Social Development and Public Governance > Social Development > Urban Development
Getting Results in Housing
By Michael Jacobs, Shlomo Angel (08/06, SDS/SOC, En, Es)
A Framework for Monitoring Results in Housing Projects Using Measurable Indicators.
The housing projects currently financed by the Bank are characterized by an emphasis on regulatory reforms and more efficient targeting of public resources. Bank experience in the sector has shown that governments adopting an "enabling strategy" are more likely to achieve their housing sector goals than those using public funds to directly finance and construct housing units. In addition to financing settlement upgrading programs, these projects support a wide range of new housing delivery options, foster the participation of the private sector and nonprofit and community development organizations, and promote the use of transparent, direct and up-front subsidies. These projects are more complex than the housing programs of the 1980s, thus taking longer to mature and presenting a considerable implementation challenge for the Bank and its borrowing countries.
The efficient use of public resources and effective government intervention in the sector requires careful evaluation of project results. Presently, the quality of the evaluation reports of Bank-supported housing programs is not entirely satisfactory, partly because the underlying incentive structure does not promote evaluation, and also because of a lack of well-defined indicators to check progress on key aspects of sector performance. The borrower member countries and the Bank must rigorously evaluate projects in order to (i) determine whether loans were efficiently targeted, generated value in excess of investments and had the desired impacts; (ii) increase the transfer of knowledge from one project to the other to improve overall design; and (iii) present solid data on project performance to prospective borrowers in other countries, while promoting its lending program in the sector.
This document identifies and defines a set of indicators covering the key areas of intervention in housing projects. The main objective is to assist project teams and counterpart officials in selecting suitable indicators to measure project inputs, outputs, outcomes and long-term impacts. The Social Programs Division hopes that this publication will help improve the quality of Bank-financed projects and assist in evaluating its development contribution to housing, a key social sector.
Last updated: 06/08/07
