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Third world housing
HABI¹A¹ IN¹¸. Vol. 22, No. 3, pp. 209—213, 1998 ( 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd All rights reserved. Printed in Great Britain 0197-3975/98 $19.00#0.00
PII: S0197-3975(98)00006-X
Third World Housing: The Future Is Now RANVINDER S. SANDHU* Department of Sociology, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, India BRIAN C. ALDRICH Department of Sociology, Winona State University, P.O. Box 5838, Winona, MN 55987-5838, USA
ABSTRACT Third World housing policy is undergoing a process of change. Increasing emphasis is being placed on the role of the market. This special section of Habitat International consists of certain papers on housing policies in various places which were presented at the recent Housing in the 21st Century: Looking Forward Conference at Radisson Plaza Hotel Alexandria. The papers review housing policy developments in South Africa, China, Ghana, Zambia and Vietnam. ( 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Keyword: housing policy
INTRODUCTION Just a few years ago the housing experts at the World Bank were met with heavy resistance while promoting the benefits of market-based housing provision for the poor and low income group in developing countries. Resistance came from the Socialist camps in the Second and Third Worlds, as well as from large segments of the First World. Then suddenly, within a decade, the market is in! The Eastern European countries are looking back to the period before the Soviet occupation to try and find a legal structure for a private housing market. Welfare parties in Europe find housing too expensive to be carried by the state and begin a serious process of privatization. Provision of local housing in China begins to fit the model of the ‘‘Growth Machine’’ made popular by Logan and Molotch (l987). Traditional African practices in the provision of housing are suddenly subjected to the scrutiny of comparison with market models. And certainly the least expected event was the demise of apartheid in South Africa and the sudden prioritization of housing for the burgeoning Black and Colored populations. But perhaps the biggest surprise of all is the recently instituted World Bank practice of sending staff to live in squatter settlements in order to experience the local situation. The articles which follow are revisions of presentations made in the Future Governance and Housing Policy in Developing Countries sessions, at the Housing * Correspondence to: Ranvinder S. Sandhu, Department of Sociology, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, India and Brian C. Aldrich, Department of Sociology, Winona State University, P.O. Box 5838, Wilnona, MN 55987-5838, U.S.A.
209
210
Ranvinder S. Sandhu and Brian C. Aldrich
in the 21st Century: Looking Forward conference held during 11—14 June 1997 at Radisson Plaza Hotel Alexandria, Virginia, U.S.A. The conference was co-chaired by Pat Edward and Ted Koebel of Virginia School of Technology. This event brought together about 180 researchers from some 25 countries and all continents. Research Committee 43 (RC 43), Housing and the Built Environment, of the International Sociological Association sponsored the international conference. A noteworthy feature of RC 43 is that it has been publishing selected papers presented in its sessions for a number of years. Gower, Duke University, Greenwood, Sage, Zed Books, B.R. Publishing and Rawat have published edited works. We are very thankful for the work of Charles Choguill, editor of Habitat International, for providing us with the opportunity to present papers from these sessions in a special edition. R. S. Sandhu and B. C. Aldrich, as organizers of these sessions, asked a set of housing experts to each present a paper on a developing country about which they were knowledgeable. Each presenter was requested to review the history of housing conditions and housing policies in the country, examine current housing conditions and policies and then discuss implications for the 21st Century. These articles, on South Africa, China, Ghana, Zambia and Vietnam, are the best from that conference. THE PAPERS South Africa The future became the present faster than expected in South Africa. Peter Wilkinson writes that the ‘...problems of the past have profoundly shaped the situation to which the present policy seeks to respond.’ Approximately three million out of a total of 40 million South Africans are officially regarded as having inadequate shelter. Most of these are African. Wilkinson does an excellent job of describing how South African society ended up with this magnitude of a housing problem. Whatever the particular policies in that historical context, the actions of the South African government in the past have been, like so many other governments in developing countries, to simply refuse to acknowledge the existence of a housing problem. Only the form of the resistance, apartheid and its related ‘‘homelands’’ and ‘‘racial capitalism’’ policies, are peculiar to South Africa. Wilkinson describes how housing policies, which once had the goal of establishing orderly urbanization of the African population in single family, detached, freehold dwellings, failed to contain the Africans in an effort to perpetuate apartheid. Wilkinson calls the National Housing Subsidy Scheme, housing policy under the new regime, ‘‘state sponsored self-help’’. Subsidies are made available out of the national budget through the Minister of Housing for housing projects, cooperative projects and to communities or individual householders for the purpose of completing formal structures. The policy is part of the newly elected government’s strategy of bringing all of the major housing stakeholders into the process, including private housing contractors, co-operatives, communities and civic associations, to meet the commitment of making the process work and to contain housing costs. Wilkinson has some reservations about the new policy because it more or less leaves the current spatial and racial divisions in place. He is more concerned about whether or not the economy will continue to provide jobs and income at a level necessary to provide the household income required to complete the upgrading of housing at the individual household level. He is also very concerned about whether the public agencies involved in the process will be responsive to the populations they serve. This question can perhaps be rephrased into the question of how these agencies will respond under these conditions? To what extent will the distribution
