City to raid illegal apartment tenants

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A warning from the city to all illegal tenants of low-cost apartments -- soon you will be raided. Unfortunately, that likely goes for all you legal tenants as well.

City public order officials have announced their plans to raid 7,000 low-cost apartments managed by the City Housing Agency on suspicion that many are being illegally occupied by people who do not qualify for the housing.

City Housing Agency head Hari Sasongko said the body believed illegal tenants accounted for about 70 percent of 7,000 subsidized apartments his office managed in the capital.

"If we find illegal tenants during the raid, we will soon withdraw subsidies for their apartments," Hari said during a hearing with the City Council's Commission D for development affairs on Wednesday.

Low-cost apartments were sold at half of the market price to low-income families in the capital. Aside from the City Housing Agency, state-owned housing company Perumnas is also managing some 13,000 subsidized apartments in Jakarta.

However, the demand for cheap housing has led many poor families on-selling or subletting their apartments to better off people, who become, by the City Housing Agency's definition, illegal tenants. Corruption surrounding the applications for apartments has also meant they are often owned by people who do not qualify for the housing and then let out to poorer families at inflated prices.

Hari said that his office had complete identities, including photographs, of first buyers and renters of all low-cost apartments in the capital.

Head of the agency's planning division Suratman said that the city administration gave subsidies up to 50 percent of the price of apartments to low-income families.

A 21-square meter apartment, for example, was sold at Rp 15 million (US$1,667), half the Rp 30 million construction cost to low-income families, while the official rents were only Rp 90,000 a month.

The plan to raid tenants of low-cost apartments received support from several members of the council's Commission D on housing, who said the subsidies should only be given to low- income families.

Irman Syukur of the Democratic Party faction said the City Housing Agency should regularly undertake such raids so that low- cost facilities were not abused by the better off. "Such raids must be implemented at least once every six months," he said.

Hari said his agency was also focusing its attention on developing more cheap apartments for some 40,000 families living on many riverbanks across the city.

The figure did not include another 180,000 families living in slum areas, who also needed to be relocated, he said.

Unfortunately, the city budget could finance the construction of only around 4,000 units of low-cost apartments a year, he said.

The central government and private developers are also expected to build low-cost apartments -- as regulations make creating low cost apartments a requirement when building all luxury accommodation.