Self-help housing improving the slums

Press, 29 July 1976, Page 16

Self-help housing improving the slums

By

JOHN WILSON

of the

editorial staff of “The Press”

Almost everyone in New Zealand lives in a house which has been built by professional builders. But this is a luxury which most of those in the world who lack adequate housing cannot afford.

In almost all the world’s poorer countries people from rural villages are pouring into the cities. These “peasant immigrants” become the inhabitants of the vast shanty towns which ring the cities.

The plight of shanty-town dwellers was the main concern of the recent United Nations’ Habitat Conference. The conference ended in bickering, but it marked a turning point in attitudes towards how to house the world’s urban poor in tolerable conditions.

In the past most countries have favoured crash programmes to build subsidised, low-cost housing as a solution to the shanty town problem. But the hope of a decade ago that such schemes would soon assure everybody a decent, wellserviced house to live in has faded.

Even the cheapest, most heavily subsidised, commercially built public housing has proved to be far too expensive for the bulk of the poor, most of whose meagre incomes must be spent on food. Those who have planned public housing have failed to appreciate how little a poor family can afford to spend for shelter.

After the Habitat Conference, it is clearer that “selfhelp" housing schemes provide a better hope for the poor for decent shelter. The dwellers of even the poorest shanty towns already have somewhere to live — they have built “houses” for themselves out of whatever materials they could lay their hands on.

Building on this spirit of self-help appears to be the best way of improving living conditions in the world’s shanty towns.

Many public authorities now, instead of clearing the shacks away and having commercial contractors build public housing on the land, spend what money they have on providing the existing shanty towms with basic services like water supply, drainage, street paving and rubbish collection. The World Bank recently started approwng “site and service” loans for such work.

Gradually, using their own small savings and their own labour, the poor “improve” their shacks. Security of tenure nas already been found, naturally enough, to be a powerful encouragement to peoples efforts to build themselves better houses. Lima, Peru is surrounded by some of the world’s worst and most rapidly growing shanty towns — the barriadas. Lima has also seen some of the most vigorous efforts of any shanty dwellers to build and improve their own housing.

Much of the desert land around Lima is publicly owned. “Immigrants” from the Andes, after spending some time in rough shacks in the worst slums, often form “associations” with family and friends and pool their money to buy building materials and to rent a truck. Then, often in an overnight operation on a public holiday, they take over a new block of land and throw up shacks of bamboo or straw matting.

Provided the Government acquiesces, which it usually does, the squatters are soon busy making improvements to their houses. When cash is available, they buy adobe (mud bricks) or bricks and build themselves more substantial houses. The Govern-

ment may help by eventually reticulating the area with water and electricity. Fifteen to 20 years after they first moved on to the land, the former shanty dwellers may be living in quite substantial houses, of their own building, in a reasonably well-serviced “suburb.”

The result is not a planner’s dream. But by spending money as it is available and using their own labour, the people have acquired houses oi a higher standard than if they had saved and waited t< move into a commercia'ly built public housing scheme. By 1990, the authorities estimate that 4.5 million of

Lima’s 6 million inhabitants will be illegal squatters living in houses they have built themselves. In all of Latin America between a half and two-thirds of the people already live in houses they have built with their own hands.

But it is not only in the “third world” that “selfhelp” housing is becoming regarded as a better answer to inadequate housing than slum clearance and the building of low-income housing blocks. In many American cities there are thousands of dilapidated, but structurally sound buildings which are too costly for commercial contractors to renovate.

Many of these buildings are owned by the cities or the government. In 1973 Congress passed an Urban Homestead Act, the aim of which was to rehabilitate slums by relying on the initiative of those who lived in the slums themselves. The act was modelled, roughly, on the 1862 Homestead Act under which the United States Government practically gave away Western land to anyone who promised to live on it and develop it. Under the Urban Homestead Act, cities give houses or apartments away, or sell them for a token amount, in return for a promise that the person who is given title to the property will bring it up to minimum standards within a certain time and live in it for a somewhat longer time. The first programme under the Act was launched in Wilmington, Delaware, in May, 1973. Programmes are also running in

Baltimore and Philadelphia. The results have not been as spectacular as the Act's promoters hoped. Some “homesteaders" have had trouble servicing the loans they have taken out to rehabilitate their houses or apartments. But the scheme is still in operation. Many still doubt that, even if many programmes to foster the spirit of self-help of those living in inadequate “houses” were set in motion, the problem of housing the millions who live in the world’s shanty towns can be solved.

The World Bank is promoting schemes to encourage farmers and peasants to stay on the land. The problem of housing the urban poor would certainly be easier if there were fewer urban poor. But for those who are already in city slums, “self-help” programmes appear to offer the best hope for an adequate house.