QG2 LowIncome PDF

More information can be found on the website www.housing-the-urban-poor.
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United Nations Human Settlements
Programme (UN-HABITAT)
P.O.Box 30030 GPO 00100
Nairobi, Kenya
Fax: (254-20) 7623092 (TCBB Offce)
E-mail: [email protected]
web site: www.un-habitat.org
United Nations Economic and Social Commission
for Asia and the Pacifc (UNESCAP)
Rajdamnern Nok Avenue
Bangkok 10200, Thailand
Fax: (66-2) 288 1056/1097
Email: [email protected]
Web site: www.unescap.org
The pressures of rapid urbanization and economic growth in Asia and the Pacifc have resulted in
growing numbers of evictions of urban poor from their neighborhoods. In most cases they are relocated
to peripheral areas far from centres of employment and economic opportunities. At the same time over
500 million people now live in slums and squatter settlements in Asia and the Pacifc region and this
fgure is rising.
Local governments need policy instruments to protect the housing rights of the urban poor as a critical
frst step towards attaining the Millennium Development Goal on signifcant improvement in the lives of
slum-dwellers by 2020. The objective of these Quick Guides is to improve the understanding by policy
makers at national and local levels on pro-poor housing and urban development within the framework
of urban poverty reduction.
The Quick Guides are presented in an easy-to-read format structured to include an overview of trends
and conditions, concepts, policies, tools and recommendations in dealing with the following housing-
related issues:
(1) Urbanization: The role the poor play in urban development (2) Low-income housing: Approaches
to help the urban poor fnd adequate accommodation (3) Land: A crucial element in housing the urban
poor (4) Eviction: Alternatives to the whole-scale destruction of urban poor communities (5) Housing
fnance: Ways to help the poor pay for housing (6) Community-based organizations: The poor as
agents of development (7) Rental housing: A much neglected housing option for the poor.
This Quick Guide 2 describes ways of addressing low-income housing. It reviews well-tried methods
of improving the housing environments of people living in slums and informal settlements, and
providing adequate housing for future generations living in Asias cities. The guide examines con-
siderations needed to improve these settlements, and to produce housing at a city-wide scale.
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Q U I C K
G UI D E S
F O R
P O L I C Y
M A KERS
cities
LOW-INCOME HOUSING:
Approaches to help the urban poor
find adequate accommodation
housing
the
in Asian
poor
2
United Nations
ESCAP
Copyright United Nations Human Settlements Programme and
United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacifc, 2008
ISBN: 978-92-113-1947-7
HS/960/08E Housing the Poor in Asian Cities, Quick Guide 2
DISCLAIMER
The designations employed and the presentation of material in this publication do not imply the expression
of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations concerning the legal status of
any country, territory, city or area or its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries
regarding its economic system or degree of development. The analysis, conclusions and recommendations
of this publication do not necessarily refect the views of United Nations or its member States. Excerpts may
be reproduced without authorization, on condition that the source is indicated.
Cover design by Tom Kerr, ACHR and printed in Nairobi by the United Nations Offce at Nairobi
Cover photo by Asian Coalition for Housing Rights
The publication of the Housing the Poor in Asian Cities series was made possible through the fnancial support
of the Dutch Government and the Development Account of the United Nations.
Published by:
United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacifc (UNESCAP)
Fax: (66-2) 288 1056/1097
Web: www.unescap.org
and
United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT)
P.O.Box 30030 GPO 00100
Nairobi, Kenya
Fax: (254-20) 7623092
Web: www.un-habitat.org
i QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 2, LOW-INCOME HOUSING
Acknowledgements
This set of seven Quick Guides have been prepared as a result of an expert group meeting
on capacity-building for housing the urban poor, organized by UNESCAP in Thailand in July
2005. They were prepared jointly by the Poverty and Development Division of UNESCAP
and the Training and Capacity Building Branch (TCBB) of UN-HABITAT, with funding from the
Development Account of the United Nations and the Dutch Government under the projects
Housing the Poor in Urban Economies and Strengthening National Training Capabilities
for Better Local Governance and Urban Development respectively. An accompanying set
of posters highlighting the key messages from each of the Quick Guides and a set of self-
administered on-line training modules are also being developed under this collaboration.
The Quick Guides were produced under the overall coordination of Mr. Adnan Aliani, Poverty
and Development Division, UNESCAP and Ms. sa Jonsson, Training and Capacity Building
Branch, UN-HABITAT with vital support and inputs from Mr. Yap Kioe Sheng, Mr. Raf Tuts
and Ms. Natalja Wehmer. Internal reviews and contributions were also provided by Ms.
Clarissa Augustinus, Mr. Jean-Yves Barcelo, Mr. Selman Erguden, Mr. Solomon Haile, Mr.
Jan Meeuwissen, Mr. Rasmus Precht, Ms. Lowie Rosales, and Mr. Xing Zhang.
The Guides were prepared by Mr. Thomas A. Kerr, Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR)
based on documents prepared by Mr. Babar Mumtaz, Mr. Michael Mattingly and Mr. Patrick
Wakely, formerly of the Development Planning Unit (DPU), University College of London;
Mr. Yap Kioe Sheng, UNESCAP; Mr. Aman Mehta, Sinclair Knight Merz Consulting; Mr.
Peter Swan, Asian Coalition for Housing Rights; and Mr. Koen Dewandeler, King Mongkut
Institute of Technology, Thailand.
The original documents and other materials can be accessed at: www.housing-the-urban-
poor.net.
The above contributions have all shaped the Quick Guide series, which we hope will
contribute to the daily work of policy makers in Asia in their quest to improve housing for
the urban poor.
ii QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 2, LOW-INCOME HOUSING
Contents
What are slums and squatter settlements? ................................................................. 2
No two are alike: Informal settlements in Asian cities ................................................... 3
Why do slums exist at all? ............................................................................................ 4
What to do about slums? .............................................................................................. 5
4 key aspects of informal housing development ........................................................... 6
Women and low-income housing ................................................................................. 8
Discrimination in access to housing and land ............................................................... 9
Eviction and slum clearance ...................................................................................... 10
5 alternatives to eviction:
Option 1: On-site upgrading ................................................................................. 13
Why is on-site upgrading often the best option of all? ................................................ 14
7 principles of successful upgrading ........................................................................... 16
Upgrading dos and donts .......................................................................................... 19
7 stages of a typical upgrading project ....................................................................... 20
Check list: Questions you should ask about your upgrading project .......................... 24
Option 2: Resettlement ........................................................................................ 25
Managing the resettlement process in a participatory way ......................................... 26
Putting people at the centre of the resettlement process ........................................... 28
The resettlement site .................................................................................................. 29
Option 3: Government-built new public housing .............................................. 30
Can governments provide housing for all? ................................................................ 31
Option 4: Sites-and-services ............................................................................... 32
5 ways to make sites-and-services work better .......................................................... 33
The problems of sites-and-services ............................................................................ 34
Option 5: City-wide housing strategies ............................................................. 36
What do you need to go up to city-wide scale? .......................................................... 39
Books, articles, publications and websites ................................................................. 40
C O N D I T I O N S
C O N C E P T S
A P P R O A C H E S & G U I D E L I N E S
R E S O U R C E S
1 QUICK GUIDES FOR POLICY MAKERS 2, LOW-INCOME HOUSING
Low-income housing:
Approaches to help the
urban poor find adequate
accommodation
Q U I C K G U I D E F O R P O L I C Y M A K E R S N U M B E R 2
This guide describes several ways of addressing low-income housing at the
programme and project level. It focuses on well-tried methods of improving the
housing and living environments of people living in slums and squatter settle-
ments, and providing adequate housing for future generations of urban poor.
The frst part presents concepts essential to understanding low-income housing,
and explores the reasons behind the serious lack of decent, affordable hous-
ing and hence the problem of urban slums. Key approaches to address the
housing needs of the urban poor are outlined next, by examining alternative
strategies for what to do about existing slums and how to avoid future slums
through the production of new housing. Finally, the guide examines the main
considerations needed to address the improvement of slums and production of
adequate and affordable low-income housing on a city-wide scale.
This guide is not aimed at specialists, but instead aims to help build the capaci-
ties of national and local government offcials and policy makers who need to
quickly enhance their understanding of low-income housing issues.
Millennium Development
Goal 7, Target 11:
To achieve signifcant improvement in the lives
of at least 100 million slum-dwellers by 2020,
recognizing the urgent need for the provision of
increased resources for affordable housing and
housing-related infrastructure, prioritizing slum
prevention and slum upgrading ....
Article 56.m of the September 2005 UN Summit
resolution
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What are slums
and squatter settlements?
Not all of Asias urban poor live in slums, and
conversely, not all those who live in slums are
poor. However, the poor quality of housing and
lack of basic services that are common in slums
represent a clear dimension of urban poverty. This
