YLKI demands transparency in land-use policy

JAKARTA (JP): Low-income earners have increasingly less access to land in the city due to the lack of transparency in land use and housing policy, said an executive of the Indonesian Consumers Foundation ((YLKI).

Zumrotin K. Soesilo said yesterday the public should be able to monitor the development of land allocated for low-cost housing, which would prevent the land being sold to developers catering to higher income consumers.

"Now we do not know which plots are set aside for poor residential space," Zumrotin said.

In Klender, East Jakarta, for instance, the land owned by the State Housing Company (Perumnas) was not considered strategic in 1975.

Perumnas' main task is to provide housing to low-income bracket families.

"The company did nothing with the land. By the 1980s the land was put up for sale to private developers. Of course, the prices of the homes built and sold in the area was beyond the reach of low-income residents," Zumrotin said.

"The chance for low-income people to live in the area disappeared," she said, adding that many other strategic plots in the city have been sold to private developers.

Zumrotin was responding to a suggestion from an official of the city housing agency that ownership of low-income apartments should not include the land the apartments stand on. Residents of apartments share ownership of the land.

The official who requested anonymity told The Jakarta Post last Friday that prices could become lower for former slum dwellers if apartment applicants were only entitled to own the apartments which measure 21 square meters, now priced at Rp 26 million (US$11,304)

Former slum dwellers often say they cannot afford the apartments even with a government subsidy of 50 percent.

"If the land remains a government asset the consumers will have even less legal guarantee to stay," Zumrotin said, because the government could sell the land at anytime.

Zumrotin also responded to complaints of low-cost apartment dwellers that they cannot keep up with the various monthly fees, which are apart from their mortgage repayments. Many have sold their dwellings to live in less costly areas.

"Economically these fees are very low," Zumrotin said. "But the economic gap leads to strong reactions against increasing the price of anything. The people can't take it anymore."

Djunaedi Hamin, the head of the occupants' organization at the Tanah Abang apartments, said earlier it is very difficult to raise monthly fees for the organization, which now stand at Rp 3,000. Among others, this covers electricity fees to pump water from the ground to upper floors.

Residents of the 960 apartments pay another Rp 5,000 to their neighborhood head. On top of this there are monthly water, gas and electricity bills to pay.

Endang, a civil servant at the Tanah Abang apartments, said it is increasingly hard to live there with a family of five and pay monthly installments and fees nearing Rp 100,000.

He said he agrees with his neighbors and wants to sell his apartment which he acquired in the early 1980s when the apartments were prioritized for homeless low-income people.

Djunaedi said of the 960 apartments, less than 40 percent are inhabited by their original owners.

The apartments were originally priced at Rp 7 million and can now be sold for Rp 60 million, he said, as many people want to buy the apartments to rent out.

"The requisite that applicants must show notices from neighborhood heads stating that they are homeless can be easily abused," he said.

Yusuf Usman, an official at the city housing agency, said the agency is still trying to keep low-income residents in the apartments built for them.

On-going negotiations between the agency and state-owne electricity company PLN and water company PDAM Jaya will hopefully produce an agreement on lower fees to be paid by apartment dwellers, Yusuf said. (anr)