Coupling community group-saving and housing delivery in ACHR/IIED-ACCA process is a strategic element in global transition towards sustainability, towards ecological age.
Why?
First of all it is about what that coupling means. Secondly, it is about a fundamental problem in ecology.
The coupling means formation and consolidation of finance (through saving) and space (through housing/settlement) as common resources at very real scale: community.
Being real (not imagined as in many new nation-states that emerged after World War II) means that in it there are real, direct relationships, where trust is possible and risky at the very same time, and working on a project (such as housing delivery) is a direct exercise of those relationships and trusts, testing and strengthening them, while at the same time exposing them to equally devastating risks of destroying them. But, this later end of the balance is well worth a chance because it is hardly any bit more troublesome than what the urban poor have been experiencing.