Third World Housing: the Future is Now
211
of subsidies be carried out for the purposes of providing more adequate shelter and to what extent will it be handled as a political payoff to supporters of the current parties in power? Significant ethnic splits within the South African population may make for a troubled future for this policy. China Housing in China, as described by On-Kwok Lai, has moved from socialist to capitalist. Private property rights have been recognized and financial capital markets are promoted. Housing provision has moved from work units to private ownership. The problem shifts from too little housing in general, to the problem of too many expensive houses and too few for the low-income group. The significant changes in housing policy began as early as 1988 when the laws regarding private property rights were consolidated in the interest of urban redevelopment. In 1995, the independent local development corporations were set up and suddenly the future, and its attendant problems, was now. Capital for housing comes from a variety of sources, including foreign investments, bank loans, mortgages, reinvestment of work unit profits, municipal revenues, individual savings and overseas capital. Land speculation emerges, along with local taxation, ranging from 30—60% on capital gains! Lai points out that the major variation that emerges under this new system of housing provision is the abuse of distribution of housing which varies depending upon the character of the local regime. These are terms which have until now been reserved for the analysis of urban housing in the United States. Lai points out that not only are low-income groups left out in this process of the commodification of housing, but renters as well. Reform of the rental system has been slow, with subsequent problems in housing provision for this group. Ghana A. Graham Tipple and David Korboe have presented a compelling argument, in their description of housing in Ghana, for a restriction of the market approach. While Ghana may be typical of many other countries in regard to the ‘...inefficiency and failure of formal housing suppliers to perform to plan and the reliance of most householders on the informal sector,’ the fact that land in Ghana is owned by kin groups across several generations, makes the necessary alienation of land very problematical. Kin groups, like those in pre-industrial Japan, really function as corporations. Individuals do not have the right to alienate the resources of the family or group. Paramount chiefs hold most land. Other land is held by fetish priests, quarter heads or family heads. Ownership of houses is also controlled in this same fashion. This religio-social system of land ownership and housing provision is, they conclude, ‘...relatively inexpensive and potentially equitable’. The problem is this traditional system does not provide a basis for the operation of a credit system for improving the housing supply. The authors leave the contradiction between this traditional system and the emergence of a market system in which foreclosure laws operate an open question. Their main recommendation is that the rental market be freed from rent control and the increase in needed housing in urban areas be accommodated in that fashion. Zambia If Ghana is struggling with the issue of the impact of a shift to a market approach to the provision of housing, Zambia is much more typical of the problem, trying to find the matrix of new laws, customs and politics necessary to fuel a housing market. Their solution, under very stringent economic conditions, is to formalize the services of various non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such as Habitat
212
Ranvinder S. Sandhu and Brian C. Aldrich
for Humanity, to provide upgrading and housing services to local communities. The shift from a single party state, in which the local political party representative functioned as the conduit for housing services from a highly centralized state, to a multi-party set up with local elections, has disrupted the traditional flow of services. Attempts have been made to create local Residential Development Committees with locally elected members. The other change has involved trying to move away from the traditional policy of housing provision by private economic organizations or government bureaucracies in cooperation with the state. These parastatal housing projects are being privatized. Land tenure seems to be the biggest bone of contention in the Zambian situation. Like so many other societies where residents of the informal sector took over vacant land in and around cities to build housing and businesses, formalization of that process always brings up the issue of who owns the land and who wants the land for speculation and who is going to pay for its alienation. In Zambia, the newly created certificates of ownership and occupancy are not good enough to be used for collateral. Therefore, one can only conclude that the market cannot function without alienable land. The question that naturally arises in regard to housing provision in Zambia is, ‘In whose interests is the land being held?’ NGOs cannot solve that problem. »ietnam The article by Katharine Coit on slum upgrading in Ho-Chi-Minh City is something of a departure from the first four papers in that it deals with a single project. It goes a long ways towards providing insight about the prevalent local conditions in South Africa, Ghana and Zambia. She boldly addresses the key question in all of these cases: ‘How to distribute scarce resources when access to land is political?’ Like the Lai conclusions in China and the party factor in Zambia, there is considerable variation within the 18 different Peoples Councils in the urban area called Ho-Chi-Minh City. Therefore, when ARCI, a small Paris-based NGO with support from the European Union, set out to improve the housing, infrastructure and credit of a very poor sector of the city, the role of the local regime does not turn out to be quite so enabling. Coit reports that, similar to other findings of NGO projects, the ideal of gender equality was not met by the project. Males predominated in leadership positions. The project succeeded in upgrading the neighborhood, making it a more healthy and attractive place to live without displacing the residents. However, she reports, the larger community development failed, in part, because community participation was more pro forma than popular. The fundamental problem, she points out, is the lack of political and popular support for the redevelopment of a very lowincome, low-status neighborhood in the face of extensive housing needs by the broad middle and working classes. One conclusion that could be drawn from this project is that it is important to keep expectations within bounds. A small project in a very large city may not be very convincing to public officials, particularly when substantial additional funds for similar projects are not forthcoming. CONCLUSIONS These papers raise important technical questions about housing materials, production and costs. The cases also highlight problems associated with the organization of the housing provision process. There is no automatic route to a market mechanism which will provide enough housing to reach low-income groups. There are many political, cultural and bureaucratic impediments to the implementation of a housing market. The China case shows that moving to a capital-based housing
Third World Housing: the Future is Now
213
market does not provide all the housing needed. The Ghana case suggests, from the opposite side of the coin, that such a mechanism may not work if it destroys the traditional cultural basis for housing provision. The Zambian and Vietnamese cases illustrate the particular problems involved in depending upon NGOs for the provision of housing. Their concerns for low-income members of the community may be in conflict with the political interests and desires of more politically mobilized groups. The cases presented here and elsewhere (Aldrich and Sandhu, 1995), clearly indicate, however, that the provision of housing and related services has become more and more of a priority for the governments of developing countries. More technical assistance, more money and more political will are being brought to bear upon it. The cases presented here indicate that there is a learning curve across the world that is leading to more effective provision of housing. REFERENCES Aldrich, B. C. and Sandhu, R. S. (1995). Housing the ºrban Poor: Policy and Practice in Developing Countries. Zed Books, London. Logan, J. R. and Molotch, H. L. (1987) ºrban Fortunes: ¹he Political Economy of Place. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.
PII: S0197-3975(98)00006-X
Third World Housing: The Future Is Now RANVINDER S. SANDHU* Department of Sociology, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, India BRIAN C. ALDRICH Department of Sociology, Winona State University, P.O. Box 5838, Winona, MN 55987-5838, USA
ABSTRACT Third World housing policy is undergoing a process of change. Increasing emphasis is being placed on the role of the market. This special section of Habitat International consists of certain papers on housing policies in various places which were presented at the recent Housing in the 21st Century: Looking Forward Conference at Radisson Plaza Hotel Alexandria. The papers review housing policy developments in South Africa, China, Ghana, Zambia and Vietnam. ( 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Keyword: housing policy
INTRODUCTION Just a few years ago the housing experts at the World Bank were met with heavy resistance while promoting the benefits of market-based housing provision for the poor and low income group in developing countries. Resistance came from the Socialist camps in the Second and Third Worlds, as well as from large segments of the First World. Then suddenly, within a decade, the market is in! The Eastern European countries are looking back to the period before the Soviet occupation to try and find a legal structure for a private housing market. Welfare parties in Europe find housing too expensive to be carried by the state and begin a serious process of privatization. Provision of local housing in China begins to fit the model of the ‘‘Growth Machine’’ made popular by Logan and Molotch (l987). Traditional African practices in the provision of housing are suddenly subjected to the scrutiny of comparison with market models. And certainly the least expected event was the demise of apartheid in South Africa and the sudden prioritization of housing for the burgeoning Black and Colored populations. But perhaps the biggest surprise of all is the recently instituted World Bank practice of sending staff to live in squatter settlements in order to experience the local situation. The articles which follow are revisions of presentations made in the Future Governance and Housing Policy in Developing Countries sessions, at the Housing * Correspondence to: Ranvinder S. Sandhu, Department of Sociology, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, India and Brian C. Aldrich, Department of Sociology, Winona State University, P.O. Box 5838, Wilnona, MN 55987-5838, U.S.A.
