By the end of 2009, over 43 million people worldwide had been forcibly displaced due to conflict and persecution. In addition, during 2009, 335 reported natural disasters killed over 10,000 people and affected more than 119 million people. The corresponding scale of global shelter need has required a diversity of approaches that go beyond simple design solutions. Spanning humanitarian responses from over 60 years, Shelter Projects 2009 is the second annual compilation of shelter programmes.

The project summaries included aim to illustrate some of the project options available to organisations working in both post disaster and post conflict situations, as well as to support learning from the strengths and weaknesses of different projects. The focus of this book is on projects that maximise emergency response funds to support sustainable recovery.

In recent years, the humanitarian community has looked inward, learning from their past experiences in providing emergency shelter for the ever-increasing number of populations suffering from crises worldwide. The humanitarian reform process has helped widen the community of practitioners, reinforced global and country-based coordination systems, and required the agencies concerned to seek new and better means of ensuring integrated and robust humanitarian programming.

This publication is an example of a series of learning tools being produced to support improved response to crises. It has been developed by the Emergency Shelter Cluster through a group of agencies within the cluster led by UN-HABITAT. It contains summaries of a range of experiences applied in crisis situations, and an honest appraisal of their successes and failures.

This report examines the housing finance mechanisms in South Africa. The report looks at the macro-economic conditions and legal environment in which housing finance is operating. It discusses the role of the state, private sector, multilateral institutions and other agencies in the development of housing finance mechanisms. It reviews a variety of instruments and measures to facilitate access to housing finance and for implementation of different housing finance schemes. It demonstrates that how policy development and environment can shape the housing finance system and its evolution.

It examines the different commercial banking approaches, instruments and products to low income housing finance, and their challenges and constraints. It explores how the regulatory infrastructure and environment and institutions created by the state can carry some of the intermediary risks associated with extending loans to the lower income housing market.