guide will therefore look at slums as the main focus
of low-income housing.
Urban poor settlements come in a variety of sizes
and shapes, and are called by a variety of names
not only slums. The word slum traditionally
describes a neighbourhood of housing that was
once in good condition but has since deteriorated
or been subdivided into a state of high crowding
and rented out to low-income groups. A squatter
settlement, on the other hand, is an area of poor
quality housing built on illegally occupied land. A
third kind of settlement is an irregular subdivi-
sion, in which the legal owner subdivides the land
into sub-standard plots and sells or rents them out
without following all relevant building bylaws.
UN-HABITAT defnes a slum household as a group
of people living under the same roof in an urban area
who lack one or more of the following conditions:
durable housing, suffcient living area, access to
clean water, access to proper sanitation and secure
tenure. (See Quick Guide 1 on Urbanization)
It lacks basic services such as adequate
access to safe water, paved walkways,
drains, sanitation and other essential
infrastructure.
It contains dilapidated and poor quality
housing structures that break the vari-
ous building bylaws.
It is overcrowded or characterized by
extremely high density of dwellings and
population.
It has an unhealthy living environment
and may be located on hazardous or
undevelopable land.
Its residents have insecure land tenure
and may be evicted.
Its residents experience high levels of
poverty and social exclusion.
What makes an urban community a slum?
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No two are alike
Informal settlements in Asian cities come in all shapes and sizes,
but the common denominator is their highly dynamic, highly
resourcesful response to an absolute lack of other options
A KATCHI ABADI IN KARACHI, PAKISTAN, a city
ringed with public land, where people have laid out and
built their own city-sized settlements.
A ROOFTOP SLUM IN PHNOM PENH, a city where
even the roof terraces of derelict apartment buildings
were used for poor peoples housing.
A GARBAGE DUMP SLUM IN MANILA, where 35,000
households earn a good living gathering recyclable
waste, but must still live in poor conditions.
A GER AREA IN ULANBATAAR, MONGOLIA, where
the citys rural migrants have brought their nomadic-style,
felt-lined ger tents along with them.
A FOOTPATH SLUM IN MUMBAI, INDIA, a city where
55% of the population lives in slums, and many cant even
afford to buy houses in slums.
A CANAL-SIDE SLUM IN BANGKOK, THAILAND,
where the long stretches of public land along canals has
been occupied by some 220 communities.
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Why do slums exist at all?
Slums are the products of failed policies,
bad governance, corruption, inappropriate
regulation, dysfunctional land markets,
unresponsive fnancial systems and a fun-
damental lack of political will. Each of these
failures adds to the toll on people already
deeply burdened by poverty and constrains
the enormous potential for human develop-
ment that urban life offers.
http://web.mit.edu/urbanupgrading
In most cities, the main problem is access to suitable land
Low-income households need to live close to
income-earning opportunities in the commercial
and industrial centres of cities and towns in order
to minimize the cost and time spent in getting to
work. But good land in these central places is
generally in high demand and therefore expensive.
So poor households are forced to occupy land
that is not in demand, because it is inappropriate
or dangerous, such as land prone to fooding or
landslides or along railway lines, canal banks and
roadsides. They are also forced to occupy as
little space as possible, which leads to very high
densities and unhealthy levels of overcrowding in
their settlements. Or alternatively, they may be
forced to settle on land at the edge of towns and
cities, where land may be more accessible, but is
beyond the urban infrastructure networks and far
from centres of employment.
An important role of governments is to intervene
in land and housing markets to ensure that the
lowest income groups in the city have access to
secure land and decent housing. Political will within
government and civil society is essential to resolve
the problems of slum populations.
Slums and squatter settlements exist because
the poor cannot afford or access even the most
minimal housing provided by the formal land and
housing markets. Many also face enormous barri-
ers in accessing housing and land because of the
time, red tape and diffculties involved.
There are slums of one sort or another in most
cities and towns throughout the world. In many
Asian cities, such as Mumbai, Manila and Karachi,
slums are home to over 50% of the citys popula-
tion. In some places, the systems for distributing
and acquiring land and housing are still governed
by traditional or indigenous land tenure systems
that exist outside the market, yet even in these
places, slums exist.
More and more, urban land and housing markets
are coming under enormous economic competi-
tion, and this is driving up the cost of all hous-
ing, so that even the most minimal standard of
formal-sector housing is unaffordable to the poor.
Forced out of the market, low-income households
are left with only one option: to build, buy or rent
dwellings of relatively small size, low quality of
construction and minimal service provision in an
informal settlement. P
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For some policy-makers and professionals,
slums embody all things negative: disease,
crime, political unrest, misbehaviour and ig-
norance. But research over many years has
revealed that slums are highly organized hu-
man settlements, both spatially and socially.
Their occupants participate fully in the urban
economy, bringing immense cultural diversity
and dynamism to their city. Contrary to popular
belief slums are not characterized by laziness or
delinquency but by energy, creativity, resource-
fulness and entrepreneurial skills.
Some established slums contain within them-
selves entire vibrant local economies, with their
own informal housing and land markets and
their own diverse social and cultural groupings.
While conditions in some slums may indeed be
squalid, unhealthy, impoverished and socially
excluding, these conditions only come about
because of the absence of alternatives and op-
portunities for their residents. Because of this
rich diversity of slums within cities and regions, it
is important that governments and NGOs seek to
What to do about slums?
Before policy-makers, NGOs or donors do anything in slums,
they first need to understand whats going on inside slum
communities
frst understand the characteristics of any slum
in which they plan to intervene. Slum-dwellers
hold the key to that understanding, if outsiders
can only listen to them.
To understand what to do, policy-makers have
to appreciate the diversity within and between
slums. Slum residents have the best knowledge
of how their settlements work, the characteristics
of their communities and the nature of their
needs and priorities.
More than meets the eye:
To outsiders, slums may look like
crowded and disorganized groups of
dirty shacks. But when you start to look
beneath their outer layers and begin to
examine whats going on underneath,
you will fnd all sorts of complex and
human life-support systems at work in
slums, in which the prominent note is
resourcefulness, not hopelessness.
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4 key aspects of
informal housing development
In many cities, governments have taken
steps to provide at least some basic in-
frastructure in informal settlements, but
these programmes are often piecemeal,
poorly planned and implemented, and many
settlements end up being left out.
The authorities may provide some water supply
via tankers or public water taps, but the taps may
run dry for part of the day or week, and many
people may not be able to access them. For local
governments, it costs little to install electric meters
in informal settlements, but many slum-dwellers
have to buy electricity at infated rates informally
from nearby houses and shops.
Solid waste is rarely collected inside informal
settlements, but when residents bring their waste to
bins outside the settlement, municipal waste collec-
tors will usually collect it. Drainage and sanitation
are major problems in informal settlements, where
insecure tenure and low-lying, steep or hazardous
land may make cities reluctant to invest in installing
drains and sewerage lines.
Informal settlements are filled with a wide
variety of housing and building qualities,
ranging from extremely solid concrete-
frame constructions with all services, to
squalid windowless shacks made of bam-
boo, mud and hammered biscuit tins.
Slums and the people who live in them are
not all the same. Many degrees of poverty are con-
tained within each slum. Some owner-occupants
will be able to mobilize enough funds to improve
their housing up to middle-class standards, while
others will continue living in the most basic huts,
unable to afford any improvements at all.
Although the health and environmental risks are
greater, one advantage of building a house in
a slum is a degree of freedom from the bylaws
of formal building practices. Since almost every
aspect of their lives is technically illegal, instead
of following someone elses idea of what should
be allowed, informal residents are more or less
free to build creatively, according to their needs
and constraints of space and budget.
1 HOUSING
2 INFRASTRUCTURE
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The location of their housing is extremely
important for the urban poor. They will
almost always try to locate themselves in
areas of the city that are as close as pos-
sible to income-earning opportunities.
This often means being near the commercial city
cores, near industrial zones, or near markets
and transport hubs. But the land in these places
is in high demand and extremely expensive, so
if the poor cant fnd land to squat on in these
areas, they will likely be forced to occupy land
that for very good reasons nobody else wants,
such as hazardous sites liable to fooding or
landslides, along roads and railway lines or on
the banks of canals and rivers.
Because even in these high-risk areas land
is at a premium, the informal settlements that
develop there tend to be very densely populated.
Alternatively, some poor households may opt
to settle on land in the urban periphery, beyond
infrastructure networks and far from the centres
of employment, where land may be available,
but jobs and survival will be more diffcult.
3 LOCATION
4 LAND TENURE
Without a doubt, one of the most serious
problems being faced by the millions who
live in Asias informal urban settlements is
insecure tenure.
Without legal permission to occupy land, they can
be evicted by the landowner or public landowning
agency at any time. Besides making life uncertain
every day, this constant threat of eviction makes
residents of informal settlements reluctant to
invest in improving their housing or settlement.
And without legally-recognized land rights, utility
companies (such as water and electricity) and
other service providers (such as credit agencies)
