DM Project Builds Eco-Friendly Homes for the Poor in Kyrgyzstan BISHKEK, Kyrgyz Republic – Christmas 2007 gave Sydykova Talaykul and her sons, aged 7 and 13, a present they will never forget: their own home. The ability to have her own home and move out of the three-bedroom house that Talaykul and her children shared with her parents, sister and brother’s family is rare for low-income families in this former USSR republic, where few new homes are built and mortgages are unaffordable for the average person.  | | Volunteers from Habitat Kyrgyzstan Foundation building homes for 10 poor families in Bishkek. |
But in 2006, Talaykul applied and won a competition offering to build her a new home. The effort, supported through a grant from the Development Marketplace (DM), is improving the life of 10 poor families in Bishkek by building new apartments for them. “It seems to me like I won a lottery,” said Talaykul. “This period is a new stage in my life, the real fortune when I got a possibility to get a house of my own. I would have never had the opportunity to buy or build a house otherwise.” Seventy percent of Kyrgyzstan’s 5.4 million people live in substandard conditions due to a combination of lack of housing, high prices and rising urban migration. Homes that low-income families can afford often lack heat, water and basic services. In the rare cases where heating is available, poor insulation makes heating inefficient and costs families as much as 50 percent of their income. The DM project built apartments in two row houses based on a traditional but rarely used construction method employing cane reed and clay. The innovative twist to the construction is the addition of an affordable underfloor heating system, which improves insulation and reduces heating costs by 75 percent.  | | Family members and friends of the 10 beneficiaries helped in building the new homes. |
Land registration, materials and construction were all provided by the project, although the 10 families – and in some cases their relatives, friends and neighbors – helped build the new homes. The project is run by Habitat Kyrgyzstan Foundation, a local partner of Habitat for Humanity International, which builds homes and facilitates mortgages for poor people around the world. Using the DM project as a pilot, Habitat in Central Asia hopes to prove its model to be a good solution for the housing situation throughout the region. The project was recognized with the prestigious Dubai International Award for Best Practices to Improve the Living Environment in 2006 and by Ashoka’s Changemakers competition in 2007. “Our project offers a low cost solution to a huge housing shortage,” said project team leader Indira Aseyin. The project identified its winners through a competition in January 2007. A month later, 10 families were identified as most needy out of 100 or so applicants. A year later, they moved into their new homes. “We tried to save money and to buy a land, but it was very expensive for us,” said Abazov Saparbek, who works as an administrator at a private firm and drives a cab at night for extra money. He found out about the housing competition through a newspaper ad and was very happy when he and his pregnant wife were identified as among the winners. A new apartment was equally good news for Izatov Salmorbek, 36, his wife and their two children. The family has been moving around for 10 years, sometimes renting just a room with a shared toilet and no running water. At one point, they tried to buy land for a house, but an investor cheated them and they lost their money. As it wraps up its DM project, Habitat is exploring opportunities to expand its work in other cities around Kyrgyzstan. It is also looking to replicate its work in neighboring Tajikistan, where a cane reed know-how transfer workshop was held in December 2007.
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