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Urban tenants and community involvement
HABITAT INTL. Vol. 20, No. 3, pp, 359-365, 1996 Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0197-3975/96 $15.00 + 0.00
Pergamon
S0197-3975(96)00015-X
Urban Tenants and Community Involvement JORGEN ANDREASEN Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, Denmark
ABSTRACT One reason that community involvement in local improvement projects does not work is because this activity is based on the assumption that local residents are owners of their housing. In a growing number of cities, a very significant proportion of residents are no more than the renters of the property they occupy. The number of renters is growing largely because they are part of a group which cannot afford the cost of house purchase due to their poverty. Much urban development policy ignores this important fact and, as a result, improvements through upgrading do not occur. Based particularly on evidence from East Africa, but from other countries as well, the paper concludes that there is an urgent need to develop new approaches to the human settlement situation. These must include a wider approach to the various options of tenure, the development of community organisations dealing with a broader set of issues than just housing, the training of technicians and social workers to help organise improvements and the establishment of legal frameworks. Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd URBAN POLICIES AND TENANTS Community involvement is a central concept in United Nations policy documents prepared for the City Summit, the Habitat II conference in 1996. This policy is also reflected in the development programmes of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (UNCHS), with Denmark as the major donor since the mid-1980s. Among the activities assisted are the Community Development Programme and the Sustainable Cities Programme, both of which have focused on the poorest, urban inhabitants, with organised communities involved as main agents in the improvement and environmental management of their own town and settlements. Mobilisation of households and communities presupposes an interest of inhabitants to manage and improve their environment through self-help. The fact that tenants are less motivated to join community projects has not been adequately acknowledged. The widely appreciated and recommended participative planning induce project makers to search for motivated and already organised communities, i.e. those dominated by owneroccupiers. Hence, tenant-dominated communities are left outside the programmes. If focusing on tenant communities at all, there is a danger that stereotype recommendations to organise residents axe applied in vain because the planning models were developed to address issues of owner-occupant communities. Correspondence to." Jcrgen Andrea.sen. Department of Human Settlements, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, 1 Kongens Nytorv, 1050 Copenhagen, Denmark.
359
360
Jcrgen Andreasen
There is no simple recipe for approaching the community-driven improvement process in the case of tenants. More knowledge on the nature of tenant communities is needed as a basis for developing new models of planning and support to such communities. Apart from the lack of knowledge of the dynamics of tenant communities, there is a widespread ignorance of the quantitative significance of renting among planners, researchers and policy makers alike. This persists despite much documentation published by UNCHS I. In 1987, the UN, through the World Commission on Environment and Development, estimated that 50% of the population in a typical Third World city are renters. In most of sub-Saharan Africa, from where this author draws most of his experience, the proportion of tenants reaches even higher levels. Why does the common understanding and why do internationally advocated policies have this bias towards owner-occupier communities? The understanding is partly based on a metaphor which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s as a basis for housing strategies advocated by international agencies: the newly migrated squatter family (or the father as bridgeheader) finds a small piece of land, constructs its own, appropriately humble, but affordable shack with the prospect of progressive improvements as the family later climbs the social ladder. The international debate focused on "culture of poverty" and a romanticised picture of the poor. This picture partly reflected the development as it was in Latin America, but it was already from the 1960s different from the reality in Africa. 2 Today, it rarely holds water anywhere. The typical poor family in Calcutta, Nairobi or Cairo is unable to pay for even an illegally subdivided plot and squatting is virtually excluded as an option. Such families rent a room if they do not share a room with others. Since then it has been virtually impossible to rectify the myth. It is often misused as a manufactured and false picture, but it is optimistic, developmental, easily comprehensible, and hence politically convenient.
M O S T FAMILIES ARE RENTERS
Rental housing covers a range of sub-categories with extremely different conditions of origin, tenure and quality. Renting is by no means restricted to the formal sector. In spite of such variations, there are common characteristics: tenants belong to the lower income groups; there are frequent complaints of exorbitant rents, poor maintenance of buildings and insecure tenure. Even worse are the problems linked with social infrastructure, drainage, sewage and water supply, communal services such as garbage collection, uncontrolled small-scale polluting industries and other environmental problems. Classic problems such as low income generation and poor security exist in rental areas as in other low-income areas. In the informally developed rental areas, the collective social and physical infrastructures and services are dealt with neither by the local government nor by the owners. And tenants remain unmotivated to invest the energy to improve the value of the property they do not own. A few examples may serve to illustrate the variations. There are squatter-like shacks built along railway tracks in Guatemala City which are, in fact, rented. There are renters of multi-storey blocks of flats in Egypt and India who have paid the entire value of the flat as key money, thus becoming de facto owners. There are renters in Egypt (and Ireland) so well protected by tenant laws that owners prefer (and at times instigate) the house to burn down. There are renters in Kenya so poorly protected that they live in daily risk of eviction. There are politicians in Africa (and France) who occupy public flats at heavily subsidised rents. There are owners in South Africa (and Europe) charging very profitable rents for a time share of a bed. There are tenement shacks with more than 100 rooms in Arusha, Nairobi and Dhaka with unscrupulous absentee owners. There are, however, also owner-occupiers in Indonesia and Thailand who let a few rooms and care for the well-being of their tenants.
