Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Housing for the Poor


 
The Indonesian Constitution stipulated that every citizen is entitled, among others, to live in a decent housing.

In order to implement this stipulation, since the 1970's the government has given subsidy for the development of houses with minimum building area of 21 square meters specially for low income citizens.

However, after 2011 low income citizens cannot buy such kind of houses anymore, because the Housing Law No. 1/2011 does not allow the building of such kind of houses anymore.

According to Kompas, Article 22(3) of the said Law stipulated that the floor area of houses should at least be 36 sq. meters. 

As a consequence, the government could not provide financial subsidy, therefore banks would not provide soft housing loans for buyers of houses with area less than 36 sq.meters.

The Minister of People's Housing Djan Faridz was quoted as saying that this Law will not inflict financial losses to the people. He said that the Law does not contradict with Article 28(1) of the Constitution. And based on the Indonesian National Standard for City Housings, the minimum building area is 9.6 sq.m for an Adult and 4.8 sq.m for a Child. So, the minimum total building area for a family would be 36 sq. meters.

The Minister also said that the Law is in accordance with Art. 2 (1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) which has been ratified by Law No. 11/2005, and United Nations Charter on Human Rights Art. 25 (1) regarding the Rights to Adequate Housing.

However, the Association of Indonesian Housings Developers said that the Law will make it impossible for low income citizens who earn less than Rp. 2.5 Million/month to own houses. Considering this fact, the Association has requested the Constitutional Court to Review Art. 22 (3) of the Law.

As the price of land is increasing, it would be very difficult for lower income citizens, which happen to be the majority of people, to buy houses. Therefore, I hope that the Constitutional Court would review the said Law.


Photo: Courtesy of Shutterstock

10 comments:

colson said...

Fascinating and very informative post!

Good intentions and benevolent bureaucracy did bear a catch 22 situation. Or so it seems to me.

Reasonable as it may be to improve housing conditions by more severe standards, it doesn't work out if no provisions have been made to improve purchasing power correspondingly.

Like you said "I hope that the Constitutional Court would review the said Law".

Unknown said...

@Colson,
I agree that the intention of the government to impose better standard is good. However, current purchasing power of low income citizens make it impossible for them to buy houses according to that standard.

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Outbound di Malang said...

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tetap semangat tinggi untuk jalani hari ini ya gan ! ditunggu kunjungannya :D

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Unknown said...

@Obat Herbal
Thank you for your visit and comment

@Outbound di Malang,
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los prados apartments pittsburg ca said...

Housing is one of the major problems of most countries in the world. In spite all the efforts exerted, there isn't enough home for all.