are likewise reluctant to go into informal settle-
ments. As a result, informal settlements often
remain squalid and unimproved for years.
Land tenure is not simply a
matter of legal or illegal
Most countries have a range of different land
tenure arrangements, all offering different
degrees of tenure security. As informal settle-
ments age and consolidate, unless there are
very clear signals of impending eviction, the
residents will gradually feel more secure from
the possibility of losing their land. Squatters
often collect documents and evidence that
they have been living in the same settlement
for a long time, which can often strengthen
their claim to remain on that land. Plus, when
the authorities bring basic infrastructure such
as walkways, drains, metered water supply
and electricity into an informal settlement, it is
often perceived as bestowing a greater degree
of security or at least recognition on that
settlement. Through all these means, squatters
try to gradually consolidate their land tenure
security, even without any legal title to the land.
(See Quick Guide 3 on Land)
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4 key aspects of
informal housing development
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The full involvement of women is the best guarantee that any
housing project will be a success
The key stakeholders in any community hous-
ing process are always women, whether the
project involves resettlement to new land or
on-site upgrading. So it is important that space
be created for women to play a full role in all
stages of the planning and implementation.
They are the ones who have the most intimate
knowledge of their community and its problems,
and they are the ones who already have strong
social networks within that community. Often the
primary caretakers of the communitys homes
and households, they are the ones who have the
most to gain from a good community housing
project, and the most to lose if their housing
conditions are bad or precarious.
It is women who have the greatest ability to
mobilize support for or opposition to any
intervention in their settlement. So their full
participation is a key to any projects success.
The involvement of women in a process which
brings improvements in the quality of everyones
lives can also build capacities and confdence,
while it enhances their status and helps under-
mine entrenched patterns of inequality. When
Women and
low-income housing:
women play a central role in planning, con-
structing and paying for their new houses and
improved infrastructure, it not only ensures the
new designs match real household needs, but
it brings them out of their houses and enhances
their status in the community as key actors in
their communitys long-term development.
In the project to rebuild the Taa Chatchai Community,
on Thailands Phuket Island, after the devastating
tsunami washed the village away, the reconstruction
of houses was supervised by an all-women team
of skilled masons. After the project was fnished,
the team went on to train in other tsunami-hit
communities to take a greater role in the technical
aspects of rebuilding.
Source: www.codi.or.th
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Poo-ying power
In Thailands Baan Mankong Community
Upgrading Programme, which is now actively
under way in 200 Thai towns and cities, you
wont hear much overt talk of gender eq-
uity. But youll fnd that it is overwhelmingly
women [poo-ying in Thai] who dominate the
ranks of the savings groups, the community
planning committees, the building materials
price negotiations, the construction teams,
the financial management and auditing
sub-groups and the community cooperative
boards. Its no exaggeration to say that the
countrys poor community upgrading move-
ment is strongly poo-ying-driven.
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Discrimination in access to
housing and land
Women often face both hidden and open discrimi-
nation when they try to meet their own and their
familys housing needs. Because women (and
especially women-headed households) often
experience lower levels of income and higher
levels of poverty, it makes housing all that more
diffcult for them to access.
Women also face all kinds of barriers to secure
housing through the laws and customs in their
countries, which can restrict their ability to legally
own, lease, inherit or control the use of property.
Even within the same household, women and
men often have sharply different relationships
to the land and housing they occupy. Many
common law systems in Asia restrict a womans
right to land in different ways by denying her ac-
cess to property ownership through inheritance
and marital property systems, which favor male
family members. In many Asian countries, only
the name of the man is included on the title deed
or loan documents for a house or piece of land.
Women who are single or who are single heads-
of-households are especially vulnerable in these
places. Since womens access to land is often
through their husbands or fathers or brothers,
they may loose such access after becoming
widowed, divorced, deserted or left alone when
their husbands migrate elsewhere.
Several organizations in Asia are tackling the
issue of womens property rights, revising inheri-
tance laws, negotiating new land tenure practices
which protect womens access to land and hous-
ing and opening space for women to be involved
in making these systems more equitable.
IN INDIA: The National Slum-dwellers Federation (NSDF) and Mahila Milan (MM) womens
savings collectives have focused their work for the past two decades on fnding many ways
to improve the housing conditions and tenure rights of some of the countrys poorest, most
vulnerable women in urban slums. In all the NSDF/MM housing initiatives, it is primarily poor
women themselves who are the designers, builders, fnancial managers and project supervi-
sors, and it is mostly in womens names that the fnished housing units are registered.
IN LAO PDR: The Lao Womens Union works both at national government and at grassroots
levels with poor womens village savings collectives throughout the country to ensure that
womens rights to land and property are recognized and enforced under the countrys land titling
programmes. This is particularly important as many rural and urban poor women are illiterate
or lack the confdence to deal with written documents and offcial transactions individually.
IN BANGLADESH: The Grameen Bank has for many years provided modest housing
loans to rural families to build one of its two standardized cyclone-proof house designs.
But the loans are given only on the condition that the land title is in the name of the woman
head-of-household, as a means of helping improve her fnancial security and status within
the family and society.
1
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3
Eviction and
slum clearance
Forced eviction is the term which describes what
happens when people are removed from their
homes and communities against their will some-
times with, and often without, provisions to resettle
them somewhere else. At their worst, evictions
can be extremely violent, brutal procedures, in
which peoples houses, personal property, com-
munities, livelihoods and support structures are all
destroyed. When the residents evicted from their
slum communities are provided with alternative
places to live, such relocation sites are often so
far away from their jobs and support networks,
so under-serviced, so environmentally hazardous
and unsuitable for human survival, that the evicted
people are effectively rendered homeless.
The demolition of slums became common practice
by many governments from the 1950s onwards.
But even with international recognition that forced
evictions should be outlawed, many governments
continue to sporadically or systematically evict ur-
ban poor households with force from their homes.
(See Quick Guide 4 on Eviction)
Forced evictions are a gross
violation of human rights.
Uni ted Nati ons Human Ri ghts
Commission, 1993, Resolution
Number 77
In recent years the decentralization of power to
local government mechanisms has meant that city
authorities can adopt policies of forced eviction
and resettlement, with central governments having
little scope to stop such a backwards step.
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Forced evictions take place for many
reasons. Slum-dwellers may be evicted
to clear valuable land for commercial
redevelopment, to beautify an area of
the city by removing unsightly squatter
housing, or to remove pockets of politi-
cal resistance. Evictions are especially
prevalent in times of economic growth,
as developers look for land and new
investment opportunities. During times
of economic recession, forced evictions
usually decline, and slum-dwellers have
a better chance of getting a good nights
sleep.
In Cambodias capital city of Phnom Penh, the residents of the sprawling river-side slum at
Tonle Basaac have been evicted in several brutal waves to make way for a commercial
development project. City authorities had been trying for years to clear the slum. Nearly
2,000 households have already been evicted and their homes burned to the ground or
reduced by demolition squads to rubble. Some residents were given small plots of land in
a big government resettlement colony at the outskirts of the city, 22 kilometers away.
But many households were not allotted resettlement plots and many complained that the
resettlement land was uninhabitable. 1,206 households remained in Basaac, living in open
encampments, as their houses had already been demolished. Most had been renters in the
old settlement, and because renters were not entitled to resettlement plots, they refused
to leave. Finally in May 2006, these last
households were forcibly evicted by
armed policemen. Increasing commer-
cial pressure on land, corruption and a
lack of credible land records have made
land disputes increasingly common in
Cambodia, with many slums being de-
molished or burned in recent years.
Source: ACHR
The story of two forced evictions
1
Metro Manila, Philippines
2
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
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In February 2007, 141 poor households
living under two highway overpasses in
the city were forcibly evicted from their
homes. According to local civil society
organizations, the demolition crew, which
comprised 200 municipal personnel and
armed police, entered the community
without prior notice. Community leaders,
who were attending a meeting called by
government offcials nearby, rushed back
to ask for time to collect their personal
belongings. But the authorities denied these requests, and police fred shots in the air and
began demolishing the houses. Many women and children were injured during the demolitions
and fve men were severely beaten with crowbars and sticks by municipal personel.
Source: www.cohre.org
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Eviction: the grim facts
environmental clean-
up, building shopping
complexes, land grabbing,
infrastructure development
shopping centres,
infrastructure development,
Olympics
environmental
improvement, removal
of hawkers, new parks,
redevelopment, tourism
development, caste confict
redevelopment of land
occupied by hawkers
clearing up the area

