Recent Activities
Boston, MA, USA - 2009, November 2
National Housing & Rehabilitation Association
Activities: Talk
The National Housing & Rehabilitation Association, USA, presented David Smith with a sixth annual Vision Award for lifetime achievement in affordable housing at a special awards ceremony on November 2, 2009 in Boston , Massachusetts.
The event was a part of NH&RAs annual Fall Forum, a two day conference that focuses on the latest developments in affordable housing, historic preservation, new market tax credits as well as green retrofitting of both existing and new buildings. The association also awarded Lisa B. Alberghini, President of the Planning Office for Urban Affairs, Inc.. More here.
Washington D.C., USA - 2009, October 8
Gaynor Asquith and Ray Christman
World Habitat Day
Activities: Presentation & Panel Discussion
AHI, Housing Partnership Network (HPN), and National Housing Conference (NHC) presented AHI's landmark new study, Mission Entrepreneurial Entities: Essential Actors in Affordable Housing Delivery, which examines the characteristics of MEEs, their role and importance in housing delivery, their principles of success, and their relevance to the Global South.
Details here.
MEE Study Presentation (pdf) here.
MEE Report Extracts and Selected Exhibits here.
The seminar was a part of the events comprising World Habitat Day.
Please visit World Habitat Day News and UN-Habitat for more.
Cambridge, MA, USA - 2009, September 21
Joint Seminar by AHI & SPURS at MIT
Activities: Discussion
AHI hosted a joint seminar with the Special Program for Urban & Regional Studies (SPURS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
"The Demolition Dilemma," was presented by Enrique Penalosa, (former mayor of Bogota, Colombia), and Fred Salvucci, (former Secretary of Transportaion, Massachusetts), explored government's power to transform the city, the public's right to be consulted, and the process that generates positive change. Details here.
Manila, Philippines - 2009, September 7-9
2nd Asia-Paciifc Housing Forum
Activities: Presentation and Panel Discussion
"Being poor is expensive"
-- quote from floor, 5th Plenary Session
David Smith of AHI was invited to speak at the 2nd Asia-Pacific Housing Forum, on September 7, 2009 at Makati City, the Philippines. He was on the panel of the key "Thought Leaders Roundtable", and also presented on "Slum Redevelopment as Urban Poverty Housing Solution" (available here), in which he outlined AHI's seminal "Home Asset Loan Finance" (HALF).
'...panelist, Mr. David Smith, founder of the Affordable Housing Institute, a US think-tank, spoke of the importance of involving the poor in solutions for housing. "The poor have independent rights to negotiate their participation. They are an integrated part of the discussion and projects need to work not for the poor but with the poor."'
-- Asia Corporate News Network Wire, September 7, 2009
The region's premier housing related industry conference, this year's Forum was co-organized by Habitat for Humanity International in partnership with principal sponsor, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and was centered on the theme "Maximizing Urban Poverty Housing Solutions for Greater Results."
Please see here for more information on the program and speakers.
Sussex, UK - 2009, August 1-2
BBC World News debate on the global housing crisis
Activities: Discussion
On August 1 and 2, BBC World News broadcast a fifty-minute debate, "Housing the Future" in which AHI's David Smith was an active participant. The program was filmed during a workshop on Financing affordable housing for low income groups: innovative funding for urban housing” and principally sponsored by UN Habitat.
“Every year the world creates roughly four Mumbais - a city of 20 million people. Every year the world has 80 million more people, and nearly all of them live in cities. If we don’t do anything about this, cities drown in poor people.”
-- David Smith, Affordable Housing Institute.
Watch the video at the BBC website here, by selecting the option “Also click here to watch in Broadband” – it should pop up and run.
The debate was filmed by Television for the Environment (tv/e), whose website carries details on the participants and clips.
David blogged about the debate here.
Bogota, Colombia - 2009, July 7-11
Bogota visit for stakeholder discussions
Activities: Stakeholder Discussion
In partnership with the Ashoka Foundation, which has a long history of supporting social entrepreneurs throughout the world, AHI’s David Smith and Deidre Schmidt traveled to Bogota on July 7-11 to explore the challenge of financing home improvements in Colombia.
Like many nations – such as Brazil, Egypt, India, Mexico, and Turkey – Colombia has a rapidly growing economy, rapid urbanization causing wide housing gaps between rich and poor, and the new emergence of a formal finance sector with mortgage-product innovations. Conversely, the vast majority of new urban housing is informal, either in structure or in legal status, and cannot access mortgage finance that is targeted for new Greenfield production. Microfinance is thriving in Colombia, but limitations of scale (loan size) and tenor (loan term) mean that microfinance is poorly suited to the multi-use expenditures – cement, bricks, tiles, and fixtures – needed to upgrade a one-room house or transform a one-room into a two-room house.