361
Urban Tenants and Community Involvement
Apart from those renting, many non-owner households live in accommodation or on land belonging to their employer. There are the "labour lines" in Africa and there are "squatters" clinging to the outer wall of an industry in Bangladesh or in the Philippines, but paying land rent. These groups often face worse living conditions and security of tenure than those experienced in the worst rental slums. There are renters in India and Latin America who, for decades, stay in the same room, entirely dependant on the town for survival, and there are renters in Africa who move frequently and maintain their stable home in the rural area. Both have very limited influence on their urban environment and are not motivated or encouraged to participate in community work. There are, however, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) who conduct admirable work also among tenants. The production of employees' housing, as well as public-sector rental housing, is declining while there is an increase in privately-owned rental housing supply, particularly in the informal sector, in Africa and Central America. Transformation of the housing stock takes place continuously. In Egypt and Peru inner city "slums" are created through high-class apartments that are subdivided and let by the room. Houses originally built as owner-occupied dwellings in squatter areas or in organised invasions are often left by the original owners and rented to lowincome households. Evidently, urban development strategies have to be tailor-made to such different conditions. Only in a few Third World countries does the proportion of owners exceed 75% and in no country are there less than 20% renters. It is, in other words, not a negligible proportion of households which live as renters. China, with one of the highest percentages of renters, is not included in Table 1. There has been much debate on the mechanisms which affect the volume of renting in different countries. The motivation for the investors is a major factor fuelling rental housing development. It is, however, not only a question of economic profitability. Housing is a popular investment object because it is safe to park money there, and it does not require specific skills on the part of the investor. Investors, therefore, often accept low rates of profits. But it is also true that where investors are powerful and linked with politically influential groups, and where land is limited and plots expensive, the poorer households'
Table 1. Selected statistical data on housing tenure(%) 3
Place Venezuela Cali (Colombia) Pakistan Santiago (Chile) Ankara (Turkey) Turkey Cameroon Delhi (India) Lima (Peru) Thailand India La Paz (Bolivia) Ecuador Lusaka (Zambia) Cairo (Egypt) Calcutta (India) Ahmedabad (India); formal sector only Jakarta (Indonesia); case study of a kampung Dhaka (Bangladesh) Moshi (Tanzania); non-random sample Kitwe (Zambia); incl. mining labour lines Kumasi (Ghana) Thika (Kenya)
Owners
Tenants
73 68 68 64 <64 64 58 <53 49 48 47 43 41 39 <31 <24 <25 <25 22 <20 <17 10 8
<27 27 <32 20 36 <36 <42 47 28 <52 <53 35 <59 <61 69 76 75 75 55 78 83 62 84
Others 4 16
23 22
23 28 8
362
Jcrgen Andreasen
space for manoeuvring is limited and the ownership option is not available, not even in the form of squatting. This is particularly true if political tradition or repressive systems impede popular organisation. The high level of renting is also influenced by the consumers' preferences and their historical and cultural background. In Africa, with its young urban tradition, the linkages to the rural "home" and the lack of roots in the urban area play a role. Finally, renting may occur even where plots are available free of charge (e.g. in Maputo, Mozambique during the 1980s), but are at such a distance from employment centres that the option to rent a room near the centre is preferred in order to avoid the use of extensive human or economic resources for transport.
