Crisis of Natural Building Materials and Institutionalised Self-Help Housing: The Case of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh

Traditional rural housing is largely based on the use of locally available natural resources as prime building materials, usually in a process of self-help building undertaken by the community. Such housing is well adapted to a natural environment with widely available resources and supports people’s direct involvement in the construction of their dwellings. However the advent of a cash economy and current scarcity of natural resources has greatly affected the self-help building process. In rural Bangladesh affluent households are shifting to manufactured materials and skilled builders and the quality of housing of low-income households is declining. For the latter self-help is the only option and recognition of this fact and of the increasing decline in the quality of their housing has prompted institutional intervention. This paper discusses the Grameen Bank’s rural housing programme in Bangladesh which provides loans for manufactured building components for low-income rural households to build houses on a self-help basis. A review of this programme indicates some of its strengths and shortcomings in the context of scarcity of natural building materials and widespread poverty.