Low cost housing designs do not appeal to poor

JAKARTA (JP): One reason behind the unwillingness of former slum dwellers to live in the apartments built for them is the design, an architect said.

To encourage the city's poorest to live in them, the design must be such that middle class residents are not enticed to buy them, Johan Silas, an architect who teaches at the Surabaya Institute of Technology said.

The smallest, 21-square-meter low cost units in the city's apartments consist of one room, a bathroom, a kitchen and a porch.

Johan said such individual designs "are middle class oriented designs that have been simplified".

This explains why many apartment units have been sold to middle class people, while the government aims to accommodate slum people, often victims of fires, in healthier housing.

Johan told The Jakarta Post that if this approach continues "Slums will never disappear. They just crop up elsewhere. "

Over the weekend some of 373 fire victims in Bendungan Hilir, Central Jakarta, who have rights to new apartment units, said most of them had sold their rights because they could not afford the down payment and the monthly installments.

Only 10 have applied for the apartments, the local sub- district head confirmed.

As of last year completed units and those under construction totaled 11,421 units, with plans to build another 27,568 units in the capital.

Johan said that designs made in line with the communal way of life which slum residents are used to, could be more cheaper. But more important, middle class people would not be attracted to them, he said.

A better design for apartment units for slum dwellers would be living units made separate from communal bathrooms, kitchens and multi-purpose rooms.

"I don't understand why the municipality keeps building apartments with the same design," Johan said.

"The housing ministry has already issued a guideline for regional administrations for the low cost apartment designs," he said.

Low cost apartments in Tangerang, West Java, and another in Cengkareng, West Jakarta, built by the state-owned Perumnas housing company, already follow these guidelines, Johan said.

In the West Tebet apartments, South Jakarta, only a few families among the 230 fire victims of 1994 moved in recently. These include a family of an Army member who supplements his wages by renting out small homes, and two civil servants.

Lili Rashid, a resident, said yesterday most of her former neighbors on the razed site, including vegetable vendors, would not be able to afford the cheapest units with Rp 25,000 monthly installments, and monthly maintenance fees of Rp 40,000.

Many of the fire victims have rebuilt their homes and shops near the fire site, refusing the Rp 400,000 provided for one year's rent allowance.

"The government has set compensation for our land at Rp 300,000 per square meter," said a trader who refused to be identified.

"The compensation for my property would reach only Rp 5 million. Where do I get the rest to pay for the Rp 12 million unit?"

Others who do not own land said they have to come up with a Rp 4 million cash down payment, which most of them are not able to do.

Another expert, Djoko Sujarto of the Bandung Institute of Technology, said the economic gap makes it difficult to make unit prices lower, he said.

The municipality and developers repeatedly insist they cannot make installments lower despite cross-subsidies.

However, "I think given proper calculations, there is a way slum dwellers could afford the units," Djoko, an urban designer, said. Urban poor make up about 60 percent of those living under the poverty line, he said.

The current land compensation policy which does not take into account the future value of a potentially strategic plot gives the impression that "the policy is irrational and inhumane", Djoko said.

If the plot is going to be in a central business district, compensation should take this into account, he said.

He said compensation should be at least based on the value of taxable property.

This way, the poor would not be forced to leave the city, Djoko said.

"I wouldn't say the program has failed," he said, "But it may be a long time before it succeeds."

It is also probable that the developers building the units for the administration realize that most slum dwellers are not land owners, and will not be able to apply for the units, he said.

Economic need is the main reason for the numerous transfers of apartment ownership rights from former slum dwellers to middle class people, Djoko said. (yns/anr)