This paper highlights the major challenges and considerations for addressing COVID-19 in informal settlements. It discusses what is known about vulnerabilities and how to support local protective action. There is heightened concern about informal urban settlements because of the combination of population density and inadequate access to water and sanitation, which makes standard advice about social distancing and washing hands implausible. There are further challenges to do with the lack of reliable data and the social, political and economic contexts in each setting that will influence vulnerability and possibilities for action. The potential health impacts of COVID-19 are immense in informal settlements, but if control measures are poorly executed these could also have severe negative impacts. Public health interventions must be balanced with social and economic interventions, especially in relation to the informal economy upon which many poor urban residents depend. Local residents, leaders and community-based groups must be engaged and resourced to develop locally appropriate control strategies, in partnership with local governments and authorities. Historically, informal settlements and their residents have been stigmatized, blamed, and subjected to rules and regulations that are unaffordable or unfeasible to adhere to. Responses to COVID-19 should not repeat these mistakes. Priorities for enabling effective control measures include: collaborating with local residents who have unsurpassed knowledge of relevant spatial and social infrastructures, strengthening coordination with local governments, and investing in improved data for monitoring the response in informal settlements.
This paper describes the nationwide "slum" upgrading (Baan Mankong) programme in Thailand, which supports community organizations to fi nd their own solutions to getting land for housing. Between 2003 and 2008, the programme supported 512 upgrading initiatives involving 1,010 communities. Community organizations form their own savings groups and draw on soft loans, and fi nd solutions that work best for them in terms of location, price and tenure, and negotiate with the landowners. Infrastructure subsidies can be drawn on to support the upgrading, and housing may be built or just improved. Collective land ownership strengthens the community processes that help households make the challenging transition from informal to formal, provides protection against market forces that often lead poorer households to sell, and encourages on-going community responses and less hierarchic community organization. Larger citywide networks of community groups work with local governments and other civil society groups to help fi nd land solutions for all those living in informal settlements.
This paper presents the findings of a two-year study of community finance systems (including community-based savings and loan groups, and larger city-based funds) that are operated by established urban poor community organizations in five Asian countries (Cambodia, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand), with support from their partner organizations. These five groups are the principal national urban poor organizations in their respective countries, and their community savings and city funds-as well as their other development initiatives-have all grown to national scale. The study, in which the chief researchers, data-gatherers and analysts were community members themselves, was managed by the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR). It was conceived as an opportunity to look in greater detail at the different models of community finance these important groups have developed, in their very different national contexts, and to compare their various aspects, draw out some key elements and lessons, and see how these people-driven finance systems can be strengthened, scaled up and brought into the formal finance and development structures in their countries.
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