removal of illegal
immigrants, road
development
removal of hawkers,
beautifcation
Bangladesh

China

India

Indonesia

Japan

Malaysia

Philippines
27,055

707,656

854,250

40,417

600

200

43,488
13 by government, 4
by private groups

6 by government, 4 by
private groups

17 by government, 4
by private groups, 1 by
local government, 2 by
state government

city government

2 by private groups, 1
by local government
national and local
government

4 by local government,
3 by government
17

10

24

12

3

4

7
Country Number of
evictions
Number of
people evicted
Reasons for
the evictions
Responsible
group
Figures cover January 2004 to June 2005 (Source: www.achr.net)
Forced evictions may eliminate the slums nobody wants to
see, but they do nothing to resolve the housing problems of the
people who were forced to live there in fact by leaving people
homeless, they make the problems worse. When people are
forcibly evicted from their homes without being provided with any
alternative accommodation, they are likely to create new squatter
settlements or become tenants, both of which only increase the
population density and problems of existing slums (see Quick
Guide 7 on Rental Housing). Whatever the motive behind a forced
eviction, it can never justify the kind of cruelty that characterizes
them and only makes for even worse housing shortages.
Forced
eviction:
a vicious cycle
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On-site upgrading means improving the physical, social
and economic environment of an existing informal settle-
ment, without displacing the people who live there. When
cities and governments support the process of upgrading
informal communities, it is the least expensive, most
humane way of enhancing a citys much-needed stock
of affordable housing, instead of destoying it.
When most people think of slum upgrading, they tend
to think only of technical programmes to install paved
walkways, drains, water supply lines, street lights,
electricity networks, sanitation and garbage disposal.
These infrastructure items are defnitely high up on the
list of whats needed. But a more comprehensive version
of upgrading can also assist the communitys residents
to do much more:
Houses: to make improvements to their houses or
entirely rebuild them.
Land: to regularize and secure their settlements
long-term land tenure.
Incomes: to upgrade their jobs, earning capacities
and small businesses.
Common facilities: to improve their facilities
such as community centres, playgrounds or
community enterprises.
Access to public services: to improve their
access to education and health care.
Welfare: to set up community-managed welfare
systems which can take care of their most vulner-
able members.
Unlike resettlement, upgrading causes
minimal disturbance to peoples lives
and to the delicate networks of mutual
support in poor communities.
Upgrading usually involves some
changes to the existing community
layout, to make room for installing
improved infrastructure facilities.
But these changes do not need to
be huge, unless communities opt to
totally rebuild their settlement, and
start from scratch with a new plan, in-
frastructure and houses. Communities
can fnd tactful ways to accommodate
the needs of people whos houses
must be demolished or shifted to
make way for improvements.
There are many options, and the na-
ture of any upgrading project depends
on the priorities and resources of the
people living in that community.
Upgrading:
good for the poor
and good for the
cities theyre part of
5 alternatives to eviction
OPTION 1: On-site upgrading
Here are fve of the key alternative approaches to solving urban housing problems, which have
been applied with varying degrees of success:
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Upgrading keeps people together in the same place where they already live, so it helps
consolidate communities, enhance social stability and build on existing support mechanisms.
It encourages participation in the many aspects of a communitys redevelopment frst
in the planning and implementation of the upgrading project, then later in many other spin-off
social and economic activities managed collectively within the community.
It stimulates people to invest in improvements to their housing and living environments, by
endorsing their long-term rights to occupy that land through long-term, secure land tenure.
It improves peoples well-being and living conditions by improving their housing and
living environments, and by freeing them from the looming threat of eviction.
It builds assets and enhances the value of peoples houses and land, by improving the land
tenure security. As assets, the houses can be used for income-generating activities, rented
or sold in a crisis, or used as collateral to get a loan.
Why is on-site upgrading often
the best option of all?
But we need that land for other purposes
One of the first arguments against upgrading
informal settlements in situ is that the land they
occupy is needed for other purposes. But housing
professionals estimate that in most Asian cities, no
more than 20% of the existing informal settlements
are on land that is genuinely needed for urgent
public development purposes, such as new roads,
drainage lines, food control projects or government
buildings. And the changing nature of how mega-
projects are being marketed, fnanced and designed
in Asian cities means that even these projects are
often poorly planned and could be adjusted to avoid
evicting poor communities. The other 80% of the
informal settlements provide a much-needed stock
of affordable housing for the people whose hard
work is fueling the citys economic growth. Enabling
these communities to stay where they already are
(rather than evicting them to put up a shopping mall,
a fast-food franchise or an up-market condominium)
constitutes a reasonable use of public land.
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It improves settlement layouts. When people upgrade
crowded, unplanned settlements, they can reorganize plots
and make space for infrastructure, pre-schools, playgrounds,
clinics and places of worship.
It builds morale and pride. Upgrading a poor communitys
housing and basic services not only fulfls an important func-
tion of local government, but also raises peoples morale,
pride, civic engagement and ambition to invest further in
their houses and neighborhoods.
It improves incomes when people can use their improved,
secure houses for income-earning: shops, room rentals and
home workshops. Having a legal address also makes it easier
to get better-paying jobs in the formal sector.
For every dollar a govern-
ment invests in community
upgrading, poor households
will invest an additional
seven dollars from their
own pockets, which they
put directly into their housing
improvement.
Source: web.mit-edu/
urbanupgrading/
People-driven upgrading in Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Before: After:
The same lane, after the under-
ground drains have been laid, the
surface completely paved with
concrete and the houses repainted
and decorated with planting beds
in front for fowers and shrubs.
In Cambodia, the community-driven Urban Poor
Development Fund (UPDF) has been at the
forefront of progress in housing policy. In 2003,
the UPDF negotiated to win offcial government
support for its community-driven savings and
upgrading model. By mid 2005, UPDF-sup-
ported upgrading projects were completed or
underway in 66 informal settlements, covering
about 6,000 households. Most of these projects
were in Phnom Penh. But through workshops
and exchange visits, the idea of community-
driven upgrading is catching on around the
country. Projects are now underway in 13
provincial cities, including Poipet, Preveng and
Siem Reap.
UPDF supports a process of comprehensive
upgrading, which communities plan and imple-
ment themselves. This approach goes beyond
making roads, drains, toilets and a few environ-
mental improvements and includes providing
communities with collective loans for housing
improvement, income generation activities
and community welfare schemes. These com-
prehensive upgrading projects in Phnom Penh
have also led to the improvement of land tenure
status in several squatter communities.
The upgrading process emphasizes networking
between settlements in the same ward, district
and city, and a process of learning between
communities throughout the upgrading process,
and collaboration with the citys 77 sangkat
(ward) administrations. At this lowest and most
local level of governance, the communities have
gained the support of their ward offcers in the
process. The people survey all the informal
communities in their ward. The selection of
priority projects and implementation are man-
aged by communities, in close collaboration
with the sangkat unit, while the funds for the
community upgrading pass directly from UPDF
to the community organizations.
Source: www.achr.net
The Ros Reay communi ty,
before upgrading. Even in the
dry season, run-off from peoples
kitchens, bathrooms and toilets
turned this lane into a stinking,
unhealthy swamp.
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7 principles
of successful upgrading
1
2
3
It has to be participatory. Upgrading has to be a participatory process, which addresses
frst and foremost the needs of the community, as identifed collectively by its members. This is
the key to a projects sustainability. Without this participation, infrastructure improvements will
not be maintained, conditions will deteriorate, people will become disillusioned with their local
government and the investment in upgrading will be wasted. The more a community participates
in each stage of the process, the more successful the results will be.
It has to be done in partnership. Planning and implementing an upgrading project
is always more effective when its carried out by the community and the local government,
in close collaboration. NGOs can also play a crucial role in supporting community organiza-
tions, as well as providing them with any technical support they need in designing housing
improvements or developing income generation projects.
It has to provide secure land tenure. Providing secure tenure is a vital part of
community upgrading. Without it, peoples continued vulnerability to eviction will make them
reluctant to invest further in their housing and living environment. Sometimes tenure is granted
to individual households in the form of title deeds or lease contracts, after the boundaries have
been measured and recorded. Granting tenure rights
to the woman household-head instead of the man
can protect and children from the threat of abandon-
ment and homelessness and provide them with an
asset they can use for income generation. Land
tenure is increasingly being granted collectively, to
communities as a whole, as a means of prevent-
ing gentrifcation and building stronger community
organization. (See Box on Individual or collective
land rights on next page)
Make upgrading an important
part of the solution:
The upgrading of housing,
infrastructure, and providing secure
tenure in existing informal settlements
should be an essential part of any
governments strategy to meet the
demand for affordable housing for the
urban poor.
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4
5
6
Individual or collective land rights?
In inner-city communities with high population
densities and small house plots, communal
land tenure is becoming the frst option for
the poor, for many good reasons
In the past, most slum regularization pro-
grammes granted tenure rights to individual
households. But regularizing tenure by grant-
ing individual title deeds to slum-dwellers
can be time-consuming, costly and prone
to corruption. Changing legislation can help.
The legislature of Sindh province, Pakistan
passed the Sindh Katchi Abadi Regularization
Act, under which residents of most squatter
settlements are to be given long term land
leases. It also established an agency, the
Sindh Katchi Abadi Authority to oversee the
tenure regularization and settlement upgrad-
ing process.
But a serious drawback of individual tenure
systems is that they fragment communities
and make it easier for speculators to buy out
residents individually, leaving poor communi-
ties on desirable inner-city land vulnerable to
market forces and gentrifcation. When land
tenure rights (by title or by lease contract) are
held collectively, by a community organization
or housing cooperative, it can act as a powerful
buffer against these market forces, giving com-
munities a structural reason to remain united,
and ensure the land will continue to be avail-
able for housing the people who need it, in the
long term. (See Quick Guide 3 on Land)
Communities have to contribute. It is essential that the community contribute to the cost
of upgrading in some way. Experience shows this strengthens a communitys sense of ownership
of the upgrading process. The contribution can be fnancial (cash or community loans) or it can
take the form of contributed labour or building materials, or some mixture of these. Upgrading
works best when the communitys contribution is supplemented by some kind of subsidy, from
donor grants or public project funds. (See Quick Guide 5 on Housing Finance)
Upgrading must be affordable. The amount that households can contribute will help
determine the scope and content of the upgrading package. If upgrading programmes come with
high taxes or user fees which the people cannot afford, they will probably not use or maintain
the facilities, or may simply move away to more affordable settlements elsewhere.
The project must be financially sustainable. Sustainability comes in part from how
the upgrading is fnanced. It is best when funds from several sources are blended, including
community members contributions, subsidies and loans from government, and maybe support
from international or local development organizations. To ensure the upgraded infrastructure is
well maintained and managed over time, it is important that the construction of this infrastructure
happen in ways which build community cohesion and organization (see Quick Guide 6 on Com-
munity-based Organizations) and promote local economic development.
It should be part of the larger urban development strategy. Community upgrading
projects have to be seen as an important part of a citys larger vision of its future development.
Projects shouldnt be emergency initiatives implemented in isolation, but should be part of plans
for overall urban management that seek to address housing problems at city-wide scale.
7
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People-financed upgrading in Hue, Vietnam
A good example of a sustainable blend of sub-
sidy and peoples contribution comes from Phu
Binh Ward, in the Vietnamese city of Hue. Phu
Binh is a poor area often hit by foods during
the rainy season, when water-borne diseases
ravage the ward. A few residents living on the
Xom Alley began discussing the problem with
their neighbors in a series of meetings. As a
result of these meetings, the community leader
presented the local authorities with a proposal
to upgrade the alley and a request for fnancial
support. After obtaining the agreement of the
Peoples Committee at national and city level,
the local authorities agreed to the Xom Alley
paving, but would provide only 30% of the
required budget.
After more community discussions about how
to come up with the remaining 70% of the
budget, the people agreed that each of the 16
households living along the alley would con-
tribute 140,000 Dong (about US$ 9). Instead
of paying cash from their own pockets, the
people decided that each household would
borrow this sum (at no interest) from the com-
munity savings and credit group they were
running in the alley, with support from ENDA
(Environmental Development Action in the Third
World). Loan recipients saved 3,000 Dong (US
20 cents) each day, which they deposited with
their community leaders. Every ten days, the
project management board collected the saved
money from the community leaders. Those who
couldnt afford to take loans, because of low or
unstable incomes, contributed
their labour instead.
When the paving of the Xom
Alley was finished, everyone
agreed that life had defnitely
improved and that the project
encouraged residents to take
on more improvements, starting
with cleaning up some waste
that had been dumped nearby.
This project also stimulated
the local authorities to apply
the same 70%30% formula
to another 18 alleys in the Phu
Binh Ward.
Source: UN-HABITAT, 2006
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Things to do: Things not to do:
PROMOTE good urban governance in the
projects, in both communities and the city.
ESTABLISH enabling institutional frame-
works which involve all partners and stake-
holders in the process.

IMPLEMENT and monitor pro-poor city
development strategies.
ENCOURAGE initiatives which come from
slum-dwellers themselves, and recognize
the role of women.
ENSURE secure tenure, consolidate oc-
cupancy rights and regularize informal
settlements.
INVOLVE tenants and owners in fnding
solutions that address collective interests.
ADOPT a more incremental approach to
upgrading.
ASSOCIATE municipal fnance, cross-subsi-
dies and benefciary contributions to ensure
fnancial viability of the upgrading.
DESIGN and negotiate relocation plans
only when absolutely necessary, as a last
resort.
COMBINE upgrading with employment gen-
eration and local economic development.
DEVELOP new urban areas by making land
and trunk infrastructure available.
Source: UN-Habitat, 2003.
ASSUME that slums will automatically disap-
pear with economic growth.
UNDERESTIMATE the important contribu-
tion local authorities, landowners, community
leaders or residents in the settlement can
bring to the upgrading process.
SEPARATE upgrading from investment in
planning and urban management.
IGNORE the specifc needs of and vulnerable
groups in the upgrading process.
CARRY OUT unlawful evictions.

DISCRIMINATE against people in rental
housing or promote a single tenure option.
IMPOSE unrealistic standards and regula-
tions that cant work for the poor.
RELY on governmental subsidies or on full-
cost recovery from slum-dwellers.

INVEST public resources in massive social
housing schemes.