Ashoka sponsored and accompanied AHI’s visit in an effort to determine if there is an open space for Home Asset Finance, whether any of the existing stakeholders by themselves would fill the space, and whether there could be created a multi-participant new identity to play the home-improvement financing role. AHI’s trip included fourteen stakeholder meetings and interviews, plus a brainstorming with Ashoka and a culminating roundtable briefing of the stakeholders, attended by roughly twenty people, where a potential vision was presented, its feasibility discussed, and next steps sketched.
Istanbul, Turkey - 2009, June 20
Report on Turkey published
Activities: Country Assessment Report
The AHI study commissioned by the Turkish non-governmental organization GYODER has just been published. "Affordable Housing in Turkey: Country Assessment and Recommendations Report," was prepared by GYODER may be obtained from the association at no-cost.
The 111-page report analyzes the Turkish housing environment today, the gaps in the housing system, and positions Turkey in relation to peer-group nations. It outlines a vision of the future and gives actionable recommendations.
The report was prepared with the assistance of research associate Didem Tuzun, as part of AHI's Country Assessment Report Internship (CARI) program. This program engages country native students from the Boston area in creating a comprehensive account of a particular country that will serve as a broadly useful resource for that country's housing finance donors, policy makers, legislators, and stakeholders, in order to enable them to formulate sustainable affordable housing strategies.
Ahmedabad, India - 2009, May 18-22
SEWA Housing Finance field visit
Activities: Program review and Design
Born from a grass-roots movement of self employed women, SEWA Bank has earned an international reputation for its success in establishing and lending to savings cooperatives. Their affiliate, Mahila Housing Trust helps communities address their infrastructure and tenure needs through collective action and advocacy. Together they recognized a need to make affordable housing finance available to their constituents. The lack of such financing was impeding their work to improve communities and to help families become more stable and prosperous.
AHI's Deidre Schmidt visited SEWA and Mahila in Ahmedabad to work toward the creation of a business plan for a SEWA Housing Finance entity. She received excellent exposure to their system in the office and in the field, and spent time talking to self help group members.
Sussex, UK - 2009, May 18-20
Conference on Financing Affordable Housing
Activities: Key Meetings
AHI's David Smith was invited to an intense workshop on "Financing affordable housing for low income groups: innovative funding for urban housing", at Wilton Park in Sussex, UK.
David and Robert Buckley of Rockefeller Foundation talked about "Innovative Approaches by Funders and Foundations" in which they noted complexity and interdependency of the urban environment , the cost of making change, the cross-sectoral, role of Mission Entrepreneurial Entities, the role of pilot projects, and donors as social venture capitalists.
Their presentation can be found here and (in pdf form) here.
David was also an active participant in the accompanying BBC World Debate filmed for TV broadcasting in August, which also featured UN-Habitat Executive-Director Anna Tibaijuka, housing activist Somsook Boonyanbancha (Thailand), UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing Raquel Rolnik (Brazil), and CEO of Equity International, Garry Garrabrant.
It is due to be broadcast on August 1 and 2, 2009.
Boston, MA, USA - 2009, March 20
AHI Exchange Series
Activities: Discussion
"Immense potential as a forum for exchanging ideas and practice"
-- participant
AHI inaugurated its series of dialogues on March 20, 2009, at its headquarters in Boston, USA, with “Leading from the Pack: Peer-Group Networks as Change Agents”, presented by Joel Bolnick of Slum Dwellers International, and Tom Bledsoe Housing Partnership Network.
Networks have emerged as among the world's most promising new approach to making change in affordable housing and urban development globally. Networks are self-organized, self-managed adaptive clusters of similarly-motivated peer entities each operating in a distinct geographic market but across a similar intellectual and business space. Rather than a top-down approach that big institutions know best, the network approach emphasizes experimentation and interactive learning that encourages insight, sharing, and rapid evolution, without creating resource competition among members.
Both presenters are leaders in this movement and head networks that have moved beyond simple idea exchange to provide practical tools and services that help their members address their biggest challenges.
For more about on these dialogues, please visit the AHI Exchange Series home page .
Cambridge, MA, USA - 2009, March 15
Harvard Business School India Conference
Activities: Panel Discussion
AHI's David Smith was invited to participate at the Harvard Business School India Conference panel on "Real Estate and Infrastructure" that brought together industry leaders to discuss its far reaching impact in India.
