Shelter for the Poor in Low Income Cities John D. Nystuen
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Figure 1. Table of Parameters Figure 2. People by the Billions Figure 4. A collage of squatter settlements. 30,000 people live in this complex. Figure 6. Table of Cities of over Ten Million house with lockable door, two windows, and corn crop that must be guarded. in the Rapki Valley, Nepal steady improvement. city-installed outdoor privys for sanitation. Metered electric power supplied direct to houses. with continuous flow when water is available. district of New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. for home with fruit trees. |
Finding
shelter for the poor in low-income cities is a problem for now and
for the future. The twentieth century saw huge growth in human
population. This population is now entering the twenty-first century
with enormous and growing needs for sustenance and shelter. Millions
of new families are created each year all seeking ways to sustain life,
to nurture, and to shelter their children. In the new century, most
of the population growth will be in cities. Most of these cities
will be poor because their already poor economies simply cannot grow at
rates needed to raise the level of living while accommodating their own
population growth. In addition these cities receive huge waves of
poor, unskilled immigrants who not only are destitute but who are often
refugees fleeing oppressive regimes. How do these people live?
All these people need shelter. How, in the past seventy years, have four
billion more people found shelter? The parameters of this process
are migration and growth, poverty, homelessness, and rule of law (Figure
1).
a
Migration
and Growth
In 1930,
there were two billion people on earth. It had taken 120 years to
grow from one billion. Forty-five years later, in 1975, the population
had doubled to four billion people. Twenty-four years later, the
population had grown again by two billion people. In the first quarter
of the 21st century, another two billion will be added to the total, at
least, according to the optimistic forecast by the United Nations, which
sees a decline in world population growth but an increasing growth in the
urban population. The number of people has increased by the billions
(Figure
2).
a
Poverty
Basic
human needs must be met or people die. Food and health are basic.
The first need is to be fed. For poor people, most of their income
goes toward finding food. Shelter comes next. Those with extremely
low incomes are homeless (Figure 3). Generally, opportunities for
making a living have been better in urban areas than in rural regions.
The consequence has been a vast rural to urban migration. However,
city economies are not able to keep pace. Opportunities for making
a living are meager. Many people are homeless or live in spontaneous
shelters, that is, self-built, squatter settlements or shantytowns squeezed
into marginal spaces in and around the city (Figure 4). Such shelters
have different names in different places: bustee in India, gegucondu
in Turkey, favelas in Brazil. To meet the housing needs in
poor cities, appropriate technologies for self-built housing must be utilized.
Hong Kong's population grew eight-fold since 1931. Most of this population
has been housed in high-rise apartment buildings (Figure 5). Hong
Kong is among the wealthy cities of the world and its economy is buoyant.
The Hong Kong Housing Authority has provided for seventy percent of the
housing demand through a building program financed by loans from the city
government. These loans have been or are being paid back on time
and with interest. This payback with interest is possible because
the occupants, whose incomes have steadily risen, can pay sufficient rent
to meet capital and upkeep costs. This process is not an option for
cities where the majority of the people live in poverty.
At
the turn of the twentieth century, most of the world's poor could not afford
to allocate the recommended twenty-five percent or more of their income
to pay for shelter. These huge concentrations of poor people are
a legacy of the last century. In 1975, five cities had ten million
inhabitants or more. Two of these cities, Tokyo and New York were
in affluent nations. In the year 2000, nineteen cities had ten million
inhabitants or more with four of them in affluent nations (Tokyo, New York,
Los Angeles and Osaka). The rest are in low-income nations (Figure
6). By 2015 the estimate is for 23 cities over 10 million.
Most of their inhabitants live in self-built housing constructed by people
with very low incomes and skills who must rely on building technologies
appropriate for those circumstances. Consequently, affordable shelter
is frequently inadequate in the extreme. The shelters are likely
to provide insecure and inadequate protection against the elements and
intrusions. They lack access to urban services, and are likely to
occupy land illegally (Figure 7). They are hazardous to life.
People constantly strive to improve their housing as a way to improve the
quality of their lives.
a
Homelessness
What
is missing when you have no home? Shelter is a complex mix of factors
each of which contribute to quality of life (Figure
8). We all seek to create a secure and comfortable home place.
In fact, most animals do the same by creating nests or dens in which to
raise offspring. To protect children is a specie imperative no less
for humans than for animals. Factors that are important for a home
place fall into the categories site and situation, terms
that are familiar to geographers. Site attributes refer to
in-place or inside characteristics such as the design and type of building
materials used for buildings, the slope and drainage of the building lot
terrain, the temperature range or number of days of sunshine. Situation
refers to the position of the home place relative to other locations.
