Small municipalities in developing countries often find that procuring new low cost housing to relocate families living in disaster-prone areas is largely constrained by political, economical and social difficulties. Acquiring safe land, matching public and private resources, encouraging individual savings, selecting, evaluating and approving beneficiaries and choosing minimum standards are some of the major barriers in the process of housing delivery.

A recent initiative in Colombia, in which 103 families were relocated from disaster prone areas into a 1262-unit project of low-income housing, illustrates a convenient way of planning, procuring and building housing for disaster prevention. In this model, an efficient partnership between the local and national government, private companies that administer social benefits and a residential developer was created. The partnership managed to successfully channel public subsidies and administrative means to use public funds and transform them into core-houses, ultimately transferring them to an ongoing process of progressive construction managed by individual beneficiaries. Some mistakes were made in the urban and architectural designs. However, the strategies used might set up an example for future municipality-based initiatives of disaster prevention in developing countries