FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For more information, contact:
Dr. Janaki Blum, +1 (617) 338-9484 x225
AFFORDABLE HOUSING INSTITUTE RECEIVES $1,000,000 GRANT
FROM BILL & MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION
TO PURSUE INNOVATIVE RESEARCH PROGRAM ON SLUM IMPROVEMENT
Funding for research and education into housing as catalyst for improving informal communities, and non-governmental enterprises as the critical change agents
BOSTON – (May 27, 2008) – The Affordable Housing Institute (AHI) announced today that it has received a two-year, $1 million project support grant from the Global Development Program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to promote research and education on the socioeconomics of housing and shelter in urbanizing communities throughout the global south, including South Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The grant will fund AHI’s innovative research approach to improving informal urbanizing communities through:
- Housing as a catalyst for improving informal communities, and
- Non-governmental organizations, often informal, as enterprises that make visible change.
“We want to change the world's understanding of what slums are, and how benefactor entities can help improve slums and cities," said David Smith, AHI's Founder and President. “In urbanizing megacities, slums aren't an aberration; they're an economically rational outcome, a spontaneous community that arises whenever people are moving to cities faster than the infrastructure can support."
There is often a mismatch between the top-down approach of formal development-oriented institutions and the self-organized, bottom-up informal communities they are seeking to aid. The grant is for a two-year project to understand how best to boost urban informal self-organizing networks and groups: how to support their growth, how to help them deploy their resources, how to replicate themselves and grow their numbers.
"Governments and donors sometimes underestimate the role of mission entrepreneurial entities as change agents. These groups not only turn programs and policies into actual housing, by doing so they also change the political environment," said Smith. Housing is crucial, he added, because homes not only provide security of tenure, they also enable better health, education, and family income. Even as they pursue their mission goals, NGOs have to operate as businesses – and they need to be studied and supported as enterprises as well as change agents.
AHI is rare in its specific, ground-level experience in generating self-sustaining communities worldwide and in its staff's concrete housing-finance and capital-markets experience. AHI founder David Smith also founded and is CEO of a successful US multifamily housing financial services company, Recap Advisors, and uses his extensive experience to keep AHI’s approach focused on real-world solutions.
"The grant to AHI is helping provide new insights about how to improve the quality of life for the urban poor," said Melanie Walker, senior program officer for special initiatives, Global Development Program at the Gates Foundation. "David's unique background in housing finance and investment banking gives AHI a fresh approach to capitalizing and catalyzing change in urban communities that we would like to see developed and tested with the world's thought leaders."
The foundation’s grant to AHI is part of the Special Initiatives portfolio of its Global Development Program, which works with motivated partners on focused strategies to increase opportunities for people in the developing world to lift themselves out of hunger and poverty. Special Initiatives grants allow the foundation to fund compelling, specific opportunities to advance development and to learn about new approaches that can inform and improve the strategies and grantmaking of the Global Development Program.
About the Bill & Melinda gates Foundation
Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, it focuses on improving people’s health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, it seeks to ensure that all people -- especially those with the fewest resources -- have access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life. Based in Seattle, the foundation is led by CEO Patty Stonesifer and co-chair William H. Gates Sr., under the direction of Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett.