The right to adequate housing, enshrined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, is fundamental to dignity, productivity, and social stability. Yet across Asia, more than 500 million people live in slums, with rural areas hit hardest. In India alone, 65 million of the country’s 113 million housing deficit units are in rural communities, where low-income families face systemic barriers: lack of land titles, limited credit history, rigid mortgage terms, and unaffordable servicing costs. Addressing this crisis calls for solutions that are both innovative and scalable, tailored to the irregular incomes and communal structures of rural life.
Swarna Pragati Housing Microfinance (SPHM) has emerged as a pioneer in incremental housing finance for India’s rural poor. To grow its impact from thousands to one million homes over the next decade, the cohort recommends three transformative strategies:
Community Housing Loan Pools – pooling demand to cut construction and servicing costs through bulk purchasing and centralised loan management, with savings passed on to borrowers.
Integrated Service Partnerships – combining housing finance with sanitation, energy, healthcare, and insurance, making each home a hub for holistic development.
Mobile Technology – deploying a platform to simplify loan applications, repayments, and engagement via SMS and apps, while leveraging data analytics to improve products.
The potential is profound. Each home financed strengthens education through stable study environments, improves health by reducing disease exposure, and promotes gender equity by providing safe spaces for women. At scale, SPHM’s model could reshape rural development, showing that housing justice is possible through market-based solutions built on community trust. By bridging the gap between human rights and financial viability, SPHM offers a blueprint for equitable growth in India and across the Global South.