URBAN DEVELOPMENT IN EAST AFRICA: RENTERS WITH A RURAL HOME
Under British colonial government in East Africa, Africans were tolerated in urban areas only if registered as "labour force". Housing was initially provided as employees' housing, and later, when the growing urban industry faced problems with the stability of the labour power, in the form of rental council housing. Under such regimes, informal land occupation was difficult. Squatting was a rare phenomenon. In contrast, the main supply of post-independence housing has been delivered by private developers without formal authorisation, built on plots bought from informal land subdividers, often with "informal anthorisation" from local leaders, party leaders or bribed officials. Private renting has boomed in spite of political and ideological attacks on 'parasites' who are accused of speculating in other people's basic needs (Zambia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Ethiopia and recently Namibia and South Africa). In other countries like Kenya - - and backed by the World Bank - - owners were encouraged to build extra rental rooms for supplementing their small income. Very high levels of rental housing still characterise most of Africa. There are few exceptions to this observation, a short list which would include Lusaka where agricultural land is poor and linkages to a rural home are weak and traditional towns in Nigeria (Ogbomosho and parts of Ibadan). In urban Kenya, renting and other forms of non-ownership have always been the dominant form of tenure, but since independence a dramatic change in the delivery of such housing has taken place from public rental housing and staff housing to private rental housing. In Thika, an industrial town of 100,000 inhabitants, by the late 1980s almost 90% of the annual housing production was for private rental. The main contribution was through building of multi-roomed site and service houses, let by the room and with extremely few resident owners.'* In Thika, the share of informal, rented housing dropped from 33% to 15% of the total annual supply from 1969 to 1985. This was mainly due to the development of site and service schemes. The living conditions in much of the informal, rented shacks in Thika, as well as in Nairobi, are revolting. Few households have more than a single room and sanitary facilities are, in many cases, completely absent. Maintenance is non-existent and the owners' procedures to collect rent are pitiless. Table 2. Percentage distribution of households by tenure: Thika5
Public rental housing Private rental housing Employees' housing Owner-occupied housing
Total
1963
1969
1977
1985
23 27 40 l0 100
23 45 23 9 100
16 62 14 8 100
9 75 8 8 100
Urban Tenants and Community Involvement
363
It is important to note that the site and service schemes and the increased formalisation secured people more value for the rent. While in the informal shacks annual surplus on the invested capital is rarely less than 50%, in the formal site and service schemes the surplus was less than 10% per year. This questions the wisdom of reduced building standards. Rent is not primarily determined by construction cost, but by payment ability. Reduced standards will, everything else equal, benefit developers and not tenants.
What is the explanation of the high incidence of renting? First, a growing middle-class accumulated a surplus to invest, and housing is a convenient, trustworthy investment, much like retail shops, restaurants and bars, buses and land. Not surprisingly, the competition for plots and land, and the not always fair methods of distribution, tend to exclude the majority of the population who have limited funds to invest. Secondlyl renting is not inappropriate to many households in Africa. Most urban men maintain social and economic links to a family farm in the rural area. It is common for men working in town to have their home - - the centre of the social and ethnic networks - - and often the wife and children, in the rural area. This, in turn, is partly explained by the difficulty of sustaining a living based on the income from a small farm only, while on the other hand, the cost of living for a family staying together in the town is prohibitive. The result is circulating labour and split families. The migrant views himself as a temporary resident in town and he maintains that attitude over decades. He moves with changing job opportunities. He limits his accommodation requirement to a modest, rented place in which to sleep. There are many indications suggesting that the rural linkage is maintained also for the second generation in town. Limited land for inheritance produces a desire to save money to buy land there. New and less-fertile land may be opened up near the original home land. But without land you are no one.
COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT IN DEVELOPMENT The origins of the concept of community participation projects within urban planning and housing can be traced back to the development of strategies as globally advocated by UN missions in the 1960s, later followed by the World Bank in the early 1970s and by the Vancouver Conference which, in 1976, gave birth to UNCHS. As a result of improved understanding of the informal housing supply, clearance of slums and squatter areas virtually stopped and was replaced by upgrading and self-help strategies, e.g. in sites and services schemes. Much of the early self-help was limited to the single plot and did not focus on such activities as community services. The intemational optimism with regard to community self-help was fuelled by the experiences from many countries. Community organisation was strong in Latin America (e.g. in Peru and Chile), but in the 1960s and 1970s, newly independent African states experimented with Harambee and Ujamaa community activities in the building of the new nations also. But in urban development, and particularly in housing, most of the thinking was based on experience from Latin America and on American ideals of home ownership in general. The importance of big regional differences have rarely been adequately acknowledged. The thriving Latin American community organisation was linked with strong popular movements, often in confrontation with govemments. In contrast, the African community work was, in many cases, initiated, guided or even forced by governments, or, more lately, propelled by foreign donor organisations. With few historical exceptions, East Africa has had little record of active tenants and successful community organisation work within planning and housing. Security of HAB 20:3-8
364
Jergen Andreasen
tenure is poor and effective rent control is unknown. Tenants are neglected in planning (upgrading) processes; they are rarely considered as beneficiaries even in recent improvement programmes or in re-allocation in the case of wholesale clearance and resettlement. And first and foremost they do not possess power, and in spite of declarations favouring decentralisation and community involvement (e.g. in Tanzania, Namibia and South Africa) there are no indications of governments and municipalities which have, in reality and at scale, empowered people. Obviously the lack of stability and roots in urban areas affects community involvement. The urban dweller has a limited interest in investing energy and resources in organisation, politics, community work and housing in town. Why, in any case, should a renter provide unpaid labour to improve the landlord's house and environment, only to see the rent increased due to improvements? The tenure status is only one among many factors which conditions the motivation to participate in community work. The picture is, indeed, quite complex. There is reason to believe, however, that the rental status in many cases coincides with other factors placing people low on the ladder of influence and motivation to invest resources in community efforts. Among such factors are the economic and social insecurity and the (rational) maintenance of rural links. Do tenant households feel that they belong to the community and society at large? Do they have an interest and willingness to contribute to common goals? Are the participatory planning ideals realistic in such situations, or will yet a new gimmick by planners become a burden and not a support to society due to inadequate basic research? Policy makers and planners need research to retrieve and disseminate experiences from different countries. They need many more tales from the field. They need international exchange visits and networks for inspiration. Exactly the same is needed nationally for NGO and community based organisation staff and leaders, and active community members should be assisted to visit other communities within the same town.