A home place must have access to community services such as utilities,
schools, and generally to connections to the larger society. All
these characteristics should be considered when assessing the viability
of home places or when planning aid in building human habitats.
a
Locational
(Access) Needs. Three types of outside connections are needed
for a home place to function effectively. They are (i) access to
physical services, (ii) access to community, and (iii) access to status.
a
Access
to Physical Services A modern American home is serviced by several
physical links such as a motorable road, electric power line, and water
and sewer lines. There are information links too for mail, newspapers,
telephone, and radio/TV. Access to information usually requires a
fixed home address and/or fixed receiver equipment, e.g., street address/mailbox,
phone jack, or cable TV. Mobile receivers, laptop computers and homepages
on the Internet have introduced new spatial dynamics to information exchange
by adding a virtual home to the physical home.
Sometimes,
depending upon local conditions and availability, services can be provided
on-site, such as, well water or a septic tank and drainage field.
Such facilities do have neighborhood or locational implications depending
upon soil type, aquifer capacity, and nearby housing density. Many
of these attributes are absent in the squatter settlements of low-income
cities.
a
Access
to Community A home place needs access to social and economic
exchange. Principal among these is proximity to work if income is
earned outside the home. The home should also be conveniently located
relative to other social services, retail stores, government offices, and
homes of relatives and friends: in sum, the urban matrix. Schools
are important. In Seoul, families move to school districts that have
the best schools because students are assigned to school by place of residence.
Residential land values in the best districts have soared due to this demand.
In
the giant, low-income cities, the people in poverty will crowd into marginal
places despite possibly terrible site conditions in order to get access
to social and economic opportunities (Figure 9). Low cost, subsidized
public transportation is a necessity in large urban areas with a high proportion
of the population in poverty. Even modest fares may be a burden to
the very poor. They must walk and must therefore crowd housing into
places within walking distances of places of opportunity.
a
Access
to Status A permanent home address is often a condition of citizenship.
You have to have a permanent address in order to vote. In some places,
home ownership is a requirement for voting on property tax proposals.
You need to be a resident for your children to attend the public schools
or to be eligible for welfare or social services. Children of migrant
farm workers in the United States are often denied access to local schools
and social services, which only adds to the difficulties in obtaining an
education or sustaining health due to their short tenure in any one place.
People
of means are inclined to invest far more in their home than is necessary
for mere shelter. The home is used for displaying wealth and power
to gain or affirm high status in the community. Ostentatious megahouses
are characteristic of the nouveau riche in the communities of Silicon Valley
and elsewhere across the United States at the end of the last century.
The middle class behaves similarly by investing more than is prudent into
too large a house and lot. Too much invested in housing leaves assets
too concentrated and debt service too high in relation to annual income.
The desire to own a large single-family house on a big lot is a major component
in urban sprawl.
At
the beginning of the last century, Americans believed that a woman's place
was in the home. At the end of the century, that attitude had changed
with over half the women in the work force outside the home. Still,
in many parts of the world, a woman's status is defined by her role in
the home. If she is not a family member located in a home place,
she is an outcast subject to harassment and danger.
a
Site
Needs. The home place is built or arranged to provide for (i)
restoration, (ii) health, and (iii) security. Our home is our castle.
a
Restoration
We have physiological needs that are periodic; foremost among them is the
need to sleep. We can sleep anywhere but we find great comfort in
returning to our own beds at night (Figure 10). This desire creates
the great diurnal movement from homeplace into and back from the urban
matrix characteristic of urban life. Other periodic needs are for
food and drink. Again, these needs can be met elsewhere but it is
efficient and comforting to have a place at home to meet these needs.
A place for toiletry and bathing meets a daily need for grooming as we
set out for the day. Finally, it is comforting to have a place to
relax, to retreat from the alertness necessary in public and/or strange
places.
a
Health
The dwelling provides a roof overhead for protection from the elements,
rain, snow, cold and heat. It can also be equipped to protect against
hazards such as wind, fire, and earthquakes. Keeping the homeplace
clean and fresh protects against disease and disease vectors. These
elements are deficient to various degrees in squatter settlements.
