« Participation », accompagnement social et microcrédit logement pour la résorption des bidonvilles au Maroc

Moroccan policies against sub-standard housing give priority to the eradication of shantytowns. News schemes mix different actors and are based on “participatory approaches”. In rehousing projects, participatory combines social support (expected to help the implication of slum dwellers in the elaboration of rehousing projects) and microcredit (expected to help their financial contribution). Based on empirical investigations, this paper shows the strengths and the weaknesses of these innovations. The absence of a clear definition of the responsibilities of the actors and the diverging points of view regarding “social support” and participatory tend to slow down, even to block, the implementation of such schemes. In fact, social support mainly aims to cover part of the costs from the households (market participation). In terms of microcredit, whilst demand is strong, the offer remains weak and focused on the least vulnerable clients and limited to short term loans. But it would not be desirable to encourage microcredit associations to finance the most destitute : a portion of clients are already on the brink of overindebtedness, and to target the poorest populations would only aggravate the problem.