Marginal housing is a manifestation ~ perhaps the most spectacular one - of a
comprehensive social marginality which renders difficult or entirely denies access
especially to ‘modern’ social assets and facilities for certain elements of the
population. This also affects access to finance for housing construction, which in
turn has repercussions on the housing situation and, in nearly all the developing
countries, is available in practice only to the socially-integrated strata of the population.
Not even costly social building schemes, which many countries are implementing
with the best of intentions and substantial resources, can effect any
basic change in this respect. Otherwise there would have been a decisive breakthrough
in these countries towards integrating the marginal population.