"Block 7-12" was an informal
community of nearly 400 families (mostly port workers, daily laborers
and small traders) who'd been squatting for over 50 years on land
belonging to the Port Authority of Thailand (PAT), in the sprawling
informal settlement of Klong Toey. Over the years, the
community experienced fires, chemical explosions and innumerable
attempts by the Port to evict them for its various projects.
Some families took compensation and moved away, some shifted to
NHA-built flats or to remote resettlement colonies, some just
disappeared. After 20 years of struggle, the remaining 49
families (the real fighters!) negotiated a deal with the Port which
allows them to redevelop their community on PAT-owned land in the same
area, one kilometer away, on a 30-year lease contract.
The community has now prepared its relocation
plan, which includes some "Block 7-12" families who were old
renters or had already been evicted. The new community,
which is now under construction, is laid out in a simple grid of small
lanes, with a community center and a wider central road which can double
as public open space for meetings and markets. The new land
used to be a container storage area and is completely covered with 15 cm
thick concrete, which has been covered over with 80 cm of soil, to
prevent flooding, and pierced in 800 places to sink deep concrete piles
for the houses. The construction committee hired one
contractor to fill the land, another to dig the piles and lay the drains
and roads. The 114 row-houses are being built in small
groups by the people themselves, on 30 and 60 square meter plots,
depending on family size.
The project is having a big impact on other
informal communities in the Klong Toey area, where there are still lots
of housing conflicts and tenure insecurity, and many neighboring groups
are now applying for similar long-term lease contracts to develop their
housing in the same place.