THE NEED FOR N E W STRATEGIES TOWARDS HABITAT II
What is in the pipeline on rental housing in the event of the City Summit, the UNCHS Conference in Istanbul in 1996? UNCHS has been actively publishing excellent reports on rental housing 6 with Alan Gilbert and others as outstanding contributors, reaching conclusions much in line with those of this paper. But does UNCHS read its own papers? Renting is often completely forgotten or omitted in prominent policy papers on housing development. UNCHS assistance to prepare the National Programme for Human Settlements Development in Tanzania (Draft 1992) omits the issue of renting in spite of the fact that between 50 and 75% of households in urban Tanzania rent their dwellings. UNCHS did not mention the particular issue of rental housing in its "Draft Statement of Principles and Global Plan of Action" (March 1995). On Danish initiative, the European Community delegation requested UNCHS to take into consideration the particular issues of renters. However, the revised agenda of September 1995 has not reacted to this. It is, perhaps, inconvenient for UNCHS to be confronted with this state of affairs as it calls for a big effort to strengthen the current community participation policy and strategy, particularly to face the African reality. Once attention is directed to the tenants, the fact that communities are not homogeneous can no longer be disregarded. There are, within every community, groups with varying, and at times, conflicting interests. Empowerment of one group can bring about the demobilisation of another. The Community Development Programme under the UNCHS research and development section, notwithstanding its very important achievements, should initiate a systematic activity to retrieve experiences on rental housing, and on that basis to expand their programme with relevant pilot projects. This is particularly urgent in Africa.
Urban Tenants and Community Involvement
365
The neglect of the tenant population of housing in most national and international housing strategies has two interrelated consequences: (1) the strategies, which are mostly based on the belief that actors are owners, are inappropriate and hence ineffective in a major part of the areas in need of support; (2) there are no alternative strategies developed and available for the tenants. Hence, in Africa, the international recipe will only have a positive impact under special circumstances and often only in isolated cases, for example, when fuelled with foreign assistance. But it is not sustainable and cannot be multiplied at larger scale. There is an urgent need to develop new approaches for improvements to the human settlement situation of tenants. This, evidently, is a challenge which will have to deal with conventional issues, such as tenants' rights and protection and the promotion of tenants' organisations, issues which have been virtually ignored to now, perhaps with justification because they will not have much effect. The attempts should be much wider to facilitate various options of tenure, including a transfer of renting to cooperative ownership, the development of community organisations dealing with a broader set of issues than housing, the training of technicians and social workers to provide immediate, concrete physical improvements to rental schemes, the establishment of legal frameworks. As so much of this centres on the informal sector, there is also a need for the training of professionals as well as their employment within this area, even if it often implies work far away from the glamour of the jet set architects and planners. Finally, the effort to upgrade and improve urban areas becomes an endless and ever increasing task if urban growth on n e w land continues without proper support in physical planning complementing the efforts of residents and their organisations. Towns double their size every 10-20 years. Rental housing should not remain an option emerging informally and unrecognised. It should be actively guided and facilitated and planning should contribute to better physical and social integration.
NOTES 1. UnitedNations Centrefor Human Settlements,Strategies for Low-income Shelter and Services Development - The Rental Housing Option (UNCHS, Nairobi, 1989) gives an excellent global overviewof the magnitude of issues and policy problems. This was later followedup by Rental Housing - Proceedings of an Expert Group Meeting (UNCHS, Nairobi, 1990), and Support Measures to Promote Rental Housing for Low-income Groups (UNCHS, Nalrobi, 1993). 2. A strategymuch indebtedto the philosophyof John Turner, as advocatedin his famouswork, Freedom to Build (Macmillan, New York, 1972). 3, The reliabilityof someof the abovefiguresis questionable.Somedate back to the 1970swhileothers are quoted in the third generation. Data, and not least general impressions, even by officialsand professionalscommonly underestimate the incidence of renting. In Table 1 only the data from Thika are based on the author's primary data. Main referencesare: United NationsCentrefor Human Settlements 1989, see note 1; A.M. O'Connor, The African City (1983);A. Desai, Urban Housing in Ahmedabad (RoyalDanishAcademyof Fine Arts Copenhagen, 1981); and J. Andreasen,Rented Rooms and Rural Relations (RoyalDanish Academyof Fine Arts Copenhagen, 1987). 4. J. Andreasen, "The Poor don't Squat", Environment and Development 1, 2 (1989), pp. 16-26. 5. 6.
