3,000 permanent houses in 25 villages
No easy matter constructing dwellings on a scale this big in a place where just about all systems are down .
3,000 houses may seem like a drop in the bucket in a place where half a million traumatized souls are still homeless. But for both the community network and their supporters, it's a mega-project - way beyond the scale and nature of anything they've ever done before. Plus, this enormous housing project is happening at a time when reconstruction is happening all over Aceh, building supplies are low and prices are going through the roof. But within the project's modest budget, everyone is committed to making the houses safe and finding low-cost and environmentally friendly ways of doing infrastructure.
ACEH INDONESIA
1. Economies of scale
The logistics of building 3,000 houses in a place where most of the commercial and transport infrastructure has been destroyed, but where everybody is trying to rebuild, are daunting.Since the tsunami, building material costs in Aceh have skyrocketed, and steel, cement, bricks, wood, sand, aggregate and stone are scarce. Plus, environmentalists are screaming about the Sumatran forests being cut down to re-house the half million tsunami survivors.
After a lot of discussing, designing, costing, modeling and adjusting, the real houses finally start appearing . . .
So Marco, Zooli and Kunto, on Uplink's logistics team, are working with the network to find ways to save money by shipping some of these materials up from Jakarta, or southern Sumatra, where they are still the normal price. A local supplier has agreed to let them use his big warehouse. They will require about 150,000 bags of cement, for example, to build those 3,000 houses. In Banda Aceh, a 40-Kilo bag of cement is now going for 31,000 Rupiah ($3.50). But a 50-kilo bag in South Sumatra costs only 23,000 Rupiah ($2.50) to buy and 7,000 Rupiah ($0.75) to ship. So if they can ship all this cement and store it, they'll save millions.
Part of Uplink's project in Aceh involves helping the 25 Udeep Beusaree villages to build about 3,000 permanent, earthquake-resistant houses. With help from some committed young Javanese architects and the Indian NGO Abhiyan, Uplink has worked with the people to develop 24 house models, from which the four most popular models were chosen to be built in the villages. To provide a hands-on training in earthquake-proof construction techniques, one model house is being built by the construction team in each village, for a family chosen by that village to be the first.
Meanwhile, the building of the other permanent houses also got started. Construction of the first batch of 20 permanent houses began in ten villages in July, and in the remaining 15 villages in August. The rains usually start in September, and everyone is keen to have the construction well under way by then.
When the first set of model houses are finished in August, the network will organize a big celebration, with the Minister of Public Works, the Mayor of Banda Aceh and Aceh Besar District chief invited to cut the ribbons. Uplink is also working with ACHR to use the occasion to invite groups of survivors and support NGOs from other parts of Aceh, as well as from other tsunami countries, to make it another regional survivors' dialogueon people-driven rehabilitation strategies.
2. Fitting new shoes on old feet
Many foundations and plinths survive in these ruined villages, like phantom imprints of the houses that used to stand there. It's no surprise that most families chosen to get the first models want their new houses built on the foundations of their old ones. But when it comes time to place the new models on the old foundations, things inevitably don't line up - the rooms are all different sizes and shapes and laid out differently.
In Lam Gurun village, for example, the villagers decided the first house should go to Muniza, a 23-year old widow who lost all her family in the tsunami. Muniza wants the new house built on the plinth of her old one, which was much bigger than the model, but has foundations that are in pretty good shape, and a bathroom which is almost intact, minus the walls. It's a tricky job for the architects to adjust the plans to try and make use of the old foundations, and it's not always possible. Eventually, the idea of a standard house model might have to be rethought. In the mean time, the main purpose of the house models is to get people thinking, to show some real progress and to get the energy going.
3. Keeping the benefits at home
Usually, money spent on a construction project just flies out of the area, into the pockets of outside contractors, outside craftsmen and outside suppliers of building materials. In the Udeep Beusaree villages, Uplink is working with the people to try to find ways of ensuring that the reconstruction process actually strengthens the local economy. They have no single blueprint for how to do this, and each village is developing its own strategy.
How much will it all cost?
These houses will all be free. The funds to build them come from Uplink's donor partner Misereor, as a subsidy, not a loan, and will come in the form of materials, not cash. The budget for houses and infrastructure below is a ceiling, and is enough to build the four basic models the people have designed.
They've set a rough target, however, of making sure that 60% of the funds used to rebuild houses should stay in the village, and only 40% should go into the market. To do this, they are exploring a number of things. First they will use skills available in the Udeep Beusaree villages as much as possible. Many of the area's skilled craftspeople died in the tsunami, but among the survivors are some carpenters, masons, plumbers, electricians, small building contractors, laborers and artisans of all sorts - all of whom will be part of the process. Next they are studying locally-available materials and local building traditions and to see how these can be incorporated into the designs, instead of just buying everything from the market - materials like local stone, sand, coconut wood and soil-cement blocks which the villagers can make themselves (with a little training and a borrowed block-making press from their Indian friends at Abhiyan).
Budget per house :
38 million Rupiah (US$ 4,200)
Infrastructure subsidy per household :
12 million Rupiah (US$ 1,300)
TOTAL housing subsidy per household : 50 million Rupiah (US$ 5,500)
Next
Building Houses Part 2
Networking with India to build Earthquake proof houses hereBack to Aceh Updates here