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

By reviewing the Bank's experience
with shelter lending, this paper seeks to address the
question of whether the Bank has helped developing countries
deal with the inevitable problems that arise with
urbanization, particularly problems with the provision of
shelter. It reviews the Bank's performance, with a
focus on identifying lessons learned so that current demands
can be more effectively addressed. In contrast to earlier
studies, however, this review focuses more on how the
changing policy environment has affected the structure of
Bank assistance, rather than on how Bank assistance has
affected the policy environment. This perspective is taken
for two reasons. First, in recent years, benevolent changes
in the policy environment are helping to ensure that better
shelter conditions are provided to the poor in rapidly
growing cities. However, despite the generally improved
environment, some serious and often long-standing obstacles
are impeding and, in some places, preventing progress. The
emphasis on the policy environment allows the Bank to give
greater weight to these constraints. Second, Bank shelter
assistance is no longer an experimental program, as it was
when the first review took place. Shelter assistance is now
a mature sector, with 278 loans (including International
Finance Corporation [IFC] loans). As a result, this review
devotes considerably more attention to the outcomes of the
Bank's shelter projects than did the earlier studies.
Conclusions about shelter lending are by no means completely
positive, however. In particular, while the nature of the
lending has evolved to embrace the private sector more
fully, it has also moved away from the poverty orientation
that was for many years the core focus. If the Bank is to
make a meaningful contribution to the Millennium Development
Goal of affecting the lives of 100 million slum dwellers,
this trend will have to change.