He spoke about "The Challenge and Opportunity of Slums" (pdf here), in particular:
- Making cities work is the 21st century's great problem. Cities are urbanizing rapidly.
- Comparative advantage of nations lies in the relative efficiency of their cities, which means improving their slums.
- Slums arise when private investment outruns public infrastructure. They are eventually absorbed into cities due to incumbency, physical durability, and sheer mass ("Money + Votes = Power").
- Mumbai and Dharavi are a quintessential urban problem. Mumbai's combination of anti-eviction laws and Transferable Development Rights (TDRs) gives slumdwellers leverage. Meanwhile, Dharavi's scale and complexity make its redevelopment a highly complex challenge.
Cambridge, MA, USA - 2009, March 13
Housing Cities 2009 Symposium (Harvard-MIT)
Activities: Panel Discussion
David Smith was invited to speak on a panel at the Housing Cities Symposium (pdf here), an interdisciplinary, student-led effort developed by graduate students in urban planning, public health, real estate, law, public policy, and business, at Harvard, MIT and the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. The event reflected this multi-disciplinary theme by covering a range of housing subjects and approaching challenges and solutions from a wide spectrum of viewpoint.
David addressed the issue of "Preserving aging affordable housing" (pdf here), at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, in which he stressed that, in the USA:
- With a few exceptions (e.g. Cambridge), the 1,200,000-apartment publichousing inventory nationwide is physically obsolescent, with a capital backlog probably between $30-40 billion.
- More urgently, the public housing deliverysystem is economically and administratively obsolescent.
- Reinventing public housing as a delivery system, enabling housing authorities to become the
Essential Housing Authority, is a critical priority that cannot wait any longer.
Cambridge, MA, USA - 2009, January 14-17
MIT, Dept. of Urban Studies & Planning (DUSP)
Activities: Training
AHI was asked by MIT's Department of Urban Studies & Planning (DUSP) to develop & teach a three day intensive course on Affordable Housing for graduate students and enrolled professionals. Participants were exposed to key principles of affordable housing finance, negotiation points and negotiation dynamics, public-private partnership, and the tensions between economics and policy outcomes. Class began with discussion of key elements: introductory principles, housing finance ecosystems, financing & capital markets, the economics of affordablility, four kinds of money (including tax credits), public-private partnerships, affordable housing in healthy communities, brief history of US affordable housing policy, and policy issues today. The course included a full-day role-playing brainstorming session of US affordable housing in practice: a case study of a mobile home park redevelopment project.
" I found the class very worthwhile. [David Smith & Deidre Schmidt] were well prepared, responsive to the class, and made themselves available both within and outside of class for clarification and advice. The role-play was also well-designed and a very helpful tool in understanding the basics of complex financial instruments in a short time period. Furthermore, the perspective from which the class was taught, ie non-profit housing developer, was also of value as I think alot of MCP students are looking to butresss the academic training with the kind of pragmatism presented in this class."
-- Participating student, MIT
Washington DC, USA - 2008, December 3
"Century of the City" book launch
Activities: Key meetings
Launched in Washington, DC., the book "Century of the City: No Time to Lose" by Neal Pierce and Curt Johnson, records the Rockefeller Foundation's historic Global Urban Summit in Bellagio, Italy, in 2007, which sought to address the pressing issues facing world metropolises. David Smith was a significant contributor to the session on Water, Sanitation, and Shelter: A Fresh Look at Finance. Details here. It is included among Planetizen's 10 best books in the planning field for 2009. David's blogpost about the book is here.
South Africa - 2008, September 29 - October 2
27th World Congress International Union of Housing Finance (IUHF)
Activities: Presentation
On October 1, 2008, David Smith, AHI's founder, gave a presentation on "The global pile-up in slow motion: Risk, repricing and housing" as part of the fifth plenary session on "The Collapse of the Housing Bubble" at the 27th IUHF World Congress in South Africa. He was also interviewed by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC).
David's commentary on the conference can be seen here. David's presentation is here. All conference presentations here.
