is a practical approach to developing a self-sufficient building materials industry. However, the small-scale sector is especially vulnerable because small production units are characterized by an unskilled labour force, a high rate of illiteracy, lack of access to credit (especially foreign exchange), lack of access to information on technological innovations and, most of all, lack of appropriate institutional support for making technological choices. A strategy for the application of appropriate technology in the small-scale sector should address the following three areas: first, the shortcomings in performance of technologies already established in production; secondly, the issue of new investments in technologies to overcome those limitations, and finally, the identification of innovations that are yet to be transferred either from local sources in laboratories and research institutions, or from international sources. In the small-scale sector, the first two issues, and particularly the first, deserve priority attention. Clearly, the capacity of the building industry to accept and adapt new technologies can be greatly increased through incentives for innovation and technical assistance.

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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
International action on the GSS Human settlements and shelter are not the only concern of the global development community, or of the United Nations system. In many quarters, the old-fashioned attitude still persists of considering settlements and shelter development as a low-priority social expenditure, diverting resources from economic growth or from pressing social needs. However, considerable progress has been made in demonstrating that shelter is an integral part of development and can strengthen efforts in the direction of self-development, equity and meaningful economic growth. Efforts in this direction will need to be maintained and intensified in the international arena, particularly in making the goals and principles of the GSS widely known, and in reaching key policy-makers at both the national and international levels. It is expected that an initial result of the launching of the GSS by the United Nations General Assembly will be a substantive discussion of the operational implications of the GSS by all international organizations - intergovernmental or non-governmental - particularly by those involved in development co-operation with and among developing countries. In many cases this review will bring about long overdue and substantive policy changes in favour of shelter development. The adoption of the GSS by international agencies and non-governmental organizations will have important multiplier effects, since the policies of international agencies influence the attitudes of both donor and recipient countries. Given the fact that, in general, countries where shelter problems are most widespread are those that have the fewest resources and know-how, it is clear that the GSS will fail unless appropriate financial and technical assistance is provided by the wealthier developed countries, particularly during the crucial formulation of national shelter strategies, and their initial implementation phases. But recipient countries should have realistic expectations as to what external assistance can or will do. There is no way, for example, by which quantitative national shelter objectives can be financed by external loans. Such objectives can and must be met through the mobilization of in-country human and financial resources. The role of the international agencies and non-governmental organizations must be an enabling one. The limitations for financing shelter action faced by many developing countries because of their high external debt situation should be further examined with a view to abolishing such debts, or debt conversion for shelter development or at least reducing them. The Commission on Human Settlements will explore the connection between the debt situation and shelter finance in its ongoing work on the GSS.

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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
International action on the GSS
The role of governments

A fundamental form of international co-operation on the GSS would be increased and sustained mutual research and technical co-operation among countries themselves. The experience of the past 10 years has amply demonstrated the extreme diversity and richness of shelter development experiences in all countries, particularly in developing countries. However, openness to learning from other countries experiences has often been constrained by language and cultural barriers and by an exaggerated notion of national uniqueness. By the same token the bulk of external assistance in the shelter sector is taking place in an ad hoc manner, with little co-ordination and integration with national development plans. In this regard, national shelter strategies will benefit from a review of the nature and kind of external assistance required to complement their implementation.

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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
International action on the GSS
The role of international organizations

Bilateral and multilateral funding agencies providing external assistance in the form of grants or loans should review their overall assistance policies in accordance with the general principles of the GSS, evaluating their overall impact on the shelter sectors of recipient countries and reviewing the thrust and level of priority of their aid specifically targeted for shelter development. In order to avoid any overlapping and waste of precious resources, co-ordination in each national context among various aid agencies in their shelter-related projects and programmes, such as the development of national road networks, water supply and sanitation systems, will be crucial. As a direct consequence of the launching of the Global Strategy for Shelter, many developing countries will require some direct assistance to promote national awareness of the value of a national shelter strategy and the need for a national co-operative effort, as well as to review the current performance of the shelter sector and to formulate and implement their national strategy for shelter. Similarly, international non-governmental organizations will have to review their policies and programmes with a view to increasing and improving their assistance to the shelter sector. Their support, which will be crucial for the important activities of local non-governmental organizations and community-based organizations, should be developed in co-operation with the governments of the countries concerned. All United Nations bodies, specialized agencies and institutions should ensure that their relevant country-specific activities are supportive of and co-ordinated with the respective national shelter strategies. Agencies dealing with sectoral aspects of development not strictly related to shelter should emphasize the links between their areas of concern and the shelter sector and should assess the impact of their current activities on the objectives of the Global Strategy for Shelter.

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Shelter for all: Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
International action on the GSS
The role of UNCHS (Habitat)

The United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) will act as the co-ordinating agency in the implementation of the Global Strategy for Shelter. Its first responsibility is to promote the GSS internationally, nationally and locally, and to foster commitment to the Strategy's objectives. Another important function is to measure progress in achieving the central goal of adequate shelter for all by the year 2000. In particular, it will provide governments with a range of shelter indicators through which they can assess the current performance of their shelter production and delivery systems and, therefore, more effectively formulate and implement their national shelter strategies. Subsequently, such shelter indicators will be vital to enable each country's government, private entrepreneurs, non-governmental organizations and general public to chart the performance of their own national shelter strategy and to access information on one another's experiences so that lessons and successful innovations can be transferred efficiently. A regular forum for the transfer of strategic data to and from Strategy participants - be they governmental, intergovernmental or non-governmental - will be provided by the biennial sessions of the Commission on Human Settlements at which governments and agencies will report on their progress and exchange the results of their work.

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