J. Andreasen (1987), see note 3. United Nations Centre for Human Settlements, see note 1.
Pergamon
S0197-3975(96)00015-X
Urban Tenants and Community Involvement JORGEN ANDREASEN Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, Denmark
ABSTRACT One reason that community involvement in local improvement projects does not work is because this activity is based on the assumption that local residents are owners of their housing. In a growing number of cities, a very significant proportion of residents are no more than the renters of the property they occupy. The number of renters is growing largely because they are part of a group which cannot afford the cost of house purchase due to their poverty. Much urban development policy ignores this important fact and, as a result, improvements through upgrading do not occur. Based particularly on evidence from East Africa, but from other countries as well, the paper concludes that there is an urgent need to develop new approaches to the human settlement situation. These must include a wider approach to the various options of tenure, the development of community organisations dealing with a broader set of issues than just housing, the training of technicians and social workers to help organise improvements and the establishment of legal frameworks. Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd URBAN POLICIES AND TENANTS Community involvement is a central concept in United Nations policy documents prepared for the City Summit, the Habitat II conference in 1996. This policy is also reflected in the development programmes of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (UNCHS), with Denmark as the major donor since the mid-1980s. Among the activities assisted are the Community Development Programme and the Sustainable Cities Programme, both of which have focused on the poorest, urban inhabitants, with organised communities involved as main agents in the improvement and environmental management of their own town and settlements. Mobilisation of households and communities presupposes an interest of inhabitants to manage and improve their environment through self-help. The fact that tenants are less motivated to join community projects has not been adequately acknowledged. The widely appreciated and recommended participative planning induce project makers to search for motivated and already organised communities, i.e. those dominated by owneroccupiers. Hence, tenant-dominated communities are left outside the programmes. If focusing on tenant communities at all, there is a danger that stereotype recommendations to organise residents axe applied in vain because the planning models were developed to address issues of owner-occupant communities. Correspondence to." Jcrgen Andrea.sen. Department of Human Settlements, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, 1 Kongens Nytorv, 1050 Copenhagen, Denmark.
359
360
Jcrgen Andreasen
There is no simple recipe for approaching the community-driven improvement process in the case of tenants. More knowledge on the nature of tenant communities is needed as a basis for developing new models of planning and support to such communities. Apart from the lack of knowledge of the dynamics of tenant communities, there is a widespread ignorance of the quantitative significance of renting among planners, researchers and policy makers alike. This persists despite much documentation published by UNCHS I. In 1987, the UN, through the World Commission on Environment and Development, estimated that 50% of the population in a typical Third World city are renters. In most of sub-Saharan Africa, from where this author draws most of his experience, the proportion of tenants reaches even higher levels. Why does the common understanding and why do internationally advocated policies have this bias towards owner-occupier communities? The understanding is partly based on a metaphor which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s as a basis for housing strategies advocated by international agencies: the newly migrated squatter family (or the father as bridgeheader) finds a small piece of land, constructs its own, appropriately humble, but affordable shack with the prospect of progressive improvements as the family later climbs the social ladder. The international debate focused on "culture of poverty" and a romanticised picture of the poor. This picture partly reflected the development as it was in Latin America, but it was already from the 1960s different from the reality in Africa. 2 Today, it rarely holds water anywhere. The typical poor family in Calcutta, Nairobi or Cairo is unable to pay for even an illegally subdivided plot and squatting is virtually excluded as an option. Such families rent a room if they do not share a room with others. Since then it has been virtually impossible to rectify the myth. It is often misused as a manufactured and false picture, but it is optimistic, developmental, easily comprehensible, and hence politically convenient.
M O S T FAMILIES ARE RENTERS
Rental housing covers a range of sub-categories with extremely different conditions of origin, tenure and quality. Renting is by no means restricted to the formal sector. In spite of such variations, there are common characteristics: tenants belong to the lower income groups; there are frequent complaints of exorbitant rents, poor maintenance of buildings and insecure tenure. Even worse are the problems linked with social infrastructure, drainage, sewage and water supply, communal services such as garbage collection, uncontrolled small-scale polluting industries and other environmental problems. Classic problems such as low income generation and poor security exist in rental areas as in other low-income areas. In the informally developed rental areas, the collective social and physical infrastructures and services are dealt with neither by the local government nor by the owners. And tenants remain unmotivated to invest the energy to improve the value of the property they do not own. A few examples may serve to illustrate the variations. There are squatter-like shacks built along railway tracks in Guatemala City which are, in fact, rented. There are renters of multi-storey blocks of flats in Egypt and India who have paid the entire value of the flat as key money, thus becoming de facto owners. There are renters in Egypt (and Ireland) so well protected by tenant laws that owners prefer (and at times instigate) the house to burn down. There are renters in Kenya so poorly protected that they live in daily risk of eviction. There are politicians in Africa (and France) who occupy public flats at heavily subsidised rents. There are owners in South Africa (and Europe) charging very profitable rents for a time share of a bed. There are tenement shacks with more than 100 rooms in Arusha, Nairobi and Dhaka with unscrupulous absentee owners. There are, however, also owner-occupiers in Indonesia and Thailand who let a few rooms and care for the well-being of their tenants.
