Hummus

Yesterday, I went to pick up some groceries. Around me, long isles, lots of products and people serving, helping, weighing, carrying, packaging.

The place–an expat haven of safety, especially now, two years after the gruesome act carried out in the very spot.

An elderly man came up with his cart full of purified water, so clearly not destined for him.

On his old Nokia screen, he showed one word.

Hummus.

Face puzzled, he walked from one helper to the next, unsure where to look, whom to ask.

I heard ‘humms?’ ‘eh hummus’ ping pong back and forth a few times, frowns and searching looks around the produce section.

When I saw the screen and the lost man, I walked over and said the hummus was most likely farther back, hiding behind various Brown cheeses and Brookside milks. We walked and searched together.

The absurdity of me trying to explain hummus to this man and the helper, him so profusely thanking me–as if his life truly depended on it–and a little later, him coming up again with three different types asking which one. His face all worry.

I smiled and told him they were all the same. The classic kind. He relaxed.

Before I moved on to oranges, I said that he should try it. It’s tasty, I said.

He looked at me seriously, then smiles and nods.

But the hummus was not for him–and I wish I had opened a package right then.

Advice

At the lakeside, we got talking

about the land, the water

one brown, one red

Hippos are fast, he said

And when they chase you

you zigzag

and run as hard as you can

His hands were in motion

setting an example

At his childhood lake, he’s escaped a few

but not his friends.

There’s water snakes too

Once they bite, stay in the water

Will they kill you? I asked

Instantaneous, he said

you leave, you die

But in the water, your blood is slow

cold

You stay, don’t move

Wait for muti.

Journalist? she asked.

I had a friend, a journalist, she said

On an assignment, in CAR

She got incredible access

embedded with the rebels

One day

they had muti

Became invisible

—including her

When they went into a village

she followed

invisible

By the next day

they had killed them all

and she was there

invisible

A Beautiful Thing/Родина

I want to tell you about a beautiful thing that recently happened to me. It has to do with my family and acceptance. Maybe some of you will relate.

My family is spread all over. My mother lives in Germany, my aunt in Spain, another aunt, uncle and cousins in Central Russia, my grandma and more cousins in Southern Russia–and I’m in Kenya. When my aunt announced that she was going to marry her long-term partner, we decided to get together, in Barcelona, to celebrate.

Not everybody could make it but the three sisters reunited. Vera, Nadeshda, Lubov–Faith, Hope, Love. I also joined and saw my mother’s sister from Central Russia and her husband for the first time in 14 years.

We were all nervous. After such a long time, you don’t know each other anymore. You–literally–have to get used to speaking the same language again, learn first-hand what has happened over all those years and what kind of person you’re related to and dealing with.

My aunt is a hard-working woman who likes to shed a tear or two over shared memories, and tell stories about her children whom she adores deeply. She is also the eldest among the three sisters, and you can tell. Even though it was her first time in Barcelona and she let others decide what to do, it still felt that she had the ultimate control. It was also her who, without hesitation, pointed out the obvious, everybody else was too polite to verbally notice. One of the sisters had gotten a little belly (“What is this? And you are wearing this tight dress?”), the other one was anxious and stressed (“Quiet! Just sit down for once and relax! You’re driving everybody crazy!”), her husband drank a bit too much (“Here we go again…”) and I was lacking a good part of crucial Russian cultural know-how (“She doesn’t understand Ukrainian jokes. You must explain again.”). But in this same direct fashion, she would also tell you when she liked something about you or something you did. After a few days together, she hugged me–suddenly–and said that I was a sensible and intelligent girl who was interested in people and the world, and that she was impressed and very happy about how I had turned out. I felt honored and glad and relieved.

My uncle was a bit of a different story. He is a man full of jokes and opinions. Many of them sounded offensive to my Western, liberal ears. There were jokes and comments about peoples he clearly disliked and there was the way he did not look at me when, on our second night together, I left the women’s family story circle on one side of the room to join the men’s political talk on the couch and hear his thoughts about Syria and Crimea–merged into one argument against American world policing. I chimed in occasionally, probing his argumentation, but he attributed our generational, cultural, sociopolitical differences to my having spent too much time in the US. It’s true, spending time abroad will most likely widen the horizon of your opinions, but I’m sure that’s not what he meant.

