The paper focuses on Zimbabwe’s past and present experiences with low-income housing provision, taking into cognizance the fact that housing is a highly visible dimension of poverty and as such it represents such a poignant issue in so many Third World Cities. The Zimbabwean experience is discussed against the background of relevant socio-economic issues, the experiences of other countries, and the stated objectives of the national housing policy framework.

The paper also focuses on the scope of the housing problem in Zimbabwe since independence while also acknowledging the impact of the pre-independence colonial legacy such as land and residential segregation.

With Zimbabwe’s transition to majority rule in 1980, years of restrictions on rural to urban migration ended. The urban population already high at 23 % of the total population in 1980 reached 33% by 1990 which put serious pressure on the country’s major cities creating a severe shortage of housing for the urban poor. At independence, the government of Zimbabwe embarked on a national development programme aimed at the provision of decent and affordable housing and security of tenure for the urban low-income groups.

Realising that the task of improving human settlements cannot be achieved by the public sector alone, the government pursued a policy that encouraged the participation of the private sector, employers, individuals, non-governmental organisations and community-based organisations in the provision of shelter. Most importantly the government depended to a great extent on multi-lateral institutions. The paper explores the challenges that remain today for the establishment of the right policy framework that brings into the fold multi-lateral lending institutions, non-governmental organizations and the private sector to arrest the unrelenting low-income housing finance crisis.