CONSIDER slum upgrading solely as a
social issue.
PROVIDE infrastructure and services that
poor people cant afford.
Upgrading Dos and Donts
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7 stages of a typical upgrading
project
1
Selecting the settlement that is to be upgraded
community organizations, or those easily con-
nected with trunk infrastructure lines. Alternatively,
settlements with conditions of the most extreme
poverty or with the highest levels of environmental
degradation may be the frst priority.
Deciding which settlement to upgrade frst involves
weighing priorities. Usually it is government plan-
ners who identify suitable settlements for upgrad-
ing, much infuenced by local politics. But its better
if local poor communities, NGOs and other stake-
holders are involved. What should they consider in
selecting settlements? A communitys readiness
to participate, the particular physical conditions
in a settlement, costs, land tenure issues and the
larger urban development context.
Achieving a good demonstration effect may also
be a factor in choosing the community, especially
if the project is going to be innovative in some
ways. Often, slums that are the easiest to upgrade
may be chosen frst. These include settlements
with transferable land titles, with well-established
2
Strengthening the communitys internal organization
The strengthening of a communitys internal
organization is an important step in the upgrad-
ing process. To be a key actor in upgrading, a
community must be able to ensure the process
meets the needs of all community members, not
just a few. And it must be able to negotiate with
local government planners, identify and articu-
late its needs and participate in all phases of the
planning, implementation and maintenance.
Sometimes, a new community organization may
have to be formed, where none yet exists (see
Quick Guide 6 on Community-based Organiza-
tions). But it gives a project a big head start if
there is some kind of community organization
already in place, which can become a partner in
the project and enable the community members
to fully participate in the improvement process.
In some cases, the project may include more
than one community organization, such as local
youth groups, minority or ethnic groups, parents
or elderly groups, or tenant groups. NGOs can
play a vital role in building the capacity of these
community organizations.
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An upgrading project can be a powerful
opportunity for communities to develop
their collective strengths, through practi-
cal concrete activities, and to build better
relationships with their local governments
at the same time.
A series of stakeholder meetings will be the
most useful tool in helping launch the upgrading
programme, make sure everyone knows what the
programme offers, and set up the mechanisms
that will be used during the projects planning and
implementation stages. It is important that these
meetings have an open agenda and an open time-
frame, so people feel free to speak their minds
and bring their ideas to the table. It should not
happen that somebody presents a pre-determined
upgrading package, that the stakeholders are only
allowed to approve or reject.
It sometimes helps if a range of schematic up-
grading options are presented by organizers and
discussed in the meeting, as a means of breaking
the ice and getting people thinking. Community
The next step is to conduct a detailed survey
and mapping of the community and draw up a
good settlement map, showing all the houses,
water points, amenities and problem areas. This
is a way to obtain accurate physical and socio-
economic information about it.
This information will play a vital part in the de-
velopment of the upgrading plans. In fact, com-
munity members know their settlement better
than any outsiders. So the best way to conduct
this kind of survey is to allow the community
organization to carry it out. This is another way
to increase peoples space for participation
and build their skills to understand their own
problems collectively. Some simple technical
support from NGOs or local government can
help residents to design a good questionnaire,
draw up accurate settlement maps and gather
data essential for upgrading. This survey and
3
Organizing meetings to get stakeholders involved
4
Surveying all aspects of the community
members and other stakeholders can then re-
spond to the ideas. With a little bit of sensitive
technical facilitating from community architects
and organizers, they can draft their own planning
options, with ideas about housing, infrastructure,
settlement layout and natural environment.
mapping process builds the capacities of com-
munity residents and at the same time stimulates
the interest of all members of the community and
strengthens their organizations.
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The more room communities have to bring
their needs and ideas into the process of
planning an upgrading project, the better
the quality of the fnal upgrading plans
will be. Ready-made plans imported from
outside are unlikely to be accepted by
people in the community, who have had
no stake in their preparation.
This step includes preparing the fnal physical
plans for the community layout and infrastructure,
designing houses and community amenities,
setting out the construction schedule and labour
contracting system, and setting up systems within
the community to maintain these improvements
after the project ends. This stage also includes the
preparation of fnancial plans, detailed cost esti-
mates and plans for fnancing the whole project:
How much everything will cost.
Who will pay for what.
How these funds will fow.
Who will purchase the materials.
How the fnances will be managed.
Its best when all this planning is carried out jointly,
by community members, their NGO supporters and
local government agencies. When communities
organize committees to manage various aspects of
this planning, it becomes a trial-run for the longer-
term management of the communitys collective
development in the years to come.
The more room there is for communities to take
charge of this planning, the greater the chances
are that the project will be a success.
PHOTO
24 - A
5
Designing all aspects of the upgrading plan
Communities as planners
Bonkai is a 30-year old squatter community of 566
households, who used to live in extremely crowded
conditions in central Bangkok, on public land belong-
ing to the Crown Property Bureau. After a big fre
destroyed half the settlement in 2001, the people
used the crisis to negotiate a renewable 30-year
community lease for their land and began making
plans to upgrade the whole settlement in phases,
with support from the Baan Mankong Community
Upgrading programme.
In order to squeeze so many households onto
such small land, the community worked with young
architects to draft an extremely effcient layout plan
with narrow lanes and compact 3-story row-houses
built on tiny plots of only 24 square meters. To
keep the new houses as cheap as possible, they
designed an extra-tall upper foor with a half-loft,
which can later be made into a full third foor. These
fully-fnished houses cost $5,500. The community
opted to use a contractor to build the frst phase
houses, but to reduce house costs, the second
and third phase houses will be built by community
members themselves.
Not only physical upgrading:
When communities prepare their
own plans for upgrading their own
settlements, it is possible for the
upgrading process to cover much
more than just the physical aspects
of their communities like housing
and infrastructure. If the upgrading
can also cover environmental
development, social development and
economic developments, this more
holistic kind of upgrading can lead to
better lives for people in many ways.
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The community process shouldnt stop when the
physical work of upgrading is done. The long-
term maintenance of the improvements is also
an important task for communities to take on.
A good upgrading project can fll communities
with confdence and inspire them to go on to plan
and carry out all kinds of further development
projects not only physical improvements, but
social and economic improvements such as com-
munity enterprises, community-managed welfare
schemes, sports facilities, health care systems,
youth activities and elderly groups. Continued
community meetings can become a platform for
planning these next-stage improvements in the
communitys life hopefully in collaboration with
their local governments and NGO supporters.
This is the exciting stage where the work actually
gets done, and a slum is transformed into a clean,
well-serviced new neighbourhood. During this
stage, houses are built or improved, drains are
laid, water pipe networks are buried and hooked
up to individual houses, lanes are paved, electric
poles are put up, trees are planted and fences
are painted.
All this work can be done in different ways. At one
extreme, all the work can be contracted out by
tender, to a builder or an NGO. Or at the other
extreme, the entire project can be built by the
community members themselves, who contribute
their labour and manage everything collectively.
Often, the fnal work is done by a combination
of the two, with the people doing as much of the
work as possible themselves, and contracting out
only the more heavy or specialized or technically
diffcult tasks in the upgrading work.
6
Carrying out the actual upgrading work
7
Continue meetings as a platform for further work
PHOTO
25 - A
When communities do it
When the Ros Reay community in Phnom Penh
began upgrading their settlement, the frst step
was to move back fences and compound walls
and straighten the lanes to make room for laying
an underground sewage and storm drain sys-
tem, which involved enormous labour. A system
was worked out by which each household was
responsible for digging up the ditch in front of
their house. Many dug by lantern-light late into
the night. The fnished drains were given their
frst test during a heavy rainstorm. Everyone
was out under their umbrellas, all eyes on the
manholes, through which the water was reported
to fow beautifully! The lanes were then paved,
after which trees and fowers were planted along
the lane-edges, and all the houses were freshly
painted in coordinated colours.
Source: ACHR
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Questions you should ask about your upgrading project:
1 About getting started
2
About setting up the project
3
About carrying out the work
4
About monitoring, evaluating and learning
How are lessons of the project being noted
and recorded? Who does this?
How are lessons being incorporated?
What are the indicators for evaluations?
Check list
How does it ft into the citys comprehen-
sive development plans?
How does it consider scaling-up?
Does it address issues of sustainability?
Is it sensitive to cultural factors?
Do the institutional and staff capacities
match the scope and scale of the
project?
Is the location appropriate to upgrade?
Does the organizational structure include suffcient
coordination and political support?
Is it fnancially viable? Are there suffcient fnancial
resources to carry through the programme?
Is the scale affordable to the households, and are
they willing to pay for the improvements?
Will laws and regulations need to be modifed?
What will be the tenure arrangements?
What are the basic issues and key trade-offs
in the upgrading programme?
What kind of institutional structure will man-
age the project?
Have the different needs of women and
men in the community been appropriately
considered?
How will renters and landlords in the settle-
ment be dealt with in the project?
What are the policies and procedures for
realignment, readjustment and legalization
of individual lots?
What are options for fnancing the installation of
basic services and infrastructure?
How will costs be recovered?
How will costs be collected?
How will house improvement loans be structured:
cash/materials, collateral, repayments?
What will happen if people default on their
loans?
What service standards will be used?
What are alternative service options, like using
small-scale informal sector providers?
Does the process support local initiatives in
the construction process?
How to assure continuity of staff and com-
munity representatives?
What are the roles of various public sector stake-
holders during construction?
What is the role of NGOs and community members
during implementation?
Source: Upgrading Urban Communities website
Whose interests are being served? Who pays?
How will the reporting system be set up?
What are the policies on displacement and spill-
over?
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But in reality, the resettlement of informal
communities is sometimes unavoidable.
When resettlement is the only option, it should
always happen with the agreement of most
residents. Without agreement, resettlement can
easily become forced eviction. In recent years,
large projects in many Asian cities have displaced
thousands of poor households. Many of these
projects are funded by multilateral lending agen-
cies like ADB and World Bank which have strict
guidelines to ensure people are resettled properly
and voluntarily. Even so, most of these projects
have not gained the cooperation or support of
those being resettled:
India: the Kolkata Canal Improvement
Project, the Jumuna River Banks Redevel-
opment in Delhi
Pakistan: Lyari River Expressway
Bangladesh: Slum clearance in Dhaka
Indonesia: the River Flood Control project
in Surabaya; the Jakarta Bay Reclamation
Project
Philippines: North and South Rail, Pasig
River Rehabilitation, Laguna Lake Ring
Road and Camanava Flood Control projects
in Metro Manila.
Providing alternative housing for ALL slum-dwellers in a city is something no govern-
ment alone can do. In the 1970s, the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board in India had a notion that
it could actually build enough subsidized housing units to re-house all the millions of slum-dwellers in
the state and thus eradicate slums. However, the construction of large numbers of new, subsidized
