Background of Baan Mankong Program

 

AIMS

 

Shelter is one of the basic requisites for human existence, and housing security is a crucial factor in the development of secure settlements, communities and societies. 

Over the past 20 years, Thailand has been transformed rapidly into a modern country, and large tracts of what used to be agricultural land has been eaten up by growing cities and become urban.  As poor rural migrants have come into cities searching for jobs, informal urban communities have mushroomed without any planning where affordable housing is scarce.  Problems of income disparities, critical poverty and lack of access to basic services all contribute to the urban poor's inability to find secure and legal housing, so they are forced to live in densely-crowded and dilapidated settlements built in hazardous, undeveloped and insecure places in the city.  Many poor families who own their dwellings have been forced to move frequently because they have no secure lease agreements for the land upon which that house is built.   

This rapid urban growth has also led to problems of environmental degradation, over-crowded residential areas and the propagation of slums in all Thailand's main cities, particularly in the Bangkok metropolitan region, where these problems have been exacerbated by poor land management policies to meet the housing needs of urban low-income groups.  According to the survey in 2000, there are altogether about 5,500 low-income communities and squatter settlements in Thai cities, where 6.75 million people, in 1.5 million households, live.  Another 1.5 million poor people (370,000 households) do not live in communities at all, but find shelter within the compounds of temples, in scattered rental room or in the factories or construction sites where they work.  When you add all these groups of poor people in need of secure housing, it comes to approximately 1.87 million households, or 8.25 million people, accounting for about 37% of Thailand's total urban population.

At present, slum people and low-income groups in Thai cities struggle with many deep problems that are physical, economic and social.  Most importantly, they struggle with problems of insecure housing.    The same 2000 survey revealed that 3,750 urban poor communities in Thailand (1.14 million households, 5.13 million people) face problems of insecurity on the public, private or temple land they occupy.  And 445 of these insecure communities (approximately 200,000 households) are in immediate danger of being evicted. 

The National Housing Authority has been working to deal with these problems since 1977 through projects they have initiated, such as the Slum Improvement Project, the Urban Renewal Program and the Community Relocation Project.  Several community-based organizations have also developed their own solutions to these housing problems by initiating on-site improvement projects in riverside and canal-side communities, in communities on land belonging to the State Railway of Thailand, in communities on Crown Property Bureau Land, etc. 

Since the Community Organizations Development Institute (CODI) was established in 1992 (called originally the Urban Community Development Office, and renamed CODI when UCDO was merged with the rural fund in 2000), the community organizations CODI supports have developed  about 50 housing  projects under CODI's housing loan programs.  Even though the community organizations have gained a great deal of experience, understanding, skills and problem-solving strategies as a result of these projects, the have been unable to keep up with the fast-increasing need for housing or the accelerating scale of the housing problem in Thai cities.

In the past six or seven years, Thailand's community-driven development process has spread and matured as networks of communities within cities, provinces and regions have become a channel for sharing, learning, linking, mutual assistance and solidarity among the urban poor.  These community networks, which operate at many overlapping levels, up and down the country, are now well established and have allowed communities to collectively develop large-scale development activities in the areas of savings and credit, welfare, income-generation, community enterprise and environmental improvement.  Many community networks, such as those in Uttaradit and Ayutthaya, have been vitally involved in exploring city-wide strategies for solving all the problems of housing in their cities as a whole, rather than in isolated communities.  And many networks have developed problem-solving strategies which involve linking with municipalities and developing city-wide development processes through partnership, which can tackle a wide range of problems, at city scale.  In all these initiatives, the large scale and collective power these community networks bring to the process are crucial elements in developing a development mechanism that is truly local and in which people are the main actors.  This new kind of local partnership process, which can work in small, medium or large cities, can solve a number of different problems at the same time, and can create the component parts for a collective development process that is national in scale. 

Since the Asian economic crisis in 1997, the community development process in Thailand has changed tremendously.  Communities have been linking together to promote a wide variety of development activities, and these community-based initiatives have revealed the enormous developmental power and expertise which is contained in the country's poor communities.  This community power can be used as a basis for solving these serious housing problems, and by doing so can change poor communities from being the passive beneficiaries of development to being dynamic agents of change at the center.  Harnessing and exploiting this enormous development energy in Thailand's poor communities is the central concept of the Baan Mankong Program.

