1.
The principal of mutual benefit
If a
solution to problems of urban land tenure for the poor works for one
group, but causes trouble for another, it won’t be sustainable.
Only solutions which benefit all the stakeholders are likely to
be repeated. In the
community-driven relocations for which UPDF has provided housing
loans, the municipality has benefited by getting back land it needs
for drainage construction or urban infrastructure projects, while the
poor families displaced to make way for those projects have benefited
by getting alternative land which meets their need to be close to
jobs, schools and support structures.
2.
The principal of collaboration
The
problems of urban land and housing for the poor are too big and too
complex for any group to solve alone.
The housing solutions which UPDF (itself a formal collaboration
of the Municipality, SUPF, ACHR, SDI and NGOs) has supported have all
involved collaboration between many key groups:
SUPF’s district units have worked closely with communities to
help them to organize themselves, save, explore options and negotiate
for resources. The
municipality has provided land for resettlement and office space for
UPDF, while district and ward officials have worked closely with the
federation’s khan units and helped people’s search for alternative
land. Young architects at
the Urban Resource Center and UPDF have helped communities to design
affordable house-types and layout plans, while the UNCHS Project has
provided technical assistance and grants for infrastructure
development at some of the relocation sites.
3.
The principal of flexibility
For Phnom
Penh’s urban poor, the situation in the city is changing constantly.
To take advantage of the opportunities in all this flux, the
UPDF works to develop tools and mechanisms to assist the poor which
are light, flexible and easily changed to respond to changing needs.
None of the loan and grant programs UPDF has initiated have
arisen from any pre-planned project or been imposed by any outside
agenda, but have been driven by needs articulated by the poor
community organizations in Phnom Penh.
All these loans and grants have responded to real situations of
urgent need, exactly when they arose, such as unexpected evictions or
fires (requiring urgent housing or income-generation loans), sudden
availability of affordable land (requiring land-purchase loan
assistance), seasonal income earning opportunities (like the Prahok
loans) or lack of basic services (requiring infrastructure and
upgrading assistance).
4.
The principal of reaching the poorest
For
solutions to poverty and tenure security problems to be sustained in
the long term, they have to work for the poorest, most vulnerable
community members. Poor
communities and their organizations are far better judges of who
really needs what kind of assistance than any professionals or outside
agencies. In all the
activities UPDF supports, the communities are the key actors, and
those activities are designed in ways which strengthen their capacity
to identify their own most urgent problems, develop their own
solutions to those problems through mutual learning and networking,
and negotiate with other stakeholders in the city to make those
solutions part of the city’s development.
5.
The principal of not going away
Change takes time and almost never happens according to
the short-term schedules of conventional development projects, which
have to wind up neatly in
three or five year packages. The
UPDF is not a “project” but a long-term resource which will
continue to be available for poor communities, to help them do
whatever they need to do, even if it takes a long time.
Supporting the learning, experimenting, sharing and
network-building which help scale up community-driven solutions in
Phnom Penh is also part of UPDF’s commitment to help build a
genuinely people-driven development in Cambodia.
6. The
principal of involvement in city planning
The
UPDF is not a bank that lends to the poor, but a mechanism which uses
a very limited resources to help connect the process of making secure
housing and healthy communities with the larger process of planning
the city. The fund
provides poor people’s organizations with an important tool as they
negotiate for a more decentralized, community-driven style of
development, