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| Document Type: | General |
| Primary Author: | Douglas Webster |
| Edited By: | Suneela Farooqi |
| Published By: | GH Bank Housing Journal |
Minimizing slums, squatter settlements and substandard housing are key objectives of most developing country governments, including Thailand. Pursuing and achieving these objectives requires that sufficient supplies of adequate housing are available, accessible and affordable. Worldwide, many strategies have been used to pursue these objectives, ranging from providing public housing at very low cost (to the user) to highly market based approaches, that may involve upfront subsidies to reach the poorest society segments. Developing countries have experienced varying levels of success providing adequate housing to their people, even when similar means to deliver affordable housing are deployed. Development experts once argued that slums are primarily a phenomenon associated with a given level of development (or underdevelopment) and that they will disappear with time, roughly in step with economic development. There is considerable truth to this argument, e.g., virtually all of the current richest cities in the world, e.g., New York City, Singapore,