In November 2001, an Indian non-governmental organization dedicated to improving the lives and housing of the slum-dwellers of Bombay (Mumbai) learned that there were potential financial problems with a major new housing project in which it had invested and had convinced others to invest. The Society for the Protection of Area Resources Centres (SPARC) had, over the previous four years, repeatedly used its good name and contacts to bring together a group of private and nonprofit investors to construct a three-building, 268-unit development in the middle of Dharavi, generally considered Asia's largest slum. It had convinced one of the world's largest financial institutions, Citibank, to loan funds to India's National Slum Dwellers Federation, the organization that would build the Dharavi project; it had convinced an international nonprofit organization, the London-based Homeless International, to finance the loan, and had advanced its own funds to get the project started. But when Citbank warns that it has doubts about the likelihood of private, higher-income buyers being willing to move into a slum area-even into a new apartment building-SPARC finds it must decide whether and how to respond. Its options range from the pragmatic-simply scaling back the three-tower project-to organizing pressure and protest against Citibank, which appeared to have agreed to invest in part to burnish its image as it sought to expand its branch operations in Bombay. The case highlights some of the unexpected ways in which commercial globalization affects the potential for philanthropy and the tactics and strategy of community activists intent on extra-market measures to improve the lives of the poor. It raises both strategic issues for the nonprofit activists at the center of the narrative and questions about housing policy, as well-among them, the question of the extent of the role which philanthropically-financed "model housing" can play in ameliorating slum conditions.

In the late 1980s, the way New York City cared for thousands of its abused and neglected children underwent an unplanned shift. The impetus for the change came from a crisis: an explosive growth in the number of children in need of foster care. Between 1986 and 1990, the number of children in the city's foster care system nearly tripled, a tragic consequence of the crack epidemic plaguing the city. The sudden increase in demand for foster care overwhelmed the city's traditional source of foster care placements. Under pressure to find homes quickly, officials turned to a recently launched, city-run program--known as kinship foster care--to help meet the need. Kinship foster care was originally intended to be a relatively modest program. But in the wake of the crisis, the program rapidly ballooned, transforming the city agency responsible for foster care from a purchased and overseer of services into the nation's largest direct provider of foster care. This case chronicles this period of change and expansion for Kinship Foster Care and focuses on the leadership of then commissioner of the Child Welfare Administration Robert Little. It should be paired with HKS82 (Epilogue). HKS Case Number 1203.0.

Faced with the need for draconian budget cuts, Robert Little was determined to do all that he could to save his agency's struggling Kinship Foster Care Program. Preserving the core of the program would demand two major steps: reducing and restructuring other areas of his agency and shaving the reimbursement rate the city paid to the voluntary foster care agencies. Under his own roof, Little slashed his administrative budget by 20 percent, stripped away all programs not legally mandated, and pared his agency's mandated programs in protective and preventive services to the bone. The mayor's budget office still insisted on cuts within the kinship program, imposing reductions on the program's periphery by stripping down the level of supervisory staff and staff in the unit charged with approving relatives' homes. But Little was able to maintain the core of the program-its caseworkers-almost as he had hoped; although he did have to sacrifice 200 of the most recently hired workers, he did receive a commitment from OMB to rehire that number and more once the current crisis passed. HKS Case Number 1203.1