Incremental housing as an alternative housing policy: evidence from Greater Khartoum, Sudan

With about 80% of households in Greater Khartoum classified as being of low income, the cost of housing is unaffordable for the vast majority of households. This results in a wide gap between demand and supply manifested in over-crowding and massive growth of informal settlements. The predominant housing supply mechanism adopted in most of urban Sudan is sites-and-services. However, about 56% of the serviced plots allocated in Khartoum State during 1956–2007 have remained undeveloped because of the prohibitive cost of housing. Consequently, the State has opted to replace sites-and-services with core housing as an alternative housing policy because of its perceived economies of scale. This paper assesses the potential and the limitations of different forms of incremental housing as solutions for low-income groups in Khartoum State. The paper analyses the strengths and weaknesses of past examples of agency-built incremental housing and suggests guidelines and recommendations to improve the performance of incremental housing. In addition to a desk review of previous studies on housing in general and on incremental housing in particular, the authors conducted a survey of 222 households in sites-and-services areas, in upgraded squatter settlements and in core housing projects.