The World Bank Group has intervened in affordable housing initiatives around the world, with mixed results – showing that taking local country and market contexts into account is essential to effective implementation. In Morocco, World Bank support has been key to sustaining the success of a low-income housing loan program through a government counterpart. This program had two main objectives, focusing on increasing the fiscal environment upstream as well as the accessibility of the market downstream. The World Bank also supported the consolidation of ten institutions of urban development and housing into Al Omrane – a single government entity that enabled more efficient action on housing.
Al Omrane became a key partner in the Villes Sans Bidonvilles (VSB) program, which focused on the upgrading and improvement of informal settlements – and has been key to achieving the government’s objective of increasing low-income access to quality housing. Though the effectiveness of this project is difficult to measure because they did not have definitions of targets, nor baseline data, five years after the consolidation, Al Omrane was financially sustainable and remained the Moroccan government’s major housing and development agency.
Source:
World Bank Group. (2016) World Bank Group Support to Housing Finance. International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank.
Link: https://ieg.worldbankgroup.org/evaluations/world-bank-group-support-housing-finance