Project Details

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has contracted the Affordable Housing Institute (AHI) and Arup to refine and test the Affordable and Socially sustainable Housing (ASHA) tool, an application that assesses social sustainability in affordable housing developments. The AHI-Arup team have been tasked with updating the framework, streamlining and standardizing the existing ASHA tool, while still allowing for appropriate country-specific calibration of rating weights and criteria. The AHI-Arup team is providing technical support to IFC in adapting and piloting the ASHA tool with developers in three countries – Mexico, South Africa, and India. Using a service design approach, our team is identifying an integrated and holistic set of activities required to launch the ASHA tool, calibrating the tool to specific markets, and completing pilot self-assessments and full assessments with selected developers. Testing and refining the tool with developers from diverse contexts will ensure that the ASHA tool is broadly applicable and the qualitative components are upgraded to offer a data-driven approach based on market-led best practice metrics. Toward this same end, we are also engaging with key stakeholders involved in various stages of housing development that will interact with large market players and their staff at both a strategy and operational level to lay the foundation for broad adoption of the ASHA tool and its underlying principles.

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