ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on various vital elements and forms of assisted self-help housing and public housing policies in the developing world. Today's rapidly urbanizing countries of the Global South are faced with huge challenges to provide affordable housing for their many low-income families. The main stakeholders of the institutional housing sector are both the public sector and private actors such as land developers, banks and construction companies. The prime actors of the self-build sector are the actual owner-occupying households themselves. UN-Habitat developed five so-called shelter deprivation indicators for the definition of slum housing: poor structural quality of housing; insufficient living space. China's urban villages have been converted into rental settlements which are virtually the only housing option for poor migrant labourers. Socio-economic factors, especially households' earning capacity and purchasing power are to a large degree responsible for the individual differences between self-help housing products in the same neighborhoods.