Crowded, unsanitary conditions, flimsy construction, lack of safe water
and accumulation of wastes create hazards that threaten the entire urban
area with spreading infectious disease or catastrophic fire, wind, or earthquake
damage.
a
Security
Strong walls and secure locks can provide for personal safety for one’s
self and family. A secure home also affords protection of possessions
and wealth (Figure 11). Physical barriers work best when attended
to by vigilant concern for who is coming and going. Protection is
more readily sustained where private, protected space is buffeted from
open public space by semi-public areas. In larger houses, strangers
are customarily welcome at the foyer/lobby or in the living room but not
the kitchen or bedrooms. In some places, an outside courtyard shared
with immediate neighbors can act as a semi-public buffer where strangers
are immediately recognized if they enter unannounced (Figure 12).
A
sense of security has much deeper roots than mere physical protection.
The home place is where your roots are located. It is steeped in
memories, memories of childhood, events, commitment, artifacts, landscapes
not by sight alone but with memories of smells, sounds, tastes and kinetic
senses. People love their homes. When separated in distant places
they long for home. They will fight for and die for their home.
The
sentiment of home arises from symbolic, shared meaning. Yi-Fu Tuan
said that, "A place is a pause in movement…The pause makes it possible
for a locality to become a center of felt value" (Tuan, page 138).
The repeated returns to pause at home creates its value. Mostly,
however, this is a collective achievement. Sharing the place with
family and friends is what makes the place a home. The lonely hotel
room or the empty house after the children have left and the spouse has
died may be a source of bitterness and sorrow rather than joy.
To
some the homeplace helps to define an individual's place or the community's
place in the cosmos. Divine or supernatural blessings of the home
may enhance a sense of security. In Thailand and Indonesia small
house temples are placed at the corner of the home lot to invite spirits
to protect the inhabitants. Sacred places are usually not in dwelling
places but are nearby in the region accessible for periodic visits, if
not daily, perhaps annually. Jerusalem is a Holy City; it is sacred
for at least three major religions and is, unfortunately, a highly contested
place. People will die to maintain control over it.
a
Rule
of Law
City officials are often at odds with people who construct inexpensive, self-built houses. Squatter settlements are often hazardous. Public safety is always at issue. Settlements may be located on land unsuitable for housing such as in floodways or on very steep slopes: places unworthy for standard housing. Cheap, self-built structures are built without housing codes or subdivision standards. The properties may not be accessible by motor vehicle, which means fire trucks and other emergency vehicles cannot reach residences. They lack public services such as potable water or sewer and waste disposal or treatment. Health hazards that affect the whole city are the result. City officials are motivated to address such issues because of political pressure from more affluent citizens living in other parts of town (Figure 14). Low-income districts may be overcrowded with too many people per room occupancy. Houses located on property to which there is no title are not eligible for public services. Some of the people living in sub-standard housing may be illegal aliens who shun contact with any officials due to their lack of standing under the law. Financing improvements in squatter settlements is extremely difficult. The economy of the low-income city is not only weak but the government has difficulty in finding funds to provide necessary public services. Urban public transit needs to be subsidized because the clients are too poor to support the system with fare box payments. If public services cannot be provided directly to private properties, it is difficult to recover costs through service charges. For example, if there is only the capacity to provide widely spaced public potable water stands; charging for the water is not possible. The water is free to all users (Figure 15). When this is the condition, water is usually available for only a short time at each stand, perhaps not even daily. The water is distributed piece-meal district by district to avoid complete loss of pressure in the system. Land taxes are not a major source of income for low-income cities. In New Orleans land tax was assessed by linear front foot; hence, the rise of the long, narrow "shotgun house" (Figure 16). The problem is lack of cadastral surveys assigning property to landowners and lack of spatial information management capacity in assessor's offices. The public policy approach to these issues shapes the way the urban fabric develops. Millions of people have moved to the large, poor cities of the world and more are coming. The formal economies of these cities cannot cope with the growth. Some accommodation by public officials to the informal economies and to the capacity for self-help exhibited by those with little means is called for. Tapping the energy of poor but able people has been tried through site and service programs in which the city lays out streets and property boundaries and allows the occupants to build their own houses, sometimes with some simple building restrictions such as minimum wall heights. Ownership title is then given to the occupant. When this happens the house and lot are usually continually improved. In time a very suitable home emerges (Figure 17). a
a
References
Yi-Fu
Tuan, 1977. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects: The 1999 Revision, Table 5. http://www.un.org/esa/population/pubsarchive/urbanization/urbanization.pdf (downloaded Nov. 1, 2001). All photos by author. |