Housing Finance for the Poor:

I. Overview Housing finance strategies vary from country to country, and depend on overall levels of internal economic, social, and political development. Natural disasters and human conflicts, however, know no borders. When confronted with either, developed countries assumedly have institutions and resources to deal with short-term relief, mid-term recovery, and long-term solvency and prevention. Developing countries, however, may have neither. The analysis of housing finance in post-emergency contexts (including both natural disasters and conflicts) presented here will seek to fill the gaps posed by these discrepancies. This paper will discuss practitioner experience using different housing finance interventions in post-emergency scenarios, with a focus on housing microfinance. To inform our understanding of the range of experiences in various situations (successes and failures), DIG will prepare a series of diverse case studies analyzing the role of housing finance in emergency recovery efforts in different contexts that will supplement this paper and provide a wide range of opportunities for learning. DIG will also utilize other documented post-disaster and post-conflict examples, drawing on the state of practice of both microfinance and housing microfinance, to provide a wide-range of lessons in the multitude of varying scenarios that occur in post-emergency environments. DIG will also examine post-emergency interventions in different stages of development as points of analysis to derive lessons and formulate recommendations.