Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses the third party associate system in Moroccan shantytown resettlement programmes and discloses the pervasive effects of unregulated, small-scale capitalism for resettled dwellers. I argue that housing affordability is not ensured through financial policy tools only.

Paper long abstract:

While in recent years, large-scale housing and resettlement programmes have experienced a renaissance in many developing countries, authors and policymakers have emphasised affordability as a key factor for success of these programmes (Buckley et al. 2016; Bredenoord et al. 2014). Subsidies, housing microcredit, and an increasing financialisation of housing have been common public responses to reduce the so-called affordability gap between housing demand and supply.

Morocco's Villes Sans Bidonvilles (VSB) programme, which aims at eradicating all bidonvilles (shantytowns) in Morocco, addressed affordability through the implementation of the tiers associé (third party associate) system. Two households from the bidonville receive together one plot in the new town. Then, they ask a tiers associé - individual small-scale investors that seek to invest in real estate property - to build a four-storey house on their plot. In return, the tiers associé receives the two lower floors, while the two resettled households move respectively into one of the upper flats. This has allowed even poor residents to become homeowners of a new flat.

However, the system shows severe deficiencies. A plot lottery, rumours, shrinking profit margins, unreliable tiers associés, and excessive requests by bidonville dwellers have produced numerous conflicts between the two actor groups. Numerous unfinished constructions, people forced to occupy building shells, and house collapses are its physical expressions. This paper explores the tiers associé system by drawing on the results of a household survey among resettled dwellers (n=361), interviews with third party associates, and in-situ observations during four months of field research.