Life in the highrise apartments

JAKARTA (JP): One day recently in Tanah Abang, Central Jakarta, apartment occupants were alarmed at the commotion coming from the top of one of the blocks.

They looked up and saw a man working on his unit -- he was building an additional story to his 36-square-meter home.

The residents protested to representatives of their occupant's organization, who managed to stop the enterprise.

Now everyone understands that even if you live on the upper floor, living in apartments means you cannot add space for the beloved family, even if you have the financial resources to do so.

But 15 years after the low-cost apartments were built, this understanding is limited to the upper floors.

It may take at least one more generation of apartment occupants to lose the feeling that the space outside the front door is private property.

On the ground floors of the Tanah Abang apartments, fences, walls and locked gates abound around the units, duplicating the typical sight around Jakarta homes.

"Didn't anyone protest?" asks an astonished expatriate from Madras, India, Shanti Venkateswaran. "The first step out the door of an apartment unit is undivided share, a space which cannot be divided!"

Residents say they did protest back in the early 1980s.

But after the transfer of ownership from the state-owned Perumnas housing company which built the units, representatives of the new occupants' organization felt they had no authority to intrude in people's privacy.

"We were informed by the city housing agency that we should report violations to them, but we have had no response," said Djunaedi Hamin, the organization's chairman.

Meanwhile, residents say, violations continue, like the addition of tiles and even bath tubs in the upper floor units which were not designed to carry the weight of ceramic tiles.

"It's their money, they can do what they like, I guess," Endang, a resident said.

Further south in the city, an occupant of a new condominium voiced a similar belief.

"I'm not an occupant," says a lawyer. "I work with my colleague who is using his unit as an office."

"It's his money, his unit, and no law says what he has to do with it once it is bought," the lawyer said.

Although apartments are for residential space, he said his colleague managed to use his unit as an office as he enjoys good relations with the developer.

"Besides, who would dare approach occupants bringing home different girls?" he said. Nobody is disturbed by office activities, he added, as visitors come while other occupants are out at work.

But occupants of higher cost apartments mostly comply with basic rules like refraining from making a lot of noise and other disturbing activities.

Some deviation is tolerated, like the furry occupants of the Mampang Arcadia apartments.

As long as the cats are really housebroken, this is allowed, an American occupant said.

Making sure everyone plays by the rules for mutual comfort raises the need for an occupants' organization.

A 1988 government rule on apartments makes this compulsory for units under individual ownership. But occupants of leased units have also found a need to get organized.

In one of their frequent cocktail parties for occupants, a manager of the Senopati Luxury Apartments in Kebayoran Baru, Adwien Dhanu, said one small problem raised was the need to inform housemaids to hang their employers' laundry a bit more discreetly.

One other problem that occupant organizations and managers might expect to take up is noise.

Venkateswaran, who lives in the Wisma Fairbanks apartments in Senayan, points to the 24-hour activities of the expansion of Plaza Senayan's office buildings outside her kitchen.

"I understand they have their deadlines," she said with caution, "But at least give us a break on Sundays." (anr)