Pilot project
No. 1
Land purchase and reblocking at
Charoenchai Nimitmai
Before
During
After
The Charoenchai Nimitmai community occupies 4.9 hectares of land in Bangkok's Chatuchak District, bound on one side by the railway tracks, on another by a roaring expressway and on the third by a drainage canal. The community's 41 families, many railway employees, had been renting their land from a private land owner for over 50 years, at 10 Baht per month. In 1998, threatened with eviction, the people negotiated to buy the land themselves, haggling the selling price down to 7,500 Baht/ s.m. - a fraction of the market value of 30,000 Baht/ sm. After establishing a cooperative, they took a loan from CODI to buy the land. To bring down the per-family land costs, they made room in their reblocking plan for an additional 48 vulnerable families squatting on land nearby.
After becoming owners of their land, the people decided to improve conditions using reblocking techniques. In the process of designing the new layout, the community went through 18 different plan layouts, with help from a young architect. The plan which everyone finally agreed on has 4-meter wide internal lanes, a community center, and varying plot sizes (according to affordability), with half meter planting strips along the street edges.
As part of the upgrading process, the community coordinated with all the different municipal departments to get individual electric and water meters installed, and to deal with building permits - which wasn't easy! As one leader put it, "When the local officials are too strong, we know how to soften them up, and when they are already soft, we do whatever we like!" They used a contractor for the infrastructure work that involved heavy machinery, like land-filling, but handled the other work themselves, using paid community labor for things like pouring concrete (150 - 200 Baht /person/day). Using community labor shaved 30% off the cost of development.
After reblocking, all but 15 of the houses had to be moved to new locations, to make way for the new roads and plot layout. Some families have built entirely new houses on their new plots, but many have rebuilt their old houses, using recycled materials, and can upgrade them gradually.
Project Details
• Households : 89
• Land-owner : Private
• Tenure terms : Cooperative ownership
• Type of upgrading : on-site reblocking
• Infrastructure cost : 1.78 million Baht (US$ 44,500)
• Housing costs : 4.01 million Baht (US$ 100,250) (aver. 50,000 Baht/ unit - $1,250 / unit)
Total cost of land + housing + infrastructure : 23.79 million Baht (US$ 594,750)
