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Low Income Housing Hybrid Value Chain
Overview of the “Housing For All” Initiative
With more than one billion people around the world living in slums, something is broken in the housing system. A home is a springboard for human and economic development for many low-income families: a safe place, a place to raise a family and often a chance to run a family business. With half a million new people arriving to slums every week, neither the public nor the citizen or private sector alone can fix the system.
Ashoka’s Full Economic Citizenship initiative (FEC) seeks to promote a new way of thinking about housing for the poor and to transform the housing industry to benefit low-income communities. Through its Housing for All program supported by the Hilti Foundation and in collaboration with its community of leading social entrepreneurs FEC is fostering innovative business models with leading business and citizen sector partners.
Our two-pronged goal is: to demonstrate the power of business/social alliances to address the housing needs of low-income people through sustainable and scalable business models in various country environments; and to enable a competitive housing market of product and service providers serving millions of low-income families annually around the world.
With more than one billion people around the world living in slums, something is broken in the housing system. A home is a springboard for human and economic development for many low-income families: a safe place, a place to raise a family and often a chance to run a family business. With half a million new people arriving to slums every week, neither the public nor the citizen or private sector alone can fix the system.
Ashoka’s Full Economic Citizenship initiative (FEC) seeks to promote a new way of thinking about housing for the poor and to transform the housing industry to benefit low-income communities. Through its Housing for All program supported by the Hilti Foundation and in collaboration with its community of leading social entrepreneurs FEC is fostering innovative business models with leading business and citizen sector partners.
Our two-pronged goal is: to demonstrate the power of business/social alliances to address the housing needs of low-income people through sustainable and scalable business models in various country environments; and to enable a competitive housing market of product and service providers serving millions of low-income families annually around the world.
How is housing for all working in Brazil?
FEC is piloting its first housing service center in Osasco, a favela in the region of Sao Paulo where most families earn less than half the minimum wage and pay monthly interest rates over 5.5% on credit that they need for their construction projects. A Casa é Sua (a local greeting that means “the house is yours”) enables them to improve their homes by addressing key gaps in the housing value chain., A Casa é Sua provides access to construction and financial counseling (including savings discipline), provides more affordable construction materials and home improvement loans in collaboration with its private sector partners Votorantim, Banco Pecúnia and local retailers. As these low-income families dream, plan and execute their construction projects, A Casa é Sua is there to help, every step of the way.
If you'd like to learn more about transforming the housing industry, check out our HVC resources or email the .