Two Years Living in a Stilt House, Muara Angke Residents Fear It Will Collapse Suddenly

JAKARTA, Kompas.com - Hundreds of three-metre-high stilt houses stood in a neat row along the shoreline of Blok Empang Kerang Hijau, RW 22, Muara Angke, North Jakarta. The stilt houses were built by President Prabowo Subianto when he was still Indonesia’s Minister of Defence in 2024. The Ministry of Defence (Kemenhan) built 200 stilt and floating houses in RT 06 and 07, RW 22, Muara Angke. Of the 200 units built, 17 are floating houses and the remainder are stilt houses. Then, after Prabowo was officially inaugurated as President, the stilt-house construction programme was continued by the Minister of Public Housing and Settlements (PKP) Maruar Sirait. Maruar constructed 30 stilt houses for residents who had not yet received housing quotas, with quotas redirected from the Ministry of Defence. Now the total flood-mitigation houses standing at Blok Empang Kerang Hijau, Muara Angke, are around 230 units. “People were willing, they didn’t refuse. Because the houses were already about to collapse, rather than collapse, they were offered something like: if their houses were torn down, a stilt house would be built. Would they like that? Yes, the residents wanted it,” Rokiyah said when interviewed by Kompas.com at the site on Wednesday, 4 March 2026. The woman from Indramayu, West Java, said the stilt-house programme is an answer to her prayers for a decent home after 40 years living with tidal floods. For decades, Rokiyah said, their rest has often been disturbed because the tidal floods frequently arrive at night when she and her family are fast asleep. “People had difficulty sleeping as well, because tidal floods occur almost every day; when the water comes at night, after work at night they can’t sleep, they can only sleep around 1:00 a.m. – 2:00 a.m. when the tide has subsided,” Rokiyah said. However, now she is no longer anxious at night, because she can sleep soundly even when the tidal floods come to her neighbourhood.