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re affordable and accessible to low and middle income households.

2.2.5. Specialized Housing Funds

Various types of dedicated Housing Funds have been developed to target different streams of population to meet their housing needs. Some target the poor families such as Urban Community Development Funds, Urban Poor Funds. Some target the general population such as housing funds in China and Singapore. In 1984, Turkey established Mass Housing Fund (MHF) to provide a substantial, steady inflow of funds for financing housing.

MHF was mainly funded through taxes on certain imports as well as on consumption of petroleum products. It makes loans at subsidized and low interest rates. It does not mobilize savings from households, and therefore can be regarded as a fiscal instrument.

Thailand established a special fund (i.e. Urban Community Development Fund) dedicated to the improvement of the poor’s livelihood and housing. The Urban Community Development Fund supports poor communities to organize savings groups and improve their capacities to manage their fund or loans for community development activities. [8]

Urban Community Development Fund provides three loan types to community savings groups: loans for community development revolving fund, income generation loans and housing loans.

2.3. HOUSING AS A TOOL TO ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Housing policy in the developing world has usually been shaped by social and political considerations, yet housing can also be used to promote economic development. From the 1930s to the 1950s, it was increasingly deployed for this purpose by the agencies of colonial powers, including Britain and France; by the United States in Puerto Rico; and by the US Agency for International Development and the Inter-American Development Bank in Latin America.

By the mid-1960s, the UN and affiliated agencies, notably the International Labour Office, had a keen and broad appreciation of its significance for economic policy. This understanding was temporarily swamped by rising social concerns and then sidelined when the World Bank began to support sites-and-services schemes in the 1970s. It reasserted itself in the 1980s in the form of ‘market enabling’ strategies which, however, too often became an excuse for inaction. This history underlines the importance of paying attention to the potential role of housing as a tool of economic development. [9]

The wealthier societies can afford better dwellings than the poorer, and many writers and governments have concluded that the best way to improve a nation's housing is to promote economic growth. But housing is not simply an indicator, a litmus test of prosperity. Dwellings are places and objects of work, not to mention major repositories of wealth. [10] Builders employ thousands of workers, with multiplier effects on suppliers and lenders. The housing sector, in other words, is a key component of development. Like industry and agriculture, it may be deployed as a policy tool: governments may use it to reduce unemployment, or to improve health and productivity; they may turn existing, insecure wealth into productive capital by regularizing the ownership claims of squatters. Potentially, then, housing is a tool of economic development.

It is a moot point as to how long, and even whether, international development agencies have fully recognized