housing units proved to be far beyond their fnancial and managerial means, as it is beyond the means
of most governments around the world. The rate of urbanization and rural-urban migration in most
developing countries is just too high, the numbers are too great, the need for affordable housing is too
overwhelming, and the money is just not there to construct housing for all these poor urban citizens
neither for the slum-dwellers already in the city, nor the migrants who continue to pour in. (See
Quick Guide 1 on Urbanization)
Resettlement should not be
the first choice
Removing people from their homes in slums
and re-housing them on alternative sites
should never be the frst-choice option for
policy makers. Resettlement almost always
destroys social networks, breaks up com-
munities, dramatically reduces peoples
earning capacities, increases their transport
costs, interrupts their childrens schooling
and generally increases their poverty.
Because urban low-income housing is so
scarce, demolishing slums and relocating
their inhabitants causes a net loss of housing
units nobody can afford to replace, and com-
pounds the problem of housing shortages.
OPTION 2: Resettlement
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Experience shows that it costs 10 to 15
times more to develop new housing than
it costs to upgrade the housing, living
environments and settlements in which
people haved already live and have already
invested.
Source: www.achr.net
Managing the resettlement
process in a participatory way
The disruption caused by resettlement affects
everyone living in a slum very much. So its
important for whoever is managing the resettle-
ment that trust be quickly established. How
can this be done? If the residents oppose the
resettlement and refuse to leave their homes,
attempting to demolish their houses constitutes
forced eviction. The most essential trust-building
strategy is to involve the affected residents in
all aspects of planning for the move, from the
frst notice of eviction to the fnal move into new
houses. Community participation is essential to
avoid destroying peoples livelihoods and the
social networks which help them to survive. Only
with participation can a resettlement process
with minimal confict be achieved.
Participatory resettlement in Surabaya, Indonesia
The Indonesian government introduced the Kampung Improvement Programme (KIP) in the
1970s to upgrade informal settlements in situ. In Surabaya, several households in one kampung
had to be relocated, to reduce the settlements density and widen its roads and walkways.
The government allocated a plot of land next-door for relocating people in government-built
walk-up apartments. With technical assistance from the faculty and students of the Labora-
tory for Housing and Human
Settlements, Surabaya Institute
of Technology (ITS), the affected
households designed the apart-
ment buildings themselves.
Their scheme included wide cor-
ridors which recreated a commu-
nal street space on each foor
and a community market on the
ground foor, where stalls were
allocated to residents interested
in running food and vending
businesses.
Source: The Clean and Green Kampungs
of Surabaya: KIP in Surabaya. 1991
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Resettlement with partnership in Mumbai, India
Large-scale resettlement doesnt have to be
marked by confict and opposition. In order to
improve Mumbais suburban train system, some
slums close to the tracks were earmarked for
demolition under a World Bank-fnanced urban
transport project. With help from the local NGO
Society for the Promotion of Area Resource
Centres, the National Slum-dwellers Federation
and Mahila Milan s Collectives, 1,400 slum
households were able to negotiate good alterna-
tive housing with long-term secure tenure a few
kilometers away.
This resettlement process was managed entirely
by the affected people, in close partnership with
all the stakeholders. The process has become
an important demonstration model, showing
that when affected communities are key actors
in every step of the resettlement planning, the
fnal solution can meet both their own housing
needs and the development needs of the city
as a whole.
As part of the process, the residents surveyed
households in the railway settlements, num-
bered the houses, mapped the areas to be de-
molished, identifed needs and organized people
to form 27 cooperative housing societies. Each
society then visited the resettlement sites they
had taken part in identifying, and began building
the temporary housing they had designed and
would occupy, in phases, while their new apart-
ments in 5-story walk-up blocks were being built
by the state government (which would be partly
subsidized by the state and partly paid for by
the households themselves, through soft loans).
On the appointed day, the households locked
their old houses and carried their belongings
in municipal trucks to the temporary houses
on the new site.
Source: www.sparc-india.org
PHOTO
29 - A
A win-win solution:
The railway relocation project in
Mumbai shows that improving the
citys infrastructure need not be
done at the cost of poor people
being forcibly removed, but with
some investment of creativity and
cooperation, it is possible for the
city to provide secure, permanent
homes for the poor people who are
displaced by the project.
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Putting people at the centre of
the resettlement process
Most poor communities have no wish to obstruct
an important urban development project which
threatens to displace them if the project is
truely for the larger public good. But if their
needs are not respected, and the process to
relocate them to make way for that project is
done without their participation, they may not
be so willing to cooperate.
The direct, meaningful involvement of
residents in every stage of the resettlement
is the best way to ensure that the stressful
process of losing a home and relocating is
characterized by cooperation and not confict.
Residents should be involved in all aspects of
planning, including setting dates for moving,
organizing transport, choosing the relocation
site, designing the community layout, housing
units and infrastructure systems and manag-
ing the allottment process. Residents should
also be supported to organize their own small
area-based groups, which can manage the
move, help dismantle the old houses and carry
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No conflict necessary:
When the roadside squatter
community at Toul Svay Prey in
Phnom Penh, Cambodia, agreed
to cooperate with the municipal-
ity and voluntarily relocate their
housing to make way for a
drainage project, a highly col-
laborative resettlement project
was developed, in which the com-
munity members were key actors
in choosing the new land and
designing their new housing.
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with them any building materials which might be
useable in the new houses.
When affected communities are at the centre
of the planning, resettlement can be a friendly,
cooperative process which preserves peoples
livelihoods, social groupings and dignity. And the
resettlement negotiation process itself can be a
community-empowering process which builds
more cohesive, confdent and resourceful com-
munity organizations along the way.
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The resettlement site:
The land chosen can make or break a resettlement project
If the new land is of good quality and at a good
location, then the cooperation and participation of
affected residents will be easier to get. Attempts
to resettle people to land that is far from job op-
portunities will always be met with hostility and lead
to declining levels of trust between residents and
government authorities.
Within all towns and cities, tracts of vacant land
are often held by various public sector bodies.
Negotiations between public agencies, community
groups and supporting NGOs to identify good land
for resettlement near the old slums can take a long
time. But it is possible for communities to end up
with a decent piece of land for resettlement if they
organize and prepare themselves, search for
land they like and have the stamina to see these
negotiations through.
Resettlement by people in Khon Kaen, Thailand
The two keys which ensure a success-
ful resettlement process are:
1
2
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For 40 years, a community of 146 poor labor-
ers, trash recyclers and pedicab drivers had
been renting flimsy timber rooms from the
Dynamo Saw Mill, on the outskirts of Khon
Kaen, in northeastern Thailand. Although the
rent kept going up, the landlord never made
any improvements to the rooms or provided any
basic services besides a few pit-latrines. The
people had to buy all their water and electricity
informally and at infated rates from nearby
shops. When the saw mill again raised the rent,
the community decided enough was enough
and began organizing themselves to plan and
carry out their own resettlement project, with
support from the Baan Mankong Upgrading
Programme. They frst set up a savings group,
formed a cooperative and began searching for
affordable land nearby. With a loan from the
Community Organizations Development Institute
(CODI), they bought a small piece of land, which
they subdivided into plots and then developed,
using the Baan Mankong infrastructure subsidy,
doing all the work themselves.
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Quality: A suitable piece of land for
resettlement should provide the affect-
ed people with access to basic infrastructure
and should have no physical, environmental
or health hazards.
Location: The new land has to en-
able people to maintain or rebuild their
livelihoods, social networks and survival
strategies with minimal disruption, so the
site should be close to job opportunities,
with easy access to public services such as
schools, clinics, banks and transport links.
The belief that governments should take respon-
sibility for constructing housing for urban poor
households has been surprisingly durable. When
governments design, build and deliver low-income
housing (for sale or rent), it is seen as a way of
ensuring that the housing is of good quality and
developed in an orderly manner.
In order to make such public housing affordable
to the poor, though, the costs of constructing and
managing it must be heavily subsidized. Very few
city or national governments have the political will
or the fnancial resources to pay for this subsidy,
or to build enough housing to meet even a fraction
of the housing needs of the citys poor.
Despite these drawbacks, many governments
around the world have continued to pursue state-
built housing policies, and large developments
of subsidized public housing continue to appear
here and there in cities, while fnancial systems
to capture savings and generate resources to
pay for these housing programmes continue to
be set up.
The sad fact, though, is that the impact of these
conventional programmes has been minimal, their
ambitious targets have not been met and their
costs have been too high. Little or no per-unit
subsidy was given, so that more units could be
built. Often the new housing became too expensive
and could only be afforded by relatively well-off
households. At the same time, if a larger per-unit
subsidy was given, which would allow poorer
groups to afford them, this meant that relatively
few could be built.
Creating state-built slums
There have also been plenty of complaints
about inaccessibility, poor services, bad de-
sign and sub-standard construction in many
state-built housing programmes. In many
projects, people move in and out very rapidly,
with higher-income groups invariably moving
in and the poor moving out and returning to
squatter settlements.
Where this gentrifcation has not happened,
the housing often falls into disrepair and
becomes a new kind of slum, due to lack of
maintenance by the state and lack of involve-
ment by residents. In India, for example, a
large part of the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance
Boards slum upgrading programme in the
late 1980s was to renovate the crumbling
apartment blocks it had built itself to resettle
slum-dwellers just 15 years earlier.
OPTION 3: Government -
built new public housing
Public housing that is built by the
state is still an option, but there is
increasing evidence around the world
that this solution is too expensive for
most governments.
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Can governments
provide housing for all?
Experience shows that large-scale
public housing delivery
is not a solution
1
In European cities, there is a long history of public housing schemes being developed to
resettle large numbers of inner-city slum-dwellers. But these days, many of the high-rise
public housing estates, built at low cost and usually in their own isolated corners of the
city, are often plagued with endemic poverty, crime, economic and social exclusion, ethnic
and religious tensions, and fast declining physical environments and local economies.
From public housing in Singapore and Hong Kong
2
Large-scale programmes to construct subsidized, standardized, fully-complete housing units
for existing and future poor households are too costly for the governments in most developing
and developed countries. Public resources are better spent on improving the existing stock of
affordable housing (no matter how sub-standard) and implementing a range of innovative and
fexible approaches to create new stock. Where did the idea then come from that governments
should be the chief providers of affordable housing to the urban poor?
True believers in state-built public housing policies will frequently bring up the success
stories of Hong Kong and Singapore in the 1960s and early 1970s, to support their claim
that governments can supply decent, affordable housing to all the poor in their cities.
What they wont tell you is that Hong Kong was a show-case colony and that Singapore
is a city state, neither of which had to work within tight public budgets, like much of the
rest of the world. Unlike virtually all other Asian cities, the affuent Singapore has no
countryside and therefore no rural migrants constantly fowing into the city, putting a strain
