Small is beautiful, but big is often the practice: Housing microfinance in discussion

The intention of people-centred organisations is to help provide the poor with better quality housing, but organisations still tend to offer big housing loans. Whenever they do so, the terms and conditions of housing microfinance often conflict with the needs and livelihood strategies of the urban poor. These strategies include incremental building and financing strategies, characterised by a relatively small amounts and short-term time frames. The term housing microfinance seems to suggest that small loans will be provided, but in practice practitioners in the housing microfinance sector tend to face difficulties in thinking ‘small’. This paper discusses the dilemmas of thinking and acting small and how big tends to dominate.