361
Urban Tenants and Community Involvement
Apart from those renting, many non-owner households live in accommodation or on land belonging to their employer. There are the "labour lines" in Africa and there are "squatters" clinging to the outer wall of an industry in Bangladesh or in the Philippines, but paying land rent. These groups often face worse living conditions and security of tenure than those experienced in the worst rental slums. There are renters in India and Latin America who, for decades, stay in the same room, entirely dependant on the town for survival, and there are renters in Africa who move frequently and maintain their stable home in the rural area. Both have very limited influence on their urban environment and are not motivated or encouraged to participate in community work. There are, however, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) who conduct admirable work also among tenants. The production of employees' housing, as well as public-sector rental housing, is declining while there is an increase in privately-owned rental housing supply, particularly in the informal sector, in Africa and Central America. Transformation of the housing stock takes place continuously. In Egypt and Peru inner city "slums" are created through high-class apartments that are subdivided and let by the room. Houses originally built as owner-occupied dwellings in squatter areas or in organised invasions are often left by the original owners and rented to lowincome households. Evidently, urban development strategies have to be tailor-made to such different conditions. Only in a few Third World countries does the proportion of owners exceed 75% and in no country are there less than 20% renters. It is, in other words, not a negligible proportion of households which live as renters. China, with one of the highest percentages of renters, is not included in Table 1. There has been much debate on the mechanisms which affect the volume of renting in different countries. The motivation for the investors is a major factor fuelling rental housing development. It is, however, not only a question of economic profitability. Housing is a popular investment object because it is safe to park money there, and it does not require specific skills on the part of the investor. Investors, therefore, often accept low rates of profits. But it is also true that where investors are powerful and linked with politically influential groups, and where land is limited and plots expensive, the poorer households'
Table 1. Selected statistical data on housing tenure(%) 3
Place Venezuela Cali (Colombia) Pakistan Santiago (Chile) Ankara (Turkey) Turkey Cameroon Delhi (India) Lima (Peru) Thailand India La Paz (Bolivia) Ecuador Lusaka (Zambia) Cairo (Egypt) Calcutta (India) Ahmedabad (India); formal sector only Jakarta (Indonesia); case study of a kampung Dhaka (Bangladesh) Moshi (Tanzania); non-random sample Kitwe (Zambia); incl. mining labour lines Kumasi (Ghana) Thika (Kenya)
Owners
Tenants
73 68 68 64 <64 64 58 <53 49 48 47 43 41 39 <31 <24 <25 <25 22 <20 <17 10 8
<27 27 <32 20 36 <36 <42 47 28 <52 <53 35 <59 <61 69 76 75 75 55 78 83 62 84
Others 4 16
23 22
23 28 8
362
Jcrgen Andreasen
space for manoeuvring is limited and the ownership option is not available, not even in the form of squatting. This is particularly true if political tradition or repressive systems impede popular organisation. The high level of renting is also influenced by the consumers' preferences and their historical and cultural background. In Africa, with its young urban tradition, the linkages to the rural "home" and the lack of roots in the urban area play a role. Finally, renting may occur even where plots are available free of charge (e.g. in Maputo, Mozambique during the 1980s), but are at such a distance from employment centres that the option to rent a room near the centre is preferred in order to avoid the use of extensive human or economic resources for transport.
