Did you know?

• 1 billion people live in slums around the world
• $332 billion size of the low income housing market
• $9.3 trillion in dead capital is locked in informal housing

Full Economic Citizenship's (FEC) Housing for All is just what the name implies.  It is one of the most ambitious initiatives in terms of scale and impact that has ever been undertaken to provide safe and decent housing for the world’s poor. Today, a billion people – 32% of the global urban population – live in slums, and another half-a-million more join them each week. Would you believe that this figure is 57% of the urban population in India and throughout South Asia?  By the year 2030, an additional 3 billion people will need access to housing. This translates into a demand for 96,150 new housing units every day – that’s 4,000 every hour!

Impact Contributions by Ashoka Fellows in Housing

• In Brazil, 11,000 families secured land tenure and joined savings groups.
• In Algeria, 20,000 units became available for low-cost housing to poor communities through appropriate building material, adoption of a participatory approach for transferring skills, and using effective building techniques.

Collaborative Entrepreneurship in Action
Social entrepreneurs have made great strides in addressing the housing issue, but they haven’t been able to overcome numerous major barriers. By enabling businesses to target rather than ignore or overlook low-income populations, we strike at the root of the housing problem and cause fundamental change on a previously unimaginable scale. In 2006, Ashoka Fellow Haidy Duque partnered with a leading Colombian tile manufacturer named Colceramica. This partnership has resulted in having 20,000 low income families benefitted from better sanitation while generating over 256 new jobs for local women as promoters.

To learn more about business models that serve the world's housing needs, see the Ashoka-sponsored issue of the Global Urban Development (GUD) Magazine.

Learn how Housing for All is working in Brazil.