After a while, he decided to give me a lesson of sorts. He asked me to join him on the balcony, away from the (protective) women. While he smoked a cigarette, he told me about his two children whom he raised to love Kuban, the region in Southern Russia where we are all from. Even though his children had been born in other regions of the Soviet Union, he took them to Kuban as often as he could, because he wanted them to love it as much as he did, and to view it as their Родина [liberally where you’re born or your homeland]. Clearly, my uncle loved his country–and he expected me to feel the same. Standing on this little balcony, overseeing a narrow street in the Gothic quarter of Barcelona, where one of my aunts lived and where I had spent more time coming of age than in Russia, a country I left at age 2 and had only visited a few times since, I felt the pressure of needing to belong. I felt that I had to choose sides (my homeland’s side in this case) and stick with it, no matter what. Most of all though, I felt sad and disappointed that my uncle did not see me as the person I was–complex background and all. I had not grown up in a different region of Russia, like his kids, but a completely different country, Germany. And even that place I had traded in over 10 years ago for the US, South Africa, Kenya and others, because I did not feel that I belonged. People like me who face dilemmas of not truly fitting in anywhere have since been dubbed “third culture kids.” Even though I had grown up with the Russian language, food, stories, mentality and culture, I did not belong to it–and I never would, at least not fully. And that was something my uncle could not accept.

We spent the next week cooking, eating, strolling, laughing, crying, arguing, making up–and on my last evening, just before I was to head to the airport to fly back to Nairobi, a beautiful thing happened.

Over another lavish meal, accompanied by a great deal of spirits, my uncle raised his glass to make a toast. He looked at me and he said: “Forget what I have told you about your Родина. Home is where you are happy, where people accept you as you are–and where your mother is.” Everybody drank to that and my mother beamed at him, but I knew that this was a private exchange between him and me. That he, like me, had continued thinking about our conversation on the balcony. That he had learned, as we spent time together, that I could not and would not belong–and that that was OK. It was one of those rare times when you see somebody opinionated change their opinion. And it was in this moment that he stopped trying to make me something I was not and accepted me instead.

Fallacy

Today I sat at a table

With a vet, clerk, farmer, banker, professor

all concerned about inclusive business

Voices were low, humble, conspiratory

The room lit with a few bright lights

Contributions to the conversation were carefully announced, delivered softly and determined,

like a feather falling down to the middle of the table

to be examined and accepted

with understanding nods and continuous “hm”s

Among water bottes, notebooks, glasses, suits and cloth-covered chairs

the consensus was reached

that we too readily fall prey to the fallacy

that technology solves anything

by itself

Situations

This one time
I sat in Dolores Park overlooking San Francisco
listening to “Best Day Of My Life”
checking out stylish people
on a borrowed iPhone
dancing bright yellow frames
all over the city
an advertisement friends were making
on tight budget
thus the cinematic favor.

This other time
I sat in a crammed bus returning to Nairobi
listening to “Best Day Of My Life”
stuck for hours
an accident
people overtake each other
on the steep Great Rift Valley roads
red dust in the air from shaggy wheels
makes it hard to see
a man threw suffocated sheep off his animal-stacked truck
they landed twisted, eyes closed
and the words
“Best Day Of My Life”
morbidly mocked the ambulance
speeding by.

My commute: Getting to know you, San Francisco

After a little more than a month, I think that maybe—just maybe—I know it well enough to begin to describe: my commute.

This sudden impulse, probably because this week, for the first time, I shared it with somebody. We walked along, me pointing out the spots, moments, observations I’ve begun to see as mine, as you do when you get to know someone new—be it a person, or a place. And it struck me that it was time to share. My commute, my getting closer to this city I don’t quite like—part of my life, just like that.

The territorial cats who still regard me with suspicion. But I know where to expect them now—the happy hounds and them

The red strawberry I admire. And I wonder if the owner will mind when, one day—I eat it, straight from the branch, in the breaking light

The severity of silence for 30 precious minutes, serene in the true sense, and inexplicably important. Because every morning I entrust my safety to a complete stranger, for a dollar. When the stranger drops me off on the other side of the bridge, we’re a little less strange—and somewhat restored

At 3^rd and Mission, a homeless man eats his Styrofoam breakfast

The two wide inbetween streets that are so out of place in this densely and constantly densifying place. The first—home to colors: a green, indiscernible corner on top of the roof, a rose wall and gray asphalt. The second—home to a man: bright blankets, always asleep, always contorted, always anew

Downtown construction that never ends, fueled by technology, both micro and macro, swept even into our non-profit shared working space. Until profits are made

The line outside the methadone clinic by the office, and the woman who looks, glazed over, tattoos across her face, and she’s gone

The security guard, deemed necessary, positioned outside the office—sunglasses and leather jacket

The impossibly young faces of the bourgeoning, posh ad firm, sprawling on three floors below ours in a building, formerly a garment factory—the long florescent lights still blind

 

My path there so starkly different from my return.