URBAN DEVELOPMENT IN EAST AFRICA: RENTERS WITH A RURAL HOME
Under British colonial government in East Africa, Africans were tolerated in urban areas only if registered as "labour force". Housing was initially provided as employees' housing, and later, when the growing urban industry faced problems with the stability of the labour power, in the form of rental council housing. Under such regimes, informal land occupation was difficult. Squatting was a rare phenomenon. In contrast, the main supply of post-independence housing has been delivered by private developers without formal authorisation, built on plots bought from informal land subdividers, often with "informal anthorisation" from local leaders, party leaders or bribed officials. Private renting has boomed in spite of political and ideological attacks on 'parasites' who are accused of speculating in other people's basic needs (Zambia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Ethiopia and recently Namibia and South Africa). In other countries like Kenya - - and backed by the World Bank - - owners were encouraged to build extra rental rooms for supplementing their small income. Very high levels of rental housing still characterise most of Africa. There are few exceptions to this observation, a short list which would include Lusaka where agricultural land is poor and linkages to a rural home are weak and traditional towns in Nigeria (Ogbomosho and parts of Ibadan). In urban Kenya, renting and other forms of non-ownership have always been the dominant form of tenure, but since independence a dramatic change in the delivery of such housing has taken place from public rental housing and staff housing to private rental housing. In Thika, an industrial town of 100,000 inhabitants, by the late 1980s almost 90% of the annual housing production was for private rental. The main contribution was through building of multi-roomed site and service houses, let by the room and with extremely few resident owners.'* In Thika, the share of informal, rented housing dropped from 33% to 15% of the total annual supply from 1969 to 1985. This was mainly due to the development of site and service schemes. The living conditions in much of the informal, rented shacks in Thika, as well as in Nairobi, are revolting. Few households have more than a single room and sanitary facilities are, in many cases, completely absent. Maintenance is non-existent and the owners' procedures to collect rent are pitiless. Table 2. Percentage distribution of households by tenure: Thika5
Public rental housing Private rental housing Employees' housing Owner-occupied housing
Total
1963
1969
1977
1985
23 27 40 l0 100
23 45 23 9 100
16 62 14 8 100
9 75 8 8 100
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It is important to note that the site and service schemes and the increased formalisation secured people more value for the rent. While in the informal shacks annual surplus on the invested capital is rarely less than 50%, in the formal site and service schemes the surplus was less than 10% per year. This questions the wisdom of reduced building standards. Rent is not primarily determined by construction cost, but by payment ability. Reduced standards will, everything else equal, benefit developers and not tenants.
What is the explanation of the high incidence of renting? First, a growing middle-class accumulated a surplus to invest, and housing is a convenient, trustworthy investment, much like retail shops, restaurants and bars, buses and land. Not surprisingly, the competition for plots and land, and the not always fair methods of distribution, tend to exclude the majority of the population who have limited funds to invest. Secondlyl renting is not inappropriate to many households in Africa. Most urban men maintain social and economic links to a family farm in the rural area. It is common for men working in town to have their home - - the centre of the social and ethnic networks - - and often the wife and children, in the rural area. This, in turn, is partly explained by the difficulty of sustaining a living based on the income from a small farm only, while on the other hand, the cost of living for a family staying together in the town is prohibitive. The result is circulating labour and split families. The migrant views himself as a temporary resident in town and he maintains that attitude over decades. He moves with changing job opportunities. He limits his accommodation requirement to a modest, rented place in which to sleep. There are many indications suggesting that the rural linkage is maintained also for the second generation in town. Limited land for inheritance produces a desire to save money to buy land there. New and less-fertile land may be opened up near the original home land. But without land you are no one.
COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT IN DEVELOPMENT The origins of the concept of community participation projects within urban planning and housing can be traced back to the development of strategies as globally advocated by UN missions in the 1960s, later followed by the World Bank in the early 1970s and by the Vancouver Conference which, in 1976, gave birth to UNCHS. As a result of improved understanding of the informal housing supply, clearance of slums and squatter areas virtually stopped and was replaced by upgrading and self-help strategies, e.g. in sites and services schemes. Much of the early self-help was limited to the single plot and did not focus on such activities as community services. The intemational optimism with regard to community self-help was fuelled by the experiences from many countries. Community organisation was strong in Latin America (e.g. in Peru and Chile), but in the 1960s and 1970s, newly independent African states experimented with Harambee and Ujamaa community activities in the building of the new nations also. But in urban development, and particularly in housing, most of the thinking was based on experience from Latin America and on American ideals of home ownership in general. The importance of big regional differences have rarely been adequately acknowledged. The thriving Latin American community organisation was linked with strong popular movements, often in confrontation with govemments. In contrast, the African community work was, in many cases, initiated, guided or even forced by governments, or, more lately, propelled by foreign donor organisations. With few historical exceptions, East Africa has had little record of active tenants and successful community organisation work within planning and housing. Security of HAB 20:3-8
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tenure is poor and effective rent control is unknown. Tenants are neglected in planning (upgrading) processes; they are rarely considered as beneficiaries even in recent improvement programmes or in re-allocation in the case of wholesale clearance and resettlement. And first and foremost they do not possess power, and in spite of declarations favouring decentralisation and community involvement (e.g. in Tanzania, Namibia and South Africa) there are no indications of governments and municipalities which have, in reality and at scale, empowered people. Obviously the lack of stability and roots in urban areas affects community involvement. The urban dweller has a limited interest in investing energy and resources in organisation, politics, community work and housing in town. Why, in any case, should a renter provide unpaid labour to improve the landlord's house and environment, only to see the rent increased due to improvements? The tenure status is only one among many factors which conditions the motivation to participate in community work. The picture is, indeed, quite complex. There is reason to believe, however, that the rental status in many cases coincides with other factors placing people low on the ladder of influence and motivation to invest resources in community efforts. Among such factors are the economic and social insecurity and the (rational) maintenance of rural links. Do tenant households feel that they belong to the community and society at large? Do they have an interest and willingness to contribute to common goals? Are the participatory planning ideals realistic in such situations, or will yet a new gimmick by planners become a burden and not a support to society due to inadequate basic research? Policy makers and planners need research to retrieve and disseminate experiences from different countries. They need many more tales from the field. They need international exchange visits and networks for inspiration. Exactly the same is needed nationally for NGO and community based organisation staff and leaders, and active community members should be assisted to visit other communities within the same town.