209
210
Ranvinder S. Sandhu and Brian C. Aldrich
in the 21st Century: Looking Forward conference held during 11—14 June 1997 at Radisson Plaza Hotel Alexandria, Virginia, U.S.A. The conference was co-chaired by Pat Edward and Ted Koebel of Virginia School of Technology. This event brought together about 180 researchers from some 25 countries and all continents. Research Committee 43 (RC 43), Housing and the Built Environment, of the International Sociological Association sponsored the international conference. A noteworthy feature of RC 43 is that it has been publishing selected papers presented in its sessions for a number of years. Gower, Duke University, Greenwood, Sage, Zed Books, B.R. Publishing and Rawat have published edited works. We are very thankful for the work of Charles Choguill, editor of Habitat International, for providing us with the opportunity to present papers from these sessions in a special edition. R. S. Sandhu and B. C. Aldrich, as organizers of these sessions, asked a set of housing experts to each present a paper on a developing country about which they were knowledgeable. Each presenter was requested to review the history of housing conditions and housing policies in the country, examine current housing conditions and policies and then discuss implications for the 21st Century. These articles, on South Africa, China, Ghana, Zambia and Vietnam, are the best from that conference. THE PAPERS South Africa The future became the present faster than expected in South Africa. Peter Wilkinson writes that the ‘...problems of the past have profoundly shaped the situation to which the present policy seeks to respond.’ Approximately three million out of a total of 40 million South Africans are officially regarded as having inadequate shelter. Most of these are African. Wilkinson does an excellent job of describing how South African society ended up with this magnitude of a housing problem. Whatever the particular policies in that historical context, the actions of the South African government in the past have been, like so many other governments in developing countries, to simply refuse to acknowledge the existence of a housing problem. Only the form of the resistance, apartheid and its related ‘‘homelands’’ and ‘‘racial capitalism’’ policies, are peculiar to South Africa. Wilkinson describes how housing policies, which once had the goal of establishing orderly urbanization of the African population in single family, detached, freehold dwellings, failed to contain the Africans in an effort to perpetuate apartheid. Wilkinson calls the National Housing Subsidy Scheme, housing policy under the new regime, ‘‘state sponsored self-help’’. Subsidies are made available out of the national budget through the Minister of Housing for housing projects, cooperative projects and to communities or individual householders for the purpose of completing formal structures. The policy is part of the newly elected government’s strategy of bringing all of the major housing stakeholders into the process, including private housing contractors, co-operatives, communities and civic associations, to meet the commitment of making the process work and to contain housing costs. Wilkinson has some reservations about the new policy because it more or less leaves the current spatial and racial divisions in place. He is more concerned about whether or not the economy will continue to provide jobs and income at a level necessary to provide the household income required to complete the upgrading of housing at the individual household level. He is also very concerned about whether the public agencies involved in the process will be responsive to the populations they serve. This question can perhaps be rephrased into the question of how these agencies will respond under these conditions? To what extent will the distribution
Third World Housing: the Future is Now
211
of subsidies be carried out for the purposes of providing more adequate shelter and to what extent will it be handled as a political payoff to supporters of the current parties in power? Significant ethnic splits within the South African population may make for a troubled future for this policy. China Housing in China, as described by On-Kwok Lai, has moved from socialist to capitalist. Private property rights have been recognized and financial capital markets are promoted. Housing provision has moved from work units to private ownership. The problem shifts from too little housing in general, to the problem of too many expensive houses and too few for the low-income group. The significant changes in housing policy began as early as 1988 when the laws regarding private property rights were consolidated in the interest of urban redevelopment. In 1995, the independent local development corporations were set up and suddenly the future, and its attendant problems, was now. Capital for housing comes from a variety of sources, including foreign investments, bank loans, mortgages, reinvestment of work unit profits, municipal revenues, individual savings and overseas capital. Land speculation emerges, along with local taxation, ranging from 30—60% on capital gains! Lai points out that the major variation that emerges under this new system of housing provision is the abuse of distribution of housing which varies depending upon the character of the local regime. These are terms which have until now been reserved for the analysis of urban housing in the United States. Lai points out that not only are low-income groups left out in this process of the commodification of housing, but renters as well. Reform of the rental system has been slow, with subsequent problems in housing provision for this group. Ghana A. Graham Tipple and David Korboe have presented a compelling argument, in their description of housing in Ghana, for a restriction of the market approach. While Ghana may be typical of many other countries in regard to the ‘...inefficiency and failure of formal housing suppliers to perform to plan and the reliance of most householders on the informal sector,’ the fact that land in Ghana is owned by kin groups across several generations, makes the necessary alienation of land very problematical. Kin groups, like those in pre-industrial Japan, really function as corporations. Individuals