A central part of the endemic poverty found across the developing world and the conditions of slum communities stems, in part, from a general denial of formal financial opportunities to large segments of the population. Slum dwellers suffer from insecure tenure, inadequate access to safe water, sanitation, and other infrastructure, as well as poor structural quality of housing construction, and overcrowding. Solving the problems inherent to these informal housing communities represents a key part of improving the general quality of life for significant segments of the underserved population. Launched in July of 2004, the national Moroccan program Villes sans Bidonvilles (VSB, or literally, “Cities Without Slums”) evolves from the wide sweeping goal of “eradicating all slums by 2012” through making home ownership affordable for the urban poor. This program can be analyzed in the broader international context of the United Nations Millennium Development Goal, which is aimed at improving living conditions of at least 100 million slum inhabitants by 2020.

This paper seeks to present the Villes sans Bidonvilles program within the overall context of Morocco’s housing policies, programs and institutions. This endeavor offers interesting innovations in the field of housing finance and a concept which is globally transferable. A number of key features are of particular interest to the industry, which include (i) the use of credit enhancements such as the Fogarim guarantee program to create an enabling framework for financial institutions to extend loans to a traditionally excluded target segment, (ii) Retail Platforms or “one-stop-shops” (guichets uniques) which tend to unite stakeholders in slum neighborhoods to facilitate administrative, legal, and financial formalities involved in a housing transaction, and, (iii) public-private partnerships.