 

The smell on Howard Street that reminds me of a boy I once saw at age 8 at Niederrad train station in Frankfurt, Germany. A smell of ripe fruit that has just begun to rot—sweet, animal-like

The strange feeling when one of the homeless is not in his regular spot. Could he have?

Oh, but I know the patched sidewalk. Let me show you where.

Lines and streams of bodies move. Stop, and you’ll make them part

The lengthening line of bus passengers, one after another, actually—incredibly!—abiding

6.30pm lights flickers on passengers’ balding heads. They don’t notice me noticing

Albany’s glowing shimmer of gold, welcoming me back. I look and look. Until my eyes hurt. The angle shifts. And it’s just another apartment building

I nod a quick hello at my familiar giant harbor friends

They know

I’ll be back tomorrow

Breaking

Breaking is those hated, inappropriate tears that come, because I know the right questions to ask.

Breaking is cracking the shell, when he opens up but never talks to me again. Breaking is the glimpse I don’t deserve, the one that never lasts.

Breaking is spelling out the word “cappuccino,” because of its novelty, because it’s a rich person’s thing, a thing to tell, to show, to spell. The hysterical laughter at the leaf in the foam.

Breaking is when I see things I should not see.

Breaking is the old man across my mountain of fish, plantains, vegetables chewing on his plain potatoes, staring absently. Alone.

Breaking is the layer of skin forming on the old man’s hot tea, and the clothes that are too big on him, too stiff, destined to carry to the grave—Him. Us. Whether it’s time or not.

Breaking is the disbelief of a slum dweller in the UN (“It’s so big!”). Breaking is its very rarity.

Breaking is a body in the middle of the street, naked, buses swirling out of their way, avoiding contact because it slows down business. Breaking is not knowing death from drunkenness.

Breaking is a waiter asking “Would you like lemon with your Pimms?” and the fact that he really means it. That this could matter to him.

Breaking is the dead pig in the river, swollen, grey, and children throwing stones at the other pigs, calling them by name.

Breaking is his red eyes, infected, in the fumes of burnt plastic, batteries, flesh.

Breaking is the “thank you” after another unaffordable meal afforded—For him. His family. When he can’t. The endless thanking.

Breaking is the sullied and ripped, sparkly dresses on little girls in the mud.

Breaking is that smell.

Breaking is having doubts—about trust, about security, about life.

Breaking is nervously looking out of the taxi, making sure you are on the right road.

Breaking is when it becomes a habit.

Breaking is trying to explain—blank stares on beloved faces.

Breaking is when he orders the largest coffee available. His eating an opportune meal.

Breaking is the sign by the city’s dumb site “Don’t throw away your baby.”

Breaking is a man who says “I don’t know what to do.”

Breaking is when I can’t sleep at night.

Breaking is the insistence that he’s not a criminal and does not want to be one, that he wants to earn his living “with his sweat,” the doubt so obvious in his voice, his look.

Breaking is that I get it. I won’t blame him.

Breaking is the waiting eviction notice. The inevitable, patient state. State of affairs, state of being, state of desperation.

Breaking is being let into a ministry and given insider contacts because of the color of your skin. No questions asked.

Breaking is avoiding people, because what can you realistically talk about?

Breaking is when the libido is numbed by the shit filling your head.

Breaking is when the act is desperate, beautiful, the thing that might save you.

Breaking is feeling pretentious because of my inability to deal, to adjust, to care for the things that should matter in my life.

Breaking is being surprised at a slum resident’s brains. And being appalled at the inability of so many in power.

Breaking is the hands on his face when he thinks of my leaving, when the challenge, the investigation is over.

Breaking is the question “When will you come back?”

Breaking is what I do. Be it an inherited masochism or one acquired—with too much alcohol, too many worries, too little sleep, too many places not-to-go, too many thoughts not-to-think.