on the urban housing stock. And in Hong Kong, public housing still constitutes 50% of
the citys housing stock, but instead of being praised for this, the governments continued
high production of subsidized fats for sale has been blamed for the collapse of the citys
property prices and private housing market. Mass production of public housing in the
context of economic globalization has implications that nobody predicted when polices
of public housing construction were frst advocated.
From public housing in Europe
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The benefits of sites-and-services
The state as facilitator, not provider:
Sites-and-services are an attempt to strike a
balance between minimum, socially-acceptable
housing conditions and what their low-income
benefciaries can afford. In these projects, the state
plays a lesser role than it does in fully-built public
housing.
Sites-and-services enable governments to share respon-
sibility for providing housing with low-income groups and
thus save scarce public resources.
Because they are planned, the provision of infrastructure
and services is cheaper to build and maintain.
The benefciaries are in control of the pace and form of
house construction.
They can reach large numbers of people, while maintaining
some minimum safety and public health standards.
They can be useful in accommodating essential resettle-
ment projects.
If properly planned and implemented, they can provide a
fexible way of meeting future housing needs.
As a reaction to most governments inability to
provide adequate, ready-built shelter to all the
urban poor households who need it, there has
been a shift in thinking around the world, from
seeing the state as provider of housing to seeing
it as a facilitator of the self-help housing efforts
by the poor themselves. One form this facilitation
takes is when governments provide plots and
basic services in a planned manner, but let people
build their own houses on that land. These are
called sites-and-services schemes.
recovery approach, the people may be expected to
repay the costs of land and development gradually,
but in other projects, these are provided free, as
a public subsidy. How much the projects provide
to the benefciary households varies: in some,
only an empty plot is provided, while in others,
an already-built foor slab with utility connections,
roofs or one-room cores houses might be pro-
vided. Utility services also vary, from communal pit
latrines and shared water standpipes at the most
basic, to full piped services to individual plots.
OPTION 4: Sites-and-services
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The strategy in sites-and-services
is to share the responsibility for
providing decent, affordable hous-
ing in the city, between the state
and the people. The government
agencies take responsibility only
for preparing the plots and bring-
ing in certain basic infrastructure.
The individual plots are then sold,
leased or allotted to the benefciary
households, whose responsibil-
ity it is to build their own house
sometimes with soft loans, basic
building materials and technical
support provided by the project,
and sometimes on their own. In
some projects which take a cost-
1
2
3
4
5
5 ways to make sites-and-services
schemes work better:
Provide land in a good location. The location of a sites-and-services project can make it
a success or a disaster. Land should be close to employment centres, in order to offer viable
earning opportunities for people who live there. Land should also be close to existing infra-
structure trunk grids, to reduce the costs of extending these grids to the project.
Recognize that sites dont have to be huge or at the city edge. Sites-and-services
schemes are often developed on large pieces of land at the outer edges of the city, where
large numbers of house plots, schools, recreational and social amenities can be developed
in a planned way. But in reality, most cities have many smaller available sites right inside the
city, with easier access to existing infrastructure and services. These inner-city sites can be
developed more cheaply, without having to invest in costly trunk infrastructure extensions.
Keep plot sizes small. That way, more people can be accommodated and costs kept low.
When determining plot sizes, its good to plan for meeting a variety of needs and to study how
low-income households use their domestic space and how much land they need, minimally.
Existing standards and bylaws are often inappropriate and have to be challenged, to make
projects affordable to the poor and prevent them from being gentrifed in future.
Reduce services costs through good planning. The cost of laying infrastructure within
sites-and-services schemes can be greatly reduced by planning rectangular housing plots
with narrow frontages. Square plots are the most uneconomical. The design of roads, lanes,
water supply, sewage and electricity should be decided according to how affordable and how
socially acceptable they are to the people who live there. As in all low-income housing, the
key to making this happen is the full participation of benefciaries in planning, implementation
and maintenance.
Develop incrementally to reduce peoples costs.
One way to make sites-and-services projects more af-
fordable and more fexible is to develop them in phases,
starting with basic infrastructure that can be improved
over time. For this to work, you have to know how minimal
to make your infrastructure, to ensure peoples health,
safety and well-being. Projects should plan for schools,
clinics, religious buildings and police posts, even if they
are not provided immediately. This incremental approach
is especially useful in sites-and-services schemes targeting
vulnerable migrants new to the city.
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The problems of sites-and-
services
Sites-and-Services problems in Karachi, Pakistan
Starting in the 1960s, many sites-and-services projects began having serious problems. Many feel that
the sites-and-services approach is based on some misconceptions about what urban poor households
need, what they can afford and what they can achieve. Despite their good intentions, many sites-
and-services schemes have failed to be affordable and accessible to the lowest-income groups who
were their targets. Plus, many sites-and-services schemes are plagued by poor cost recovery. At a
time when they have lost jobs and income after moving into the scheme, residents must also make
payments for their land and pay to construct a new house. Transport, water and electricity costs only
add to this burden. Cost recovery problems also arise when services are delayed, repayment collection
methods dont work and political will to enforce repayment is absent.
In the early 1970s, the Karachi Development
Authority (KDA) developed a large sites-and-
services scheme to provide housing to poor
households. Metroville I included some 4,113
plots, designed to accommodate more than
35,000 people. The land where Metroville was
sited was considered to be an ideal location
for poor households to be right next to a
large existing squatter settlement and close
to an industrial estate and to higher-income
neighborhoods of the city, offering a variety of
employment opportunities.
But it took the KDA four years, from the time
the plots were allotted, to provide basic infra-
structure like water supply and electricity. Even
10 years later, in a city with such acute housing
shortages, only 700 out of the 4,113 plots had
been occupied. What went wrong? Research in
1984 revealed that some poor households who
had been allocated plots in Metroville couldnt
wait four years for a new house and had sold off
their plots to higher-income groups who already
had housing elsewhere in the city. Others found
it too expensive to pay both the monthly install-
ments to KDA for land and infrastructure and
the cost of building their new houses.
Meanwhile, as Metroville remained unoccu-
pied, the nearby squatter settlements of Baldia
and Orangi continued to grow and thrive, and
now house over a million urban poor people.
Source: Aliani and Yap, 1990
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Sites-and-Services success in Hyderabad, Pakistan
PHOTO
37 - A
Not quite
as cheap
as we
thought
At some point, the urban planners at the
Hyderabad Development Authority (HDA)
began asking themselves why their legal sites-
and-services housing schemes were failing
to attract the poor, while the illegal squatter
settlements organized next-door by informal
power-brokers were fourishing.
One thing they realized was that while govern-
ment schemes required time-consuming paper
work, a person could approach the local power
broker in a squatter settlement and occupy a
new plot the same day. They also found that
since the land in squatter settlements came
without infrastructure, it cost less and was af-
fordable. As the settlement developed, people
worked together to install infrastructure and
services incrementally. They also built their
houses incrementally. At the same time, the
informal process could be very exploitative, with
local strongmen selling occupied plots to higher
bidders, evicting the frst households.
The HDA planners decided to adopt the squat-
ters approach and launched the Incremental
Development Scheme in the 1980s. Interested
poor households had to stay in a designated
reception area for two weeks, after which
they were given a plot. Only tanker water was
provided, and the household paid only for the
land. The only condition was that they live on
their new plot continuously. Titles of absentee
occupants were revoked. As people settled in,
they were encouraged to organize themselves
within lanes and decide what infrastructure
they wanted frst. Residents managed con-
struction of infrastructure themselves and paid
the HDA for bulk infrastructure delivered to the
edge of the settlement.
Within a year, the settlement had all basic
services such as water, sanitation, electricity
and paved roads. It also had schools and
clinics and several residents had opened
manufacturing and retail businesses. By
adopting the strategies poor communities use
to provide their own housing and by removing
the exploitative elements of that process, HDA
succeeded where others had failed.
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Developing and implementing strategies which set a target of
housing all the poor households in the whole city
If you decide to take a city-wide approach in solving
low-income housing problems, you will have your
hands full. Besides coping with the cumulative
backlog from years of housing shortages and
upgrading all the under-serviced areas in the city,
you will also have to address future housing needs.
Current needs for affordable housing in most cities
are alone so overwhelming that the challenge of
meeting future housing needs can seem an impos-
sible task. In fact, solving all the housing problems
in a city is something that is possible. However, if
you want to do it in a city-wide way several
things are needed:
be shared and spread around, so that others need
not re-invent the wheel.
2
3
4
Solving housing problems in our
cities is possible:
But to do it, all the stakeholders the local
and national governments, the aid agencies,
the support NGOs, the technicians and
the communities themselves, need to
be involved and need to fnd space
to collaborate and develop innovative
solutions.
OPTION 5:
City-wide housing strategies
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1
More horizontal links between poor
communities: Networks of mutual support
and mutual learning between poor communities
within countries and between countries are essen-
tial. Some of the most innovative housing initiatives
in Asian cities now are not coming from engineers,
architects, politicians or bureaucrats but from
poor communities themselves. When they develop
something that works, those experiences need to
More room for innovation in the
policy environment: Local and national
policies on land and housing need to be loosened
and adjusted, to make room for innovation in how
the poor can access land and housing, and how
the poor settlements which already exist can be
improved in practical and sustainable ways.
More public investment in infrastruc-
ture: This investment, across the city, can
also be stimulated by adjustments to urban and
national policies and regulations.
More investment in building vision
and capacity: To reach the large scale
that is essential to keep low-income housing prob-
lems in cities from getting worse, huge investment
is needed in the housing itself, and in building
the capacities of communities, architects, NGOs,
governments and all the other stakeholders to
implement large-scale housing initiatives.
City-wide solutions to water in Mandaue, Philippines
It is also possible that large-scale transforma-
tions of slums on a country-wide scale
can come about by eliminating some of the
change-preventing aspects of land-markets,
land policies, infrastructure extension planning
and the design and administration of subsidies.
The Community Mortgage Programme in the
Philippines, for example, is a subsidized land
The industrial city of Mandaue, near Cebu in the
southern part of the Philippines, makes a good
illustration of how a little regulatory reform and
innovation can encourage investment in infra-
structure at a small scale, and then stimulate
change at a larger scale.
A thriving federation of poor squatter communi-
ties in Mandaue (which is part of the national
Philippines Urban Poor Federation) runs six
large community savings schemes under their
San Roque Parish Multipurpose Cooperative.
This cooperative provides a legal umbrella for
a number of community-managed development
projects in land acquisition, employment, sav-
ings and credit, community provision stores and
the construction of common toilets and access
roads in some settlements.
In most of these settlements, access to water
is a huge problem. Up to 500 households must
share a single water tap and the rates they
pay for water are expensive. One of the San
Roque Cooperatives most urgent projects has
been to install and manage community water
taps, using the Metro Cebu Water Districts
