Project

About 1.6 billion people globally live in substandard housing conditions, which affects their health and well-being, but is also suspected to impact educational attainment of children and job prospects. At the same time, people have to forego worthwhile investments into housing improvements because of credit constraints and affordability. Financed by MasterCard Foundation and implemented by Habitat for Humanity International (HFHI), the programme Building Assets, Unlocking Access aims at developing scalable housing microfinance products for low-income households in Uganda, Kenya, and Ghana. HFHI is forming strategic partnerships with local financial service providers (FSP), and gives technical assistance in order to help the FSPs to diversify their product range by including a dynamic array of housing microfinance products. These products differ from normal microfinance by their compulsory purpose for housing improvements and Housing Support Services, which is embedded in the product. Housing Support Services are demand-driven services designed to enable low-income households make adequate planning on viable housing improvements in affordable stages. MasterCard Foundation and HFHI have contracted RWI in partnership with Genesis Analytics, a South-Africa based consultancy, and the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg to accompany the implementation of the project in order to examine the program’s effectiveness. The study will assess impacts of the improved access to housing microfinance on several impact categories: safety from hazards, health security, educational security, economic security, social inclusion, as well as wellbeing and happiness. To measure the impact of the programme on these indicators, randomised control trials (RCT) will be undertaken. In Uganda, a randomized phasing-in approach will be applied, where the FSP’s branches are subject to a random lottery to determine which branches offer the housing micro-finance products immediately and which branches offer it only some 12-24 month later, after the data collection for the impact evaluation will have been finished. In Kenya, randomisation will take place at the applicant level, where eligible applicants are subject to a random lottery to determine whether they receive the HMF or not. It is assumed that this process is in accordance with normal capital rationing practices, except for the fact that it is not run on a first-come-first-serve basis. The implementation of the evaluation approach will be done in close cooperation with the FSPs. As such, this research project is the first to study the economics of microfinance for housing and its impacts in field experiments. The research team is responsible for the design of the impact evaluation, the implementation of the randomisation process, the compilation of the survey questionnaire, the training of enumerators to run the survey, the performance of quality monitoring of data and its collection, the analysis of the data, and the production of an impact evaluation report as well as the dissemination of the findings. HFHI’s M&E team will perform continual monitoring and collect the data to be used in the impact evaluation.

Project start:
01. January 2014

Project end:
31. December 2017

Project staff:
Prof. Dr. Jörg Peters, Dr. Maximiliane Sievert, Dr. Annekathrin Schoofs

Project partners:
Genesis Analytics, University of Witwatersrand

Funding:
Habitat for Humanity International, MasterCard Foundation