do not have the right to alienate the resources of the family or group. Paramount chiefs hold most land. Other land is held by fetish priests, quarter heads or family heads. Ownership of houses is also controlled in this same fashion. This religio-social system of land ownership and housing provision is, they conclude, ‘...relatively inexpensive and potentially equitable’. The problem is this traditional system does not provide a basis for the operation of a credit system for improving the housing supply. The authors leave the contradiction between this traditional system and the emergence of a market system in which foreclosure laws operate an open question. Their main recommendation is that the rental market be freed from rent control and the increase in needed housing in urban areas be accommodated in that fashion. Zambia If Ghana is struggling with the issue of the impact of a shift to a market approach to the provision of housing, Zambia is much more typical of the problem, trying to find the matrix of new laws, customs and politics necessary to fuel a housing market. Their solution, under very stringent economic conditions, is to formalize the services of various non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such as Habitat
212
Ranvinder S. Sandhu and Brian C. Aldrich
for Humanity, to provide upgrading and housing services to local communities. The shift from a single party state, in which the local political party representative functioned as the conduit for housing services from a highly centralized state, to a multi-party set up with local elections, has disrupted the traditional flow of services. Attempts have been made to create local Residential Development Committees with locally elected members. The other change has involved trying to move away from the traditional policy of housing provision by private economic organizations or government bureaucracies in cooperation with the state. These parastatal housing projects are being privatized. Land tenure seems to be the biggest bone of contention in the Zambian situation. Like so many other societies where residents of the informal sector took over vacant land in and around cities to build housing and businesses, formalization of that process always brings up the issue of who owns the land and who wants the land for speculation and who is going to pay for its alienation. In Zambia, the newly created certificates of ownership and occupancy are not good enough to be used for collateral. Therefore, one can only conclude that the market cannot function without alienable land. The question that naturally arises in regard to housing provision in Zambia is, ‘In whose interests is the land being held?’ NGOs cannot solve that problem. »ietnam The article by Katharine Coit on slum upgrading in Ho-Chi-Minh City is something of a departure from the first four papers in that it deals with a single project. It goes a long ways towards providing insight about the prevalent local conditions in South Africa, Ghana and Zambia. She boldly addresses the key question in all of these cases: ‘How to distribute scarce resources when access to land is political?’ Like the Lai conclusions in China and the party factor in Zambia, there is considerable variation within the 18 different Peoples Councils in the urban area called Ho-Chi-Minh City. Therefore, when ARCI, a small Paris-based NGO with support from the European Union, set out to improve the housing, infrastructure and credit of a very poor sector of the city, the role of the local regime does not turn out to be quite so enabling. Coit reports that, similar to other findings of NGO projects, the ideal of gender equality was not met by the project. Males predominated in leadership positions. The project succeeded in upgrading the neighborhood, making it a more healthy and attractive place to live without displacing the residents. However, she reports, the larger community development failed, in part, because community participation was more pro forma than popular. The fundamental problem, she points out, is the lack of political and popular support for the redevelopment of a very lowincome, low-status neighborhood in the face of extensive housing needs by the broad middle and working classes. One conclusion that could be drawn from this project is that it is important to keep expectations within bounds. A small project in a very large city may not be very convincing to public officials, particularly when substantial additional funds for similar projects are not forthcoming. CONCLUSIONS These papers raise important technical questions about housing materials, production and costs. The cases also highlight problems associated with the organization of the housing provision process. There is no automatic route to a market mechanism which will provide enough housing to reach low-income groups. There are many political, cultural and bureaucratic impediments to the implementation of a housing market. The China case shows that moving to a capital-based housing
Third World Housing: the Future is Now
213
market does not provide all the housing needed. The Ghana case suggests, from the opposite side of the coin, that such a mechanism may not work if it destroys the traditional cultural basis for housing provision. The Zambian and Vietnamese cases illustrate the particular problems involved in depending upon NGOs for the provision of housing. Their concerns for low-income members of the community may be in conflict with the political interests and desires of more politically mobilized groups. The cases presented here and elsewhere (Aldrich and Sandhu, 1995), clearly indicate, however, that the provision of housing and related services has become more and more of a priority for the governments of developing countries. More technical assistance, more money and more political will are being brought to bear upon it. The cases presented here indicate that there is a learning curve across the world that is leading to more effective provision of housing. REFERENCES Aldrich, B. C. and Sandhu, R. S. (1995). Housing the ºrban Poor: Policy and Practice in Developing Countries. Zed Books, London. Logan, J. R. and Molotch, H. L. (1987) ºrban Fortunes: ¹he Political Economy of Place. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.