Only few will understand. But they are there, those few.

From Silicon Savannah to Ushahidi: Technological Determinism or Real Opportunity?

At best, it could increase democratic participation, accountability, transparency, quality and speed of government delivery.

At worst, it is unaffordable, inaccessible, could be controlled or entirely hijacked by a central government and make everything quite a bit worse: e-governance or the application of electronic means in the interaction between the government and its citizens and internal government operations.

Ranging from G2C (Government to Citizens), G2B (Government to Businesses) and G2E (Government to Employees) to G2G (Government to Governments) and C2G (Citizens to Governments), this world of acronyms aims at informing, representing, consulting, involving and encouraging citizens. The United Nations—along with numerous other international organizations and governments—has embraced e-government. In 2012, for instance, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs proclaimed that “new technologies can be used to advance sustainable development for all people across the world while including them in the process” and ranked its 191 member states by its telecommunications infrastructure and human resource endowment in a so-called e-Government Readiness Index. The Republic of Korea ranked #1, while Kenya placed as #119 and Somalia at the very bottom.

At the risk of being named a technological determinist and victim of my tech-obsessed generation, I believe that in the case of Kenya, it would be a grave mistake to ignore Information and Communications Technologies when drafting any national policy, especially a National Slum Upgrading and Prevention Policy.

There are several reasons for this.

Firstly, the Kenyan government has launched several innovative projects or ideas, including a pilot project by the Information Technology Standards Association of Kenya. As one of the first e-governance programs and in an attempt to increase public awareness and participation in the fight against corruption, this program collected source points in form of corruption reports sent by citizens through an Internet hotline and routed those to the Electronic Graft management Center. The center, in turn, filtered the information before channelling it to the Anti-Corruption Authority for action. To increase participation, existing Internet cafes were made available free-of-charge to send corruption reports. Moreover, youth volunteers and news media outlets were recruited to raise awareness of the service.

Another noteworthy government initiative is the Connected Kenya 2017, a 5-year national ICT Masterplan, adopted earlier this year. As part of Vision 2030, this policy plan is supposed to turn Kenya into “Africa’s most globally respected knowledge economy” by 2017. Under three main pillars, the plan outlines the achievement of ambitious goals such as centralized affordable cloud services and the development of Konza Technology City that is supposed to promote Kenya as a Silicon Savannah over the course of the next 20 years.

An artist’s imagination of Konza City. Source: http://www.mwakilishi.com/sites/default/files/Konza4.jpg.

Finally, and possibly most exciting among government initiatives, is the Kenyan Government’s open data website, launched in 2011 by President Mwai Kibaki. This pretty comprehensive portal draws data from the Ministry of Finance, Planning, Health, Education and Kenya National Bureau of Statistics. While it does not yield too much information about informal settlements, it provides formal information on six main sectors: education, energy, health, water, sanitation, population and poverty.

Besides government initiatives, Kenya has also been at the forefront of alternative communications and value exchange platforms. Ushahidi, for example, is an open-source mapping system that resulted from a lack of information flow during Kenya’s 2007-2008 post-election violence. During a time period when Kenyans in certain parts of the country did not know whether it was safe or not to step outside their house, this alternative news platform mapped crime reports to assess the local situation better. This “politics of witnessing” has become notorious and has since spread as a crisis-mapping tool all over the world.

Mapping riots, deaths, property loss, government forces, civilians, looting, rape, peace efforts and internally displaced people during the 2007-2008 post-election violence in Kenya. Source: http://legacy.ushahidi.com/.

Kenya has also witnessed the world’s fastest uptake of mobile phone-enabled systems for value transfer and storage. According to the World Bank, 93% of Kenyans use mobile phones and 73% are M-PESA customers, a mobile banking application of local telecommunications company Safaricom. In 2011, an incredible 25% of Kenya’s GDP moved through M-PESA.

It is true that technology and open data offers opportunity for citizens’ input and feedback. So-called “big data” could also increase the state’s power to track taxes and criminal and terrorist activity for law enforcement purposes. But—and this is a big but—given the centralized power node of mobile banking and associated data, it is also possible that autocratic leaderships with access to “big data” could easily cease control over a population. Kenya’s post-election period, for example, witnessed political mobilization organized through text messages. After blocking services that could send large volumes of messages, the Kenyan unity government worked in close cooperation of mobile phone operators to compile a prosecution list of 1,700 phone users who had written or forwarded inciting text messages. They did not “use it;” nobody was harmed for sending text messages. But the list exists–somewhere.

