I 
111TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 1702 
To authorize assistance for affordable housing and sustainable urban 
development in developing countries, and for other purposes. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
MARCH 25, 2009 
Mr. MILLER of North Carolina (for himself, Mr. PRICE of North Carolina, Mr. 
CASTLE, Mr. HINCHEY, Mr. ELLISON, Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin, and Mr. 
JACKSON of Illinois) introduced the following bill; which was referred to 
the Committee on Foreign Affairs 
A BILL 
To authorize assistance for affordable housing and sustain-
able urban development in developing countries, and for 
other purposes. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Shelter, Land, and 
Urban Management (SLUM) Assistance Act of 2009’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
Congress makes the following findings: 
(1) Approximately 51 percent of the world’s 
population currently lives in cities of all sizes and 
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produces the majority of the world’s economic out-
put. 
(2) Approximately one billion people currently 
live in slums, and more than half of this population 
is under the age of 25. 
(3) It is estimated that by 2030 the number of 
people living in slums will double. 
(4) Slums are characterized by inadequate ac-
cess to safe water, sanitation, and other essential in-
frastructure, overcrowding, poorly structured hous-
ing, and insecure residential and property ownership 
status. 
(5) Eighty-eight percent of all disease is caused 
by unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation, and 
poor hygiene and almost 50 percent of all people in 
developing countries suffer health problems caused 
by water and sanitation deficits. 
(6) Over 1.1 billion people lack adequate access 
to safe water and nearly 2.5 billion lack access to 
sanitation services. 
(7) The costs of diseases and productivity losses 
linked to water and sanitation in less developed 
countries amount to two percent of gross domestic 
product and up to five percent in sub-Saharan Afri-
ca. 
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(8) Insecure lease and real property ownership 
tenure often subject slum dwellers to arbitrary, often 
supra-market rents, forced evictions, threats, and 
harassment. 
(9) In 2007, approximately five million people 
were subject to forced evictions, and projections 
show that the number of forced evictions are likely 
to increase to between 40 million and 70 million in 
the next 20 years. 
(10) Insecurity of tenure severely inhibits eco-
nomic development by undermining investment in-
centives and constraining the growth of credit mar-
kets, imperils the ability of families to achieve sus-
tainable livelihoods and assured access to shelter, 
and often contributes to conflict over property 
rights. 
(11) Women make up 66 percent of the world’s 
work force, but own less than 15 percent of the 
property globally. 
(12) Women are affected disproportionally by 
forced evictions and insecure tenure as a result of 
gender discrimination, often including gender-biased 
laws that define women as legal minors or otherwise 
prevent them from acquiring and securing land, 
property, and housing lease or ownership rights, 
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making them more vulnerable to poverty, violence, 
and sexual abuse. 
(13) Adequate housing and universal access to 
basic shelter serve as catalysts for social and demo-
cratic development. 
(14) The 2006 National Security Strategy 
states, ‘‘America’s national interests and moral val-
ues drive us in the same direction: to assist the 
world’s poor citizens and least developed nations and 
help integrate them into the global economy.’’. 
(15) Goal 7 Target 11 of the Millennium Devel-
opment Goals sets the target that ‘‘By 2020, to have 
achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at 
least 100 million slum-dwellers.’’. 
(16) The United States formerly provided sig-
nificant levels of overseas development assistance for 
shelter and affordable housing, but in recent years 
this amount has declined. 
SEC. 3. STATEMENT OF POLICY. 
It should be the policy of the United States— 
(1) to establish and implement, as a major ob-
jective of United States overseas development assist-
ance strategy, particularly in developing countries, 
programs that foster improved urban management, 
that foster sustainable urban development, that in-
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crease the security of real property tenure, and that 
expand access to basic shelter, affordable urban 
housing, and essential urban services and infrastruc-
ture, particularly by the poor and others who lack 
such access in whole or in part; 
(2) to allocate increased levels of United States 
bilateral assistance for programs described in para-
graph (1); and 
(3) in order to prevent waste and duplication in 
the use of United States overseas development as-
sistance with respect to the programs described in 
paragraph (1) and in order to foster cooperative re-
lations with foreign governments, intergovernmental 
organizations, and private business and nonprofit 
entities that singly or jointly support or implement 
programs similar to those described in paragraph 
(1), to seek and actively support innovative inter-
national mechanisms designed to increase coordina-
tion and mutual complementarity in the planning, fi-
nancing, and implementation of sustainable urban 
development policies and programs implemented by 
the United States and other donors described in this 
paragraph. 
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SEC. 4. ASSISTANCE TO PROVIDE AFFORDABLE HOUSING 
AND SUSTAINABLE URBAN DEVELOPMENT IN 
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES. 
(a) PURPOSES OF ASSISTANCE.—The purposes of as-
sistance under this section are to— 
(1) support economically and environmentally 
sustainable and administratively feasible urban so-
cioeconomic growth, development, and poverty reduc-
tion efforts and to produce improved health and 
other basic quality of life indicators for residents of 
slums, other densely populated, impoverished urban 
areas, and urban areas experiencing rapid popu-
lation growth in developing countries, including by 
increasing— 
(A) access to basic shelter and affordable 
housing, particularly by residents of slums and 
similar densely populated, impoverished urban 
areas; 
(B) affordable and equitable access to safe 
water, sanitation, and solid waste removal serv-
ices, and shared communal infrastructure, such 
as sidewalks, roads, public lighting; 
(C) access to and security of land and 
other real property use, lease, and ownership 
rights and legal recognition and protections 
thereof by all income groups, including by sup-
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porting efforts to enhance the effectiveness of 
transaction and dispute resolution systems, eq-
uitable and sustainable national land policies, 
and enhanced land administration services; and 
(D) support for efforts to enhance the ca-
pacity of developing country governments, in-
cluding regional and municipal governments, to 
plan and manage urban growth in an operation-
ally and financially effective and transparent, 
participatory, and accountable manner, to pur-
sue policy reforms that foster such objectives, 
and to provide urban services and infrastruc-
ture, such as basic water and sanitation, trans-
port, solid waste removal, and electrical power 
service delivery, including in impoverished 
urban zones; and 
(2) achieve the objectives described in para-
graph (1) by— 
(A) promoting the growth of functional, 
commercially oriented housing markets in tar-
get countries and expanding access to individual 
and institutional investment capital and financ-
ing for housing and municipal infrastructure, 
including by public-private partnerships, munic-
ipal 
bonds, 
micro-credit 
financing, 
and 
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