In March 1986, the HDA launched an Incremental Housing Scheme (IHS) in a portion of Gulshan-i-Shahbaz, a township which is being developed on the periphery of Hyderabad, Sind. The scheme aimed at overcoming the constraints that public sector programmes face in making land, credit for housing and physical and social sector facilities available to the urban poor. In attempting to fulfill its objectives the HDA has experimented with a number of approaches and involved various NGOs and public sector agencies in the development of its IHS. Since land became available to the very poor (who had never dreamt of owning a plot before) through this scheme, it has been named “Khuda-ki-Basti”, or God’s Settlement, by the poor who have benefited from it and the residents of the neighbouring low-income settlements.