So can citizens be users and co-producers of public services and should we include technology in Kenya’s National Slum Upgrading and Prevention Policy?

I could answer with a straight “yes” and out myself, yet again, as a hopeless idealist.

Or I could answer this question with another one: If technology does not contribute to a better life in some way, why do some of the poorest individuals in the world pay large sums of money—at times up to 50% of their disposable income—for a mobile phone?

The Good Kind of Bribe: Increasing Monetary Accountability with Debt-for-Development

Whenever the economy is in a crunch and budget cuts become necessary, fingers often point at foreign aid. A Gallup survey from 2011, for instance, reveals that almost 60% of Americans voted foreign aid as the #1 area for spending cuts.

Source: http://www.gallup.com/poll/145790/Americans-Oppose-Cuts-Education-Social-Security-Defense.aspx.

While I am not interested in reiterating economist Jeffrey Sachs’ well-known “The End of Poverty” mantra of the possibility to overcome global poverty (caused by a “poverty trap”) by increasing the slim foreign aid:GDP ratio of rich Western countries to 0.7%, I would like to instead propose another idea: People get foreign aid wrong. Foreign aid isn’t money given to developing countries for free. Instead, foreign aid is almost always administered as a mix of grant and loan–and under strict conditions. So, even though Kenya is the United States’ top recipient of foreign aid in Sub-Saharan Africa, this funding does not come without obligations.

There are several reasons for giving foreign aid in form of a loan instead of a grant. And vice versa.

To illustrate, let’s dream a little bit (as in this World Bank report). Imagine this hypothetical world, a world where developing countries do not have access to private capital markets. In this world, all investments are smart and yield a high return, so that all loans are repaid. (I know, but just bear with me for a moment.) If we let ourselves delve into this ideal scenario, we will find that loans are preferable to grants. Borrowing countries would repay their loans and lending countries could lend out those funds to the next needy country that would (smartly!) re-invest the money into worthy and high-yielding projects. Everyone would be absolutely delighted.

Now, this is of course not what happens in the real foreign aid market. The reality is that because not all projects are successful, borrowing countries are often unable to repay loans. This leads to accumulated debt which in turn results in even worse living conditions than before the foreign aid (see Latin America’s “lost decade” for a tragic illustration). On the other hand, research has shown that an excessive amount of grants suppresses domestic tax revenues and, as opposed to loans, conditions associated with grants do not have as much purchasing power as loan conditions do (once you got the money, it’s yours, right?). Nevertheless, over the course of the 2000s, a number of experts have called for a shift away from foreign aid loans–towards grants.

These grants come from actors within the nation and international community and are awarded and implemented at different levels. An interesting example of a grant still associated with conditionality is so-called “debt-for-development.” Debt-for-development exchanges were first undertaken in 1987 and by 2007, they have resulted in the cancellation of US$5.7 billion of debt and the application of US$3.6 billion to development projects. Under this model, the lender county will only award debt relief in exchange for having a say where the released money goes–essentially a good bribe. At times, development projects are mutually determined and they often benefit the poor.

In Kenya, a debt-for-development exchange took place not too long ago, in October 2006, when Italy’s development institution agreed to write off half of Kenya’s long-term debt (Sh4 billion or 44 million Euro) under a Debt-for-Development Swap scheme. The funds, meant to go to pro-poor development projects in health, education, water and sanitation, will be spent over the course of ten years and are supervised by a steering committee composed of representatives of the Kenyan Ministry of Finance, the Kenyan Ministry of Planning and National Development and the Italian Embassy.

To me, this compromise of a grant/debt foreign aid situation sounds promising. But only if the developing project implementation actually takes place—in the real world, not in our imagination.

How to Pay for Slum Upgrading: The Power of Leveraging Private Funds

For the next step in the Nairobi studio Spring 2013, we are looking into different models of participation and governance (getting the ball rolling and including the community), monitoring and evaluation (assuring outcomes and accountability) and financing (paying for it) of slum upgrading. Assigned to the financing team, I have been learning more about donor- and government grants and loans with or without intermediaries, temporary and long-term tax breaks and debt relief, community savings groups and participatory finance—I could go on.