Turin, Italy - 2008, July 31- August 1
Housing Finance for the Poor (HFP) Training Program
Activites: Presentation, Training
AHI was contracted by the Development Innovations Group (DIG) to engage in their Housing Finance for the Poor (HFP) training program, part of the Boulder Microfinance Training Program (MFT 2008) for professionals held in Turin, Italy, from July 31 to August 1, 2008. MFT is a forum to engender dialogue and shorten the cycle between ideas, research, and the practical application of policies designed to expand the delivery of financial services to poor people. As part of DIG's team, David Smith developed a syllabus for and tought the first-ever module on housing mortgages and a module on slum upgrading:
- Mortgages for the Poor: An overview of Products & Supporting Infrastructure:
This course focused on the challenges of offering mortgage financing and of developing the financial infrastructure underpinning mortgage systems in developing economies. Promising developments, including the rise of “micro-mortgages” was also be a core focus of the course; - Financing Slum Improvement: Public, private and personal, The Case of Sao Paolo, Brazil:
As part of a course designed to present students with case studies of successful, innovative slum improvement programs, the core of this module explored innovative financial mechanisms and tools, both at the level of the municipality or state government and at the level of the customer (or slum dweller), as well as the role of public-private partnerships, gleaned from David Smith's intensive study tour to Sao Paulo, Brazil.
For David's commentary on the mortgage course see here, and on the Favelas of Sao Paulo, Brazil, see here.
London, United Kingdom - 2008, June 12-13
WS & H Practitioners' Roundtable
Activities: Key meetings
David Smith was invited to join a number of microfinance institutions, non-governmental organisations, donor agencies and commercial banks at the WS & H Practioners' Roundtable in London on June 12-13, 2008, to explore the sustainable scaling up of microfinance in the water and sanitation sector. The meeting aimed to:
- Develop common principles for assessing the viability of micro- and commercial finance in the WASH sector, from the perspective of achieving operational and financial sustainability over time;
- Develop a conceptual framework on what is needed to scale up these market based approaches;
- Develop recommendations on the types of activities and approaches different stakeholders (donors, NGOs, banks, etc.) can use to build on the above, in order to further this market.
Participants focused and drew on each other's diverse range of expertise. Although some hoped to take home a ‘finished’ product, the questions that emerged seem more valuable than any ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution. The intensive discussion resulted in several common themes:
- Scale means different things to different people, and from different perspectives. For example, whereas ‘scale’ to a local NGO or MFI often refers to expanding activities to ensure greater coverage to poor people, scale to a commercial bank means increasing amounts of funding in a given area.
- To scale micro (small scale) finance in water and sanitation, both grants and loans are needed to support viable projects, yet there is need for careful use of subsidies.
- There is a range of ‘facilitation’ and enabling support required to bridge demand and supply for using microfinance in water and sanitation.
- While aiming for sustainable scaling up of microfinance within the WS&H sector, adequate attention is needed on targeting the poor and low income groups as well as ensuring that original MFI objectives are not lost.
- Sector coordination is needed to achieve scale through the choice of local partners, entry points in the value chain and sharing of best practices as well as failures.
Several practical ideas emerged from the workshop, including creating a portal where practitioners from varied fields can discuss their experiences in leveraging microfinance in the water and sanitation sector, share case studies for learning purposes (both successful and not-so-successful) and enhance a glossary of terms as understood by different sectors. Details of the roundtable here.
Istanbul, Turkey – 2008, June 4-5
8th Turkish Real Estate Summit 8
Activities: Presentation
AHI was commisoned by the Turkish non-governmental organization GYODER to conduct a study of the affordable housing sector in Turkey. David Smith was invited to present the conclusions of this Housing Country Assessment Report at the Eighth Turkish Real Estate Summit (reported in Europe RE), where he emphasized that:
- Turkey has to improve its housing supply, quality, and affordability in order to promote competitiveness with Europe and the Americas.
- Turkey should emphasize urban development as this is where demand and future growth will occur.
- Government must shift from housing production to housing finance.
- A national gecekondu transformation pilot program built around demolition/rebuilding and earthquake-reinforcement needs to be created.
- Municipal governments should be allowed to obtain nationally owned lands for urban development
- Consumer earthquake-reinforcement loans to improve existing neighborhoods need to be developed.
- A rental housing association model for long-term affordable apartments should be created.
David was interviewed on CNN Turkey and his talk was reported widely in the press: Dunya (Turkish, English); Hurriyet (Turkish, Turkish PDF, English PDF), Referans (Turkish, English), Sabah (Turkish, English PDF).
The presentation is here. The Executive summary of the report in English is here, and in Turkish is here.
The full report is now available from GYODER.
AHI receives grant to research slum improvement - May 2008
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Activities: Research
On May 27, AHI announced the receipt of project support funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to promote research and education on the socioeconomics of shelter in urbanizing communities outside the United States. The grant will fund AHI’s innovative research approach to improving informal urbanizing communities through housing as catalyst, and non-governmental enterprises as the critical change agents. Details here.