THE NEED FOR N E W STRATEGIES TOWARDS HABITAT II
What is in the pipeline on rental housing in the event of the City Summit, the UNCHS Conference in Istanbul in 1996? UNCHS has been actively publishing excellent reports on rental housing 6 with Alan Gilbert and others as outstanding contributors, reaching conclusions much in line with those of this paper. But does UNCHS read its own papers? Renting is often completely forgotten or omitted in prominent policy papers on housing development. UNCHS assistance to prepare the National Programme for Human Settlements Development in Tanzania (Draft 1992) omits the issue of renting in spite of the fact that between 50 and 75% of households in urban Tanzania rent their dwellings. UNCHS did not mention the particular issue of rental housing in its "Draft Statement of Principles and Global Plan of Action" (March 1995). On Danish initiative, the European Community delegation requested UNCHS to take into consideration the particular issues of renters. However, the revised agenda of September 1995 has not reacted to this. It is, perhaps, inconvenient for UNCHS to be confronted with this state of affairs as it calls for a big effort to strengthen the current community participation policy and strategy, particularly to face the African reality. Once attention is directed to the tenants, the fact that communities are not homogeneous can no longer be disregarded. There are, within every community, groups with varying, and at times, conflicting interests. Empowerment of one group can bring about the demobilisation of another. The Community Development Programme under the UNCHS research and development section, notwithstanding its very important achievements, should initiate a systematic activity to retrieve experiences on rental housing, and on that basis to expand their programme with relevant pilot projects. This is particularly urgent in Africa.
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The neglect of the tenant population of housing in most national and international housing strategies has two interrelated consequences: (1) the strategies, which are mostly based on the belief that actors are owners, are inappropriate and hence ineffective in a major part of the areas in need of support; (2) there are no alternative strategies developed and available for the tenants. Hence, in Africa, the international recipe will only have a positive impact under special circumstances and often only in isolated cases, for example, when fuelled with foreign assistance. But it is not sustainable and cannot be multiplied at larger scale. There is an urgent need to develop new approaches for improvements to the human settlement situation of tenants. This, evidently, is a challenge which will have to deal with conventional issues, such as tenants' rights and protection and the promotion of tenants' organisations, issues which have been virtually ignored to now, perhaps with justification because they will not have much effect. The attempts should be much wider to facilitate various options of tenure, including a transfer of renting to cooperative ownership, the development of community organisations dealing with a broader set of issues than housing, the training of technicians and social workers to provide immediate, concrete physical improvements to rental schemes, the establishment of legal frameworks. As so much of this centres on the informal sector, there is also a need for the training of professionals as well as their employment within this area, even if it often implies work far away from the glamour of the jet set architects and planners. Finally, the effort to upgrade and improve urban areas becomes an endless and ever increasing task if urban growth on n e w land continues without proper support in physical planning complementing the efforts of residents and their organisations. Towns double their size every 10-20 years. Rental housing should not remain an option emerging informally and unrecognised. It should be actively guided and facilitated and planning should contribute to better physical and social integration.
NOTES 1. UnitedNations Centrefor Human Settlements,Strategies for Low-income Shelter and Services Development - The Rental Housing Option (UNCHS, Nairobi, 1989) gives an excellent global overviewof the magnitude of issues and policy problems. This was later followedup by Rental Housing - Proceedings of an Expert Group Meeting (UNCHS, Nairobi, 1990), and Support Measures to Promote Rental Housing for Low-income Groups (UNCHS, Nalrobi, 1993). 2. A strategymuch indebtedto the philosophyof John Turner, as advocatedin his famouswork, Freedom to Build (Macmillan, New York, 1972). 3, The reliabilityof someof the abovefiguresis questionable.Somedate back to the 1970swhileothers are quoted in the third generation. Data, and not least general impressions, even by officialsand professionalscommonly underestimate the incidence of renting. In Table 1 only the data from Thika are based on the author's primary data. Main referencesare: United NationsCentrefor Human Settlements 1989, see note 1; A.M. O'Connor, The African City (1983);A. Desai, Urban Housing in Ahmedabad (RoyalDanishAcademyof Fine Arts Copenhagen, 1981); and J. Andreasen,Rented Rooms and Rural Relations (RoyalDanish Academyof Fine Arts Copenhagen, 1987). 4. J. Andreasen, "The Poor don't Squat", Environment and Development 1, 2 (1989), pp. 16-26. 5. 6.
J. Andreasen (1987), see note 3. United Nations Centre for Human Settlements, see note 1.