As I was reading about slum upgrading finances in Tanzania, India, Thailand, Brazil and Kenya, I kept wondering about the elephant in the room: the United States. While the United States might not harbor so-called “slums,” as they are often understood or imagined in the conventional sense (make-shift tin-roof shacks, open sewer and steep narrow roads), the United States certainly has (and continuously does) have its own massive share of sub-standard housing and programs to solve the problem.

Several examples come to mind:

–> Hoovervilles in Central Park, New York City, early 1930s during the Great Depression:

Source: http://ephemeralnewyork.files.wordpress.com.

–> Pruitt-Igoe as part of a Public Housing Initiative during Urban Renewal in the 1960s:

Source: http://openbuildings.com/buildings/pruitt-igoe-profile-42002

–> And finally modern-day colonias, mostly found close to the Mexico-USA border:

Source: http://geography.wr.usgs.gov/science/images/coloniasVan.jpg

So how did these work out and what could be learned for Kenya’s national slum upgrading policy, especially in terms of financing?

From these examples, not much. Hoovervilles and colonias are basically informal settlements: both were bottom-up self-financed and -built temporary solutions that became permanent. They do work–as slums often do–but they do not work well. Public housing under Urban Renewal, the only example here built at a large scale and by the government, is not a good inspiration either. It failed miserably:

Demolition of Pruitt-Igoe in April 1972, St. Louis, Missouri [Photo by U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research].
Source: http://places.designobserver.com/media/images/ForeclosedRoundtable-2_525.jpg

Disappointed, I poke around some more, and finally stumbled upon one interesting financing example: the Cleveland Action to Support Housing or CASH, a funding organization in operation since 1977 as a result of a collaboration between the Cleveland City Planning Commission and neighborhood organizations.

With the goal to increase funding availability from private banks for people of color (during a time of “redlining,” the practice among lending institutions to deem certain neighborhoods as less desirable for loans, based on racial representation), the idea was to maximize private investment by leveraging public monies with private dollars. This way, the lenders’ exposure to risk would be reduced (whether such a risk actually existed or not, as was most often the case). The Cleveland Planning Commisson proposed to use public money provided by the Community Development Block Grant to underwrite any part of the loans and to implement a rotation system for all participating institutions. This means that the little risk there might have been for lenders would be spread over a big pool of participating lending partners. The risk would effectively be eliminated. In addition, lenders would be allowed to occupy four of the five seats in the nonprofit corporation that established a loan-review committee to evaluate all loan applications. The only thing former director of the Cleveland Planning Commission Norman Krumholz and his team were asking was for the lenders to modify their underwriting criteria slightly, so that more borrowers would be “bankable” which in turn would allow borrowers to take out rehabilitation loans to fix up their housing at slightly below the market value.

But lenders refused to modify their criteria to lend below market interest rates.

It was a good plan: effective, safe. But it was the wrong place and the wrong time. The “risk of default,” lenders said, was too strong. What they really meant was that they would not get over their racism. Cleveland’s poor were all black.

In the face of such difficulties, how was CASH finally endorsed? Interestingly, it succeeded partially by proving another program wrong. The primary programmatic vehicle for housing rehabilitation at this time was a government-funded Three Percent Loan Program. Under this program, any qualified applicant could receive a rehabilitation loan of up to $20,000 at an (incredibly low) interest rate of 2% with a term of up to 20 years. This loan, however, had little impact on the rehab needs of the city: It turned out that most low-interest loans were going out to middle-income who used the money to remodel kitchens and bathrooms.

Although the three percept program remained, as it was politically feasible and attractive, CASH advocated had a lobbying ground and after two long years of negotiations, in 1977, it was finally implemented.

Today, CASH loans are made by one of 20 participating lenders at a 2.3% interest rate. The private public leveraging ratio is two for one. CASH no longer targets redlining—yes, it still exists—but it does offer three types of loans, mostly to low-income populations.

So goes my stint into United States house upgrading finance. And while I realize that CASH is not an ideal program and it does not live up to our search for a slum upgrading financing model, I believe that it does offer several crucial lessons:

Lesson 1: Financing requires a (at least) three-way partnership among the government (be it city-, state- or the federal level), community-based development organizations and the private banking sector.

Lesson 2: When we speak about housing provision, credit and rehabilitation can only flow when private funds are leveraged.