Annabel Noor Asyah S.T.,
M.Sc.
Generally house known
as a shelter, place that provide protection from danger and weather. However,
the meaning of housing is actually more than that. It is not only about a place
with specific structures but also about the activities that the households do
to live and improve their life that related to the livelihoods concept. There
are several housing theories and concepts that make us have better
understanding about what actually housing is and alternative housing provision
scheme that perceived effective especially for people who live in urban
poverty. One of them is self-help concept, a popular idea about housing by John
F.C Turner, an English Architect who had experiences in housing development in
Latin America. In this essay the argument about the connection between
self-help theory with livelihood theory will be developed.
Like a chapter of his
book, Turner introduced the idea about “housing as a verb” which described
housing as a process that human life depends on, not only as a product. Such
activities like nurturing the children, taking care of ourselves, and preparing
the foods are processes that essential to households life. According to Turner,
based on the strong engagement between housing and households activities,
decision making power about housing have to be decided by the house users
themselves because they know better about what they need or users as the principal actors. The main
idea of self-help is the house users have the freedom to build, to use and manage
the house by their own way (Turner, 1972). The characteristics of self-help
concept are: It is a house-users design and management process; Emphasizes
the crucial term of “who-decides” which leads to autonomy concept with
the house-users as the decision makers (Harris,2003); Limits the government
intervention (Jenkins, 2007). Although the house-users have bigger portion
of role to provide houses, they still need government support to provide things
that they can not provide alone, such as basic infrastructures like the road
and sewage. Government also have to make laws about limitation of what people
can do also have to provide and protect access to element of housing process
such as land, materials, tools etc. (Nientied, 1988).
To have a better
understanding about the role of housing, we also need to pay attention to the
livelihoods theory. Livelihoods known as combination of activities, assets, and
capabilities of the households to assure that they can survive, maintain and
improve their welfare (Rakodi, 2002). One of the main factors that influences
the livelihood is asset. There several kind of assets such as physical,
natural, human, social and financial asset. All of them are influencing each
other and affect the ability of household to managing their living. Physical
asset identified as the availability of basic infrastructures such as housing,
tools to access water etc which important for people to make their living.
Housing that categorized as physical assets play an important role that
influencing other assets such as human and financial assets.
Human asset which
known as the availability of labour resources within households divided into
quantitative and qualitative dimensions. Quantitative dimension is more about
the number of people. Meanwhile qualitative is about the education levels,
skills, and health status of each person in a household (Rakodi, 2002). Housing
influences the human asset in a significant way. For example in the case of forced
eviction in Abuja, Nigeria, people who affected the forced eviction gave their
testimonials and expressed their feeling after the forced eviction happened.
They lost their houses as the asset. They feel shocked and depressed because
they did not have house anymore and have to live in the street. One of the
interviewees known have to sleep in the street for days, and got sick
physically and mentally. And after several days tried to survive, he died. That
is a concrete example about how house as physical asset influences human asset
which is household’s health both physically and mentally.
Financial asset
identified as resources related to the availability of money which make the
households have financial options such as credit, pensions, savings, and
remittances (Rakodi, 2002). Financial asset also influenced by the physical
asset. For example for people who work in home or home-based workers. According
to Chen & Sinha (2016, p. 346), “For home-based workers, whose home is also
their workplace, housing is an essential productive asset”. For example in case
of Ahmedabad, Pakistan, where a group of waste plastic recyclers who work at
home have to be relocated to a new site because their existing place should be
functioning as floodplain to control flooding in the future. They would lost
their work which resulted on the inability to pay the bills and have to reducing
the expenditures. One group that had been relocated to the new site said that
even the government gave them a new house, they still can not find a new job
and it was hard for them to survive in the new site. They start to borrowing
money from each other. That case shows the real example about how house become
a place for generating income which related to financial asset.
After all, self-help
approach and livelihood theory are linked in a complementary way. The
application of self-help enriches the livelihood assets for the people. By
designing and managing their houses, the users will have skills like the
ability to design, construct, build and manage their own house based on their
own needs that related to their human asset. They also know their needs about
the size, the number of rooms so their house will be efficient for them to
live. This condition might not be found if people just directly buy the houses
from public or private company. Related to the financial asset, people will
build their houses based on their own financial condition. They will have the
opportunity to manage their own money to build without sacrificing their other
needs. Usually people will have tendency to build the house near the workplace,
so the self-help approach will help them increase their income. To the social
asset, self-help approach also will give the beneficial influences such as, the
sense of belonging to the community surrounding the house because they build it
by themselves and often get help from the neighbours. People also have tendency
to build their house near their relatives, so it will strengthen the relations
due to the proximity to each other. Related to nature asset, people who use the
self-help approach have the opportunity to build their house near the natural
resources so they can improve their life with easy access to natural resources
such as water and land. This natural resources also can help people bettering their
financial asset by using them as opportunity to work.
The explanation about
conectivity between self-help housing concept and livelihood assets is a
picture about how housing system works in Indonesia today. According to Johan
Silas in his book “Perumahan Dalam Jejak Paradoks” (2016), housing system in
Indonesia preceived as a plane that devided into 2 classes, business and
economy class. 70% of the plane
passengers are from economy class, yet they are the ones who make the plane operated,
not the rest 30%. This analogy is perfectly describes the housing system in
Indonesia where almost 70% of houses in Indonesia are informal, and the rest
30% are provided by formal system. This shows how self-help housing is the first
option for Indonesian to build their houses. People who can not afford housing
from formal sector, eventually would build their own houses by adjusting their
assets such financial asset, physical
asset, natural asset, human asset and social asset.
In conclusion, self-help approach which is limiting government intervention and let the house-user build and manage their own houses is complementarily linked to the livelihood theory which highlight the 5 kind of assets. Self-help approach strengthen people’s asset and give them opportunity to manage their life based on what they need. However, some kind of the government’s roles should be considered such as provide basic services and giving land protection to support what the people can not provide by themselves.
References
- Chen,
M.A., & Sinha, S. (2016). Home-based workers and citiea. Environment and
Urbanization, 28(2), 343-358.
- Harris,
R. (2003). A double irony: the originality and influence of John. F.C. Turner.
Habitat International, 27, 245-269.
- Jenkins,
P., Smith, H ad Wang, Y. (eds). (2007). Planning and Housing in Rapidly
Urbanising World. Routledge, London and New York. (Chapter 7: Housing in the
period 1960-90, pp.153-177).
- Nientied,
P. And van der Linden, J. (1988). Approaches to low income housing in the Third
World. Chapter 9 (138-156) in Gugler, J. (ed.). The Urbanisation of the Third
World. Oxford University Press, New York.
- Rakodi,
C. (2002). A livelihoods approach-conceptual issues and definitions. Urban
livelihoods: A people-centred approach to reducing poverty, 3-22.
- Turner,
J. (1972). Chapter 7: Housing as a Verb (pp148-175) in Turner,J. & Fichter,
R., (eds) 1972. Freedom to Build: Dweller Control of the Housing Process.
Macmillan, New York.
- Silas,
J. (2016). Perumahan Dalam Jejak Paradoks. Laboratorium Perumahan dan
Permukiman Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember, Surabaya.