Global Strategy for Shelter

In 1988 the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements published its Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000. This publication marked a major shift in policy for the United Nations as well as that of other multilateral and bilateral development assistance organizations and housing policy experts. What became the new policy focus, and why was there a change?

Before the 1980s, human settlements policies exclusively focused on providing housing for the poor. Most multinational and bilateral aid agencies and national governments concentrated on squatter settlement upgrading and sites and services programs [Page 244]to help the poor obtain housing. According to nearly all accounts, the “housing for the poor” strategy has not worked. Administrative and financial problems thwart the widespread replication of squatter settlement upgrading programs. Sites and services programs fared no better, and there are few examples for which the output of sites and services programs have come close to matching the housing needs of the poor. Problems with replicability and implementation as well as the sheer scale of housing needs of the poor quickly revealed the limitations of the housing-for-the-poor strategy. As Michael Cohen pointed out, by the end of the 1970s, it was evident that the notion of replicability could no longer mean doing more of the same things but rather had to involve seeking new ways to increase the scale in the provision of housing, whether through public or private sector efforts or some new combination of the two.

The Global Strategy for Shelter (GSS) replaces sites and services and squatter upgrading policies with a totally new policy initiative referred to as the “enabling approach.” This new policy directive, articulated by the United Nations, the World Bank, and other multilateral and bilateral agencies concerned with housing focuses on implementing reforms to improve the overall efficiency and effectiveness of housing markets. Instead of direct interventions to improve squatter housing conditions or provide sites and services, the enabling approach works to revise or eliminate policies or regulations that impede the provision of housing and places greater reliance on private and individual initiatives to produce housing. International development assistance agencies have begun to concentrate on providing technical assistance and policy-based lending to developing countries aimed at enabling housing markets to work better. Most efforts try to alter counterproductive policy and institutional environments that constrain housing supply and drive up housing costs.

The provision of infrastructure, land, and housing development controls; building codes; land titling and registration systems; and rules regarding housing finance have significant adverse impacts on housing production and housing prices. In rapidly growing cities, infrastructure services are not expanding fast enough to accommodate housing demand. This is usually due to unrealistic and impractical infrastructure financing and cost recovery policies. By setting service charges too low, most infrastructure service providers do not have the resources to expand and maintain their networks. As a result, informal and unauthorized housing development predominates. If infrastructure services could be expanded in step with housing demand, housing markets would be more efficient, and low- and moderate-income households would have better access to housing services.

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