The Community Mortgage Program (CMP), a program to facilitate access by low-income groups to land and credit, is the fruit of collaboration between community-based organizations, non-governmental organizations and the government. Social organizations find land for sale on the private market, they develop their proposal and gain access to credit. NGOs have significantly contributed to the evolution of this program benefiting more than 90 000 families.
CMP is a simple mortgage financing program designed to enable the landless urban poor to acquire land, facilitate the provision or services and construct or improve existing houses. The program was started in August 1988. As of September 1995 CNO gad assisted 456 communities with a population of 55,218 families and a mortgage value of P1.29 billion. CMP is cost effective. Its loan collection efficiency as of July 1995 is a 64 percent, which is much higher that other government loan programs.
CMP has shown that it is possible to access the informal sector to formal housing finance systems. The program is financially viable and provides the urban poor with security of land tenure at an average cost of P21,000 loan per family. The program has also encouraged the urban poor to improve the quality of their homes and to develop their neighbourhood usually at their own initiative and costs.
CMP has also shown that it is important to support a collective approach to housing production not just projects aimed at individual households extending collective credits to the community. Community management of individual household repayments not only reduces administrative costs but also improves repayment and strengthens the internal organization of the community.