About us

Habitat for Humanity International is a nonprofit, ecumenical Christian ministry dedicated to the cause of eliminating substandard housing and homelessness by building adequate and basic houses worldwide. Habitat increases its impact by expanding work in housing finance, advocacy and partnerships.

Habitat supports market research, product development and piloting and provision of complementary construction and program services through partnerships with more than fifteen microfinance institutions around the world.

How Habitat promotes housing microfinance

• Serving as coordinating organization and secretariat for the CGAP Working Group on Housing Finance for the Poor.
• Developed a version of Microsave tools specifically adapted for development of housing microfinance products.
• Funded and collaborated on Acción International research into the prospects for greater scale of housing products within their Latin American network partners (Results shared at the 2006 SEEP Network Annual General Meeting.).
• In June 2006, served as consultant to World Bank for publication of Housing Finance in Emerging Economies. (Franck Daphnis served as the lead researcher and writer; staff support from Acción International.)
• Produced a Spanish language version of the Franck Daphnis and Bruce Ferguson book Housing Finance: A Guide to Practice to provide more widespread availability of the resource to MFIs in Spanish-speaking countries.
• Hired Chuck Waterfield to teach a modified version of his Microfinance and FRAME courses to managers of housing finance programs.