Developers want to build fewer low-cost homes

JAKARTA (JP): Private developers urged the municipality yesterday to reduce the percentage of land they must set aside for low-cost apartments from 20 percent to five percent, councilors said yesterday.

Saud Rachman and Lukman F. Mokoginta, members of the council's Commission D for development affairs, said the developers, who were members the Jakarta branch of the Indonesian Real Estate Association, made the request in a meeting with the commission yesterday.

"The developers said that they could not afford to build the cheap apartments as stipulated in gubernatorial decree No. 540/1990," Saud, of the United Development Party, faction said.

The decree was issued to provide adequate housing for the poor and to help eliminate slum areas.

Saud said that in the meeting the developers asked the councilors to forward their request to administration officials.

"The developers' request to reduce their obligation to only five percent doesn't make any sense," Saud said.

He said that of the 114 developers in the city, many failed to meet the obligation.

"This request shows that the developers are not supporting the administration's program to provide decent housing for street dwellers. All they can think of is how to gain profit," Saud said.

If the administration approved the request, he feared that the administration's target to build around 280,000 apartments in the next 10 years could not be reached.

In the last two years the municipality has built only 3,150 low-cost apartments a year because of a lack of money. This is far below the demand for cheap apartments, which exceeds 10,500 homes a year.

Lukman said the developers promised to submit a written proposal regarding the reduction.

"We can't just accept the developers' proposal and present it to the municipality's officials before analyzing it ourselves," he said.

"They (developers) said that their calculations were realistic. But, that's their opinion. We should analyze it first before making any decision," Lukman said.

The councilors, he said, supported the gubernatorial decree, which urged developers to build low-cost apartments.

"We even consider that the decree should be made into a provincial regulation," Lukman said.

Data from the city housing agency shows that annual demand for housing in Jakarta exceeds 70,000 homes.

Due to a land shortage, housing officials say 30 percent -- or about 23,000 homes -- should be in the form of vertical housing.

Several low-cost apartments have already been built in Tebet, South Jakarta, Bendungan Hilir in Central Jakarta and Penjaringan in West Jakarta.

So far, 50 percent of vertical housing is provided by private developers, but most of this is for middle and upper-income groups.

The city has so far built 12,356 units of low-cost apartments for slum area residents. (ste)