HOUSING FINANCE AND THE URBAN POOR

This book reveals how demand and supply of the housing finance market for the urban poor in Hyderabad (India) meet. On the demand side, the poor employ self-financing methods for construction that correspond with their livelihood strategies. These strategies are compared with the supply side by focusing on the different intervention schemes created within the public and ‘formal’ private sectors. Moreover, the role of non-governmental and community-based organisations in the housing finance market of the urban poor is discussed. Finally, the book focuses on alternative intervention options.

Peer Smets is a social anthropologist working at the Faculty of Social-Cultural Studies, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He has mainly published on housing, housing finance, government bureaucracy, and financial self-help organisations in India.