Community Faucet Programme, which gives
poor communities permission to tap into the
mains and get water at a low cost, as long as
they lay the pipes, install the taps and pay for
it all themselves. Responsibility for planning,
implementing, and managing the water taps
rests entirely with the residents.
Community groups borrow money from their
savings schemes to buy the pipes and materi-
als, and undertake the often diffcult task of
negotiating with factory-owners and subdivi-
sion-developers for permission to run water
pipes across their land. The community tap
programme has sparked off other commu-
nity-built improvements, including communal
toilets, road-paving and small community
stores funded by the profts earned from the
communal taps.
and housing loan programme which helps
squatter communities to buy the land they have
been occupying and provides fnancing for
infrastructure improvements. This programme
relies on intermediaries such as NGOs, which
help with the process of buying and registering
land on behalf of the communities.
Source: web.mit.edu/urbanupgrading/
Country-wide solutions to land and housing
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City-wide slum upgrading in Thailand
Baan Mankong is achieving this national-
scale solution only by unleashing the energy
and creativity that already exists within poor
communities, by supporting thousands of
settlement upgrading initiatives that are totally
designed, built and managed by the urban poor
themselves, in collaboration with their local
governments and other local actors.
Within this national upgrading programme,
households in illegal settlements can negoti-
ate to get legal land tenure in several ways.
They can negotiate to buy the private land
they occupy (with soft loans from CODI), to
get a long-term community lease where the
land is publicly-owned, to relocate to another
piece of land provided by the same agency
on whose land they are now squatting, or to
redevelop their housing on a portion of the
land they occupy now and return the rest to
the land owner, in exchange for secure tenure
on their portion.
Baan Mankong encourages municipalities to
collaborate with urban poor organizations in
these upgrading initiatives in different ways. In
some cities, local governments have provided
land for resettling households living in scat-
tered mini squatter settlements around the
city, and leased this land to the new commu-
nities on a 30-year community lease. These
kinds of solutions can only develop when
there is a city-wide process in which urban
poor communities are the key actors.
As of December 2006, 773 community upgrad-
ing projects were fnished or underway in 158
Thai cities, affecting 45,504 households.
One of Asias most prominent and most suc-
cessful city-wide slum housing initiatives is the
Baan Mankong (secure housing) programme,
a national slum and squatter settlement up-
grading programme launched in 2003 which
operates not only in large cities but also in most
of Thailands smaller urban centres. It targets
the upgrading of the housing, infrastructure,
living environments and land tenure security of
300,000 urban poor households, in 2,000 poor
communities in 200 Thai cities and towns.
The Baan Mankong programme is imple-
mented by the Community Organizations
Development Institute (CODI), an autonomous
public organization under the Ministry of Social
Development and Human Security. The pro-
gramme provides infrastructure subsidies and
soft housing loans directly to informal com-
munities, which survey, design and implement
their own housing and settlement improvement
projects in the same place wherever pos-
sible, or on land very close by. Support is pro-
vided not only to community organizations but
also to their networks, to work with municipal
authorities and other local stakeholders and
with national agencies to develop city-wide
upgrading plans in each of these 200 towns
and cities, which should solve all their housing
problems within 3-5 years.
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What do you need to go up
to city-wide scale?
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
POLITICAL WILL: Solving housing problems on a city-wide scale requires political will on the
part of government and on the part of society as a whole.
INTEGRATED APPROACHES AND A CITY VISION: Long-term, sustainable housing planning
has to be driven by need, and needs are different in different areas.
A SUPPORTIVE LOCAL POLICY ENVIRONMENT: Including a good information base on
the citys informal settlements. Regulatory and procedural bottlenecks, building and land-use
bylaws which make it diffcult for poor communities to plan and implement their own self-help
housing must be adjusted and made more fexible.
THE RIGHT NATIONAL REGULATORY FRAMEWORK: There has to be a national regulatory
framework that stimulates on-site upgrading and provision of services for the poor, including
effective land and housing rights and land registration systems, fexible infrastructure standards,
formal planning which recognizes informal participation, clear responsibilities for after-project
supervision and evaluation, and regulations which make it easier for fnance institutions to
lend to the poor.
RESPONSIVE LAND AND HOUSING POLICIES: There have to be mechanisms to release
un-used public land for low-income housing in cities for todays and for future needs.
POLICIES TO SECURE LAND TENURE: Policies and procedures to help communities in
informal settlements to regularize and secure their land tenure are essential. (See Quick
Guide 3 on Land)
MECHANISMS FOR FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY: Subsidy systems and cost recovery
strategies that are clear and transparent make a housing programme more fnancially sustain-
able. (See Quick Guide 5 on Housing Finance)
STRATEGIC ALLIANCES: Big housing problems are impossible for any one group to solve
alone. City-wide solutions require partnership, and should include poor communities, local
authorities, utility companies, land owners, formal and informal land developers, NGOs,
academics, religious groups and the private-sector.
STRONG AND WELL-COORDINATED INSTITUTIONS: Developing institutional arrangements
in cities which effectively support city-wide housing solutions requires strong coordination that
is acceptable to all parties.
TECHNICAL CAPACITY: City-wide housing solutions require a wide range of special ser-
vices: social and technical support to communities, participatory planning, architecture and
engineering, guidance on appropriate technologies, programme coordination, project and
contract management, construction skills that match needs in informal areas, engineering and
construction, affordable building materials and micro-fnance services.
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References
P U B L I C A T I O N S
Anana, Ted, 2003, Struggling for Housing Rights in Asian Cities, Hurights Osaka, www.hurights.
or.jp/asia-pacifc/no_34/02.htm
Anzorena, Eduardo Jorge S.J., 1996 (2nd edition), Housing the Poor: The Asian Experience,
Pagtambayayong Foundation in Cebu, Philippines.
Anzorena, Eduardo Jorge S.J. & Fernandez, Francisco L., 2004, Housing the Poor in the New
Millennium, Pagtambayayong Foundation, Cebu, Philippines.
Burra, Sundar, 1999, Resettlement and Rehabilitation of the Urban Poor: The Story of Kanjur Marg,
DPU Working Paper No. 99, Development Planning Unit, University College London, U.K.
Erguden S and Precht R., December 2006, Slum Upgrading and Prevention in Asia-Pacifc,
Progress and Challenges, Thematic Paper, Asia-Pacifc Ministerial Conference on Housing and
Human Settlements, New Delhi.
Hardoy, Jorge E. & Satterthwaite, David, 1989, Squatter Citizen, Earthscan Publications,
London.
Hasan, Arif, 2000, Housing for the Poor: Failure of Formal Sector Strategies, City Press, Karachi.
Imperato, I., Diagonal Urbana & Ruster, J., 1999, Participation in Upgrading and Services for the
Urban Poor: Lessons From Latin America, World Bank, Washington D.C.
Local Government of Kotamadya Surabaya, in cooperation with the Directorate General for Hu-
man Settlements, Ministry of Public Works, Indonesia, 1991, The Clean and Green Kampungs of
Surabaya: Kampung Improvement Programme Supporting Housing by People.
Mitlin, Diana & Satterthwaite, David (eds.), 2004, Empowering Squatter Citizen: Local Government,
Civil Society and Urban Poverty Reduction, Earthscan Publications, London.
Payne G. and Majale M., 2004, The Urban Housing Manual, Making Regularatory Frameworks
Work for the Poor, Earthscan, London and Sterling, VA.
Rile, E. , Fiori, J. & Ramirez, R., 2001, Favela Bairro and a new generation of housing programmes
for the urban poor, Geoforum, 32 (4).
UNESCAP, 1996, Living in Asian Cities: The impending crisis, causes, consequences and al-
ternatives for the future, Report of the Second Asia-Pacifc Urban Forum, Economic and Social
Commission for Asia and the Pacifc, United Nations, New York.
UN-HABITAT, 2007. Policy Makers Guide to Womens Land, Property and Housing Across the
World, Nairobi.
UN-HABITAT, 2006, Enabling Shelter Strategies, Review of experience from two decades of
implementation, Nairobi.
UN-HABITAT, 2006, Water and Sanitation for Small Urban Centres, Earthscan Publications,
London.
UN-HABITAT, 2004, Urban Land for All, Nairobi.
UN-HABITAT, 2003, Slums of the World: The face of urban poverty in the new millennium? Working
Paper, Nairobi.
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W E B S I T E S
Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR). www.achr.net
Best Practices and Local Leadership Programme (BLP). www.blpnet.org
Builders Without Borders (BWB). http://builderswithoutborders.org
Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE). www.cohre.org
Cities Alliance. www.citiesalliance.org/citiesalliancehomepage.nsf
CITYNET. http://citynet-ap.org/en
City Poverty (DFID UK). www.citypoverty.net
Community Organizations Development Institute (CODI), Thailand. www.codi.or.th
Global Development Research Centre (GDRC). www.gdrc.org
Habitat International Coalition (HIC). www.hic-net.org
Homeless International, U.K. www.homeless-international.org
id21. www.id21.org/urban
infoCity. www.infocity.org
Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS), Netherlands. www.ihs.nl
International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), London. www.iied.org
Lumanti Support Group for Shelter, Nepal. www.lumanti.com.np
Partnership for Sustainable Development. www.un.org/esa/sustdev/partnership/partner-
ships.htm
Practical Action (formerly ITDG). www.practicalaction.org
Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC), India. www.sparc-india.org
Toolkit participation. www.toolkitparticipation.nl
United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacifc (UNESCAP).
http://www.unescap.org
Housing the Urban Poor: A project of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission
for Asia and the Pacifc (UNESCAP). www.housing-the-urban-poor.net
United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT). www.un-habitat.org
Upgrading Urban Communities (Cities Alliance). http://web.mit.edu/urbanupgrading
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An annotated list of key websites: For an annotated list of websites which offer more
information about the key issues discussed in this Quick Guide series, please visit the Hous-
ing the Urban Poor website, and follow the links to Organizations database.
www.housing-the-urban-poor.net
UN-HABITAT, 2003, The Challenge of Slums: Global Report on Human Settlements 2003,
Earthscan, London and Sterling, VA.
Williams, B. and Barter, P., 2003, Double jeopardy: The link between transport and evictions,
Habitat Debate,7 (3).
More information can be found on the website www.housing-the-urban-poor.net
United Nations Human Settlements
Programme (UN-HABITAT)
P.O.Box 30030 GPO 00100
Nairobi, Kenya
Fax: (254-20) 7623092 (TCBB Offce)
web site: www.un-habitat.org
United Nations Economic and Social Commission
for Asia and the Pacifc (UNESCAP)
Fax: (66-2) 288 1056/1097
Email: [email protected]
Web site: www.unescap.org
The pressures of rapid urbanization and economic growth in Asia and the Pacifc have resulted in
growing numbers of evictions of urban poor from their neighborhoods. In most cases they are relocated
to peripheral areas far from centres of employment and economic opportunities. At the same time over
500 million people now live in slums and squatter settlements in Asia and the Pacifc region and this
fgure is rising.
Local governments need policy instruments to protect the housing rights of the urban poor as a critical
frst step towards attaining the Millennium Development Goal on signifcant improvement in the lives of
slum-dwellers by 2020. The objective of these Quick Guides is to improve the understanding by policy
makers at national and local levels on pro-poor housing and urban development within the framework
of urban poverty reduction.
The Quick Guides are presented in an easy-to-read format structured to include an overview of trends
and conditions, concepts, policies, tools and recommendations in dealing with the following housing-
related issues:
(1) Urbanization: The role the poor play in urban development (2) Low-income housing: Approaches
to help the urban poor fnd adequate accommodation (3) Land: A crucial element in housing the urban
poor (4) Eviction: Alternatives to the whole-scale destruction of urban poor communities (5) Housing
fnance: Ways to help the poor pay for housing (6) Community-based organizations: The poor as
agents of development (7) Rental housing: A much neglected housing option for the poor.
This Quick Guide 2 describes ways of addressing low-income housing. It reviews well-tried methods
of improving the housing environments of people living in slums and informal settlements, and
providing adequate housing for future generations living in Asias cities. The guide examines con-
siderations needed to improve these settlements, and to produce housing at a city-wide scale.
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M A KERS
cities
LOW-INCOME HOUSING:
Approaches to help the urban poor
find adequate accommodation
housing
the
in Asian
poor
2
United Nations
ESCAP

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