Updated October 2007

Bringing poor communities
and cities together
to forge city-wide
solutions to problems of
housing, land and basic
services in Thai cities

The Baan Mankong Program was launched by
the Thai government in January 2003, as part
of its efforts to address the housing problems
of the country’s poorest urban citizens. The
program channels government funds, in the
form of infrastructure subsidies and soft housing
and land loans, directly to poor communities,
which plan and carry out improvements
to their housing, environment and basic services
and manage the budget themselves. Instead
of delivering housing units to individual
poor families, the Baan Mankong Program (“Secure
housing” in Thai) puts Thailand’s slum communities
- and their community networks - at
the centre of a process of developing long-term,
comprehensive solutions to problems of
land and housing in Thai cities.

As part of this unconventional program, which
is being implemented by the Community Organizations
Development Institute (a public organisation
under the Ministry of Social Development
and Human Security), poor communities
work in close collaboration with their local governments,
professionals, universities and NGOs
to survey all the communities in their cites and
then plan an upgrading process which attempts
to improve all the communities in that city - all
of them - over the next few years. Once these
city-wide plans are finalised and upgrading
projects are selected, CODI channels the infrastructure
subsidies and housing loans directly
to the communities.
This housing experiment in Thailand is the result
of a process which has been developing
over the past twelve years, starting with the
building of community savings activities around
the country, then the formation and strengthening
of large-scale networks of poor communities,
and finally using these people’s managerial
skills to deal with housing problems at city
scale. But Baan Mankong is only possible
with the commitment by the central government
to allow people to be the core actors and
to decentralise the solution-finding process to
cities and communities.
By creating space for poor communities, municipalities,
professionals and NGOs to look together
at all the housing problems in their city,
Baan Mankong is bringing about an important
change in how the issue of low-income housing
is dealt with: no longer as an ad-hoc welfare
process or a civic embarrassment to be swept
under the carpet, but as an important structural
issue which relates to the whole city and
which can be resolved. The community upgrading
program is helping to create local partnerships
which can integrate poor community
housing needs into the larger city’s development
and resolve future housing problems as a
matter of course.

Next      Background of the Programme

 

 

 

 

 In the Baan Mankong Program, the conventional top-down system is replaced by community-based management, in which communities themselves become the implementers of development projects they have planned and initiated themselves, with support from their community networking system, local support organizations, academics and local educational institutions.

 

Introduction - You are here

Background  -  Click Here

Goals of the Programme   Here

Five Strategies for Developing Housing Security in the Baan Mankong Program       Here

The Process of the BMP  Here

Actors Involved in Implementing BMP  Here

Main Concepts of BMP  Here

The First Phase  Here

The Next Phase  Here

Conclusion  Here

EXTRA: Some Early Pilot Projects   Here