Living conditions, population densities, housing patterns, infrastructure arrangements, income levels, community organization structures and land ownership situations will vary widely from community to community, so the way communities are improved and the way their tenure is secured under the Baan Mankong Program will also vary from place to place.

 

The Baan Mankong Program aims to create land security for the urban poor in their existing settlements, as much as possible, and to develop basic infrastructure and improved housing in those settlements. 

Aside from this important physical work, the program also aims to strengthen the community process and the community organization in other non-physical ways, by promoting a more comprehensive community improvement process which encompasses issues of welfare, economic and social development in these existing poor communities. 

The size, history, physical conditions, tenure situations and organizational levels will vary widely from one poor settlement to another and from city to city, so the way that land tenure and housing problems will be resolved under the Baan Mankong Program will likewise vary.  It is also very important that the program allows space for variation, as long as communities are the core actors. 

 

Five Strategies
or Developing Housing Security in the Baan Mankong Program

Slum Upgrading

Re-Blocking

Land Sharing

Reconstruction

Relocation

see below left

 

 

Five Strategies
for Developing Housing Security in the Baan Mankong Program

 

Instead of promoting one single development model for obtaining secure land tenure and improving housing and living conditions, a range of options will be developed and expanded, through practice by communities, as the work spreads out and scales up. 

These strategies will develop and be applied according to the particular needs, ideas and conditions in each city and each community.  But the experience of community-driven housing in Thailand so far suggests the following five broad strategies as a starting list of options for the Baan Mankong Program :  

 

1. Slum Upgrading

  In this strategy, existing slums will be improved in order to create a better living environment for its residents, through the laying of basic infrastructure, the improvement of access roads, lanes, bridges and walkways, planting of trees and greening of the settlement and overall improvements to the community environment.  In this strategy, land tenure development to ensure long-term housing security is not usually a focus. 

 2. Re-blocking 

In this strategy, the spaces and location of structures within a community are adjusted to improve access or regularize plot sizes, and this spatial adjustment then leads to improvements in infrastructure and housing.  When communities opt for reblocking, some houses may have to be moved and partially or entirely reconstructed to improve access or some lanes may have to be re-aligned to enable drainage lines, water supply systems or sewers to be constructed.  Reblocking is a community improvement strategy which involves making some structural changes within existing communities, but by doing so it ensures the continuity of the community, and as such is a somewhat more forward-looking strategy than upgrading.  Reblocking is often undertaken in cases where communities have negotiated to buy or obtain long-term leases for the land they already occupy, and in both cases, the process of reblocking is an important step in the progress towards land tenure security and improved housing. 

 

3. Land Sharing

 Land sharing is a community redevelopment strategy in which an agreement is made whereby the land already occupied by an informal settlement is "shared" between the community and the land-owner.  The community people agree to rebuild their houses on one portion of the land and return the rest of the land to the land owner to develop for their own business purposes.  In some cases, the people negotiate to be given the land they will use for their housing or to buy it at a cheap price.  In other cases, communities have negotiated for long-term leases to the land.  As a result of this agreement to "share" the land, everyone wins:  the community people get secure land tenure in the long term, and the landlord gets his land back to develop commercially.  se slum people will acquire the housings security in the long term or may obtain the land rights.  Once the land sharing deal has been struck, communities can then reblock or reconstruct their communities on their part of the land. 

4.  Reconstruction   

In this strategy, existing communities are totally rebuilt on nearby land within the same general area, either under long-term lease or outright land purchase.  The security of land tenure at the new site provides community people with a very strong incentive to invest in their housing, through rebuilding or new construction.  Although the reconstruction option involves making considerable physical changes within the community and requires some adaptations to a new environment, the strategy allows people to continue living in the same area and to remain close to their places of work and this continuity is a crucial compensation for the expense and difficulty reconstruction involves. 

  5.  Relocation

The greatest advantage of the relocation strategy is that is usually comes with housing security, through land use rights, outright ownership or some kind of long-term land lease.  However, the relocation sites are often situated far away from the existing communities, job opportunities, support structures and schools.  Community members who want to keep their old jobs or attend the same schools must bear the burden of additional traveling time and expense and must adapt themselves to the new environment.  In relocations, communities will face the cost of reconstructing their houses at the new site, and in some cases the additional burden of land purchase payments, but again, the security of tenure becomes a big incentive to invest in housing and environmental development at the new community. 

 

 

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