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Without access to functioning financial mechanisms (institutions as well as instruments), one billion people are kept from achieving an acceptable housing standard. Cities are the engines for development. Economic development depends on efficacy of land/housing markets and of the financial systems. Affordable and adequate housing depends both on what is actually being financed, and on whether sufficient levels of finance are being mobilized for this sector. Most families find shelter solutions through the market. This requires a sustainable and just finance system for the housing sector with effective assistance to those unable to look after their own shelter needs. The housing market also requires timely provision of infrastructure and a range of tradable property rights.
Cities in developing nations worldwide give clear evidence to the thesis that Progress creates poverty through constraints on the access to land. The theoretical solution is functioning housing markets and financial markets supplying affordable and adequate housing for all. The functioning of the Urban Land Market is arguably the most consistent bottleneck undermining long-term city development. Market access is built on transparency, low transaction costs, and good access to property information as well as property financing. Facilitating efficient land markets and effective land-use management is one road map, but only when using the inclusive approach.
Surveyors play a key role in linking functioning markets for housing and finance. Support to this aim is being provided, but despite 30 years of efforts, political commitments and reiterated priority to the issue, little has been achieved. Building up the key institutions that can manage the public systems providing key public goods*is –at best - “a slow process”. Not until the state can set up such an enabling regulatory framework, the poor will stop paying relatively more for inadequate services. And the poor do pay for their housing.
This initiative has been taken by the two responsible agencies in Sweden for key public goods in housing markets and housing finance, read more at National Land Surveying Agency and National Housing Credit Guarantee Board. These institutions have developed from a policy based on the need for integration, justice and equality, to combat overcrowding and poor living conditions, less than a century ago. Today we face a reality where global actors and local needs outpace the institutional development on a national, and even more- a city level.
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Background 
