text: In developing countries, connection to sewer systems is often costly for poor households, despite typically low monthly sewer tariffs. This apparent paradox is explained by the high costs of in-plot and in-house sanitary installations that have to be paid entirely by the user, by sometimes high sewer connection fees levied by utilities, and by a lack of community consultation. As a result, in many cities in developing countries conventional sewers are laid at high costs under a street, while many users on that street do not connect to them. In Brazil, in some cities connection rates in the early 1990s were less than 40% of the intended beneficiary population.