Towards Sustainable Development: Role of the Housing Fund Program for the Poor in Bangladesh

The word home is associated with the place where people can rest their heads at the end of the day. But in a developing country like Bangladesh, there are still many people who are homeless. Although there are different types of home loans available for the homeless. However, this study focused on the Grihayan Tahobil Program which was set up to provide housing loans to the extremely poor who have very limited incomes, who live in urban slums or who have become homeless as a result of river erosion. The main goal of this study is to evaluate how the social economic development issues change because of the government housing loan program (Grihayan Tahobil) in the Bangladesh to help ensure sustainable development goals. This study mainly based on primary and secondary data and primary data were collected from sample respondents through a structured questionnaire via face to face interview. Data on perception of household head on the changes in social status, health status of the respondent household head, difference in the indicator of women empowerment, food standard, children education and access to clean water and sanitation were collected through this survey. This study used systematic random sampling techniques. A total of 5 NGOs from all over the Dhaka division has been selected randomly. With the help of these 5 NGOs, 190 beneficiary households and 70 non beneficiary households have selected systematically from the five different districts for the survey. All of the findings indicate that after having an access of housing fund loan for a house, it is likely to report changes in their social status. The study finds that 90 percent of the program beneficiary households have enjoyed a positive change in their social status. The results also indicate that a new house not only improves the socio-economic condition of the program beneficiary household but also it is helping Bangladesh moving towards to sustainable development.