Abstract
Globally, housing provision has always been a mammoth task for all spheres governments; whether national, provincial or local as they struggle to meet the ever soaring demand. The situation has however been grimmer in African, Asian and South American continents that lack mostly financial resources and advanced low cost technologies. The majority of the urban poor have perpetually been excluded from most land and housing projects, that religiously follow the traditional planning-servicing-building-occupation (PSBO) frameworks. Most often than not, rigidities in housing development sequences condemn and compel the urban poor to rely on the occupation-building-planning-servicing (OBPS) frameworks that give informal settlements as outcomes. This paper discusses an innovative and less costly housing development framework, the planning-occupation-building-servicing (POBS) sequence that was adopted by the Zimbabwean government in almost all the urban centres of the country in 2005, just after Operation Murambatsvina. The data were gathered through interviews with key informants and housing plots allottees. Observations and photographic surveys of the housing structures and community infrastructure services that have so far been developed incrementally were also conducted. The findings revealed that the allocating unserviced but formally planned and surveyed housing sites to the urban poor considerably improves targeting of the urban poor and makes housing more affordable. Such schemes not only contribute to housing supply by providing orderly and standard houses but also assist in eliminating or massively reducing down-raiding of aided self-help housing schemes by the middle and high income people. The paper concludes by observing the critical need for governments of developing countries to innovatively solve housing problems of the urban poor by adjusting the currently rigid housing infrastructure provision sequences and to make them affordable and flexible.