The Journey of Credit Based Housing Scheme….

In the first phase Habitat program gone through ups & down. It was not easy for the team to change the grant base mind set up of the village people. The main problem was faced in selection of potential borrower. In some cases team constrained to select some of clients at least to initiate to got entry in the village. But afterwards it has shown adverse effect, in form of non- cooperation at client’s level. To stop the practice in some cases team took the action of recovery of released loan amount and in some cases even cancellation of client’s selection too. The team learned so many things during the implantation of project; it was realize that for smooth functioning of project, it is essential to understand village level dynamics, people expectations & how to make credit base housing policy more realistic.
To percolate the experienced base strategy on ground, team increased the frequency of its visits & meetings with villagers. It was strongly felt that to find out potential borrower, the demand creation of credit based housing would have to be increase, but how? The team decided to provide more input to build the cost effective house, the process of material purchase made flexible, people were encouraged for bulk purchasing of construction material & for giving their inputs in designing their house, team assisted the clients by providing trained masons through their resources. To boost up the interest of clients team emphasize on quick solving of construction related problems of clients. Engineer supervised the work frequently and tried their best to provide one beautiful, cost effective house. The rat-trap, and in some place arc over door and window given the new look to the house, it looks different in the middle of the other houses. At the end, when house was complete in very short period of time, clients observed that his small bungalow was completed merely in Rupees 30,000/- or 40,000/- they never expect that such good looking house construction could possible in such small amount. Now the clients was proved to be main advertising centre, he performing his role by doing the mouth publicity of Habitat Program and its cost effective housing scheme in the nearby areas.

Thus the habitat team wins the heart of the people through their services. The team also succeed in convincing the people that Rs. 12,000/- loan amount has to be return with 6% interest with nominal monthly installments, which is distributed in 60 nos of installments for 5 years along with this facility they were getting consultancy and supervision of Engineer . This is the big opportunity for them in housing sector and they have to grab this opportunity. Most of the people understand and liked the theme they came forward by their own and demanding for providing the credit base housing facility. It helped the team to drag/select the potential borrower and real needy person.

Considering the big demand of houses from the field, the need was felt to ensure the repayment, quality of housing construction, stipulated time period for completion of one house etc. The team decided to establish formats, needful changes in pervious MOU, procedure & norms of client’s selection. To bring the all theme in one row the operation manual was developed to use it as a guideline for all team members. The team has very broad vision for making the credit base housing scheme more people oriented to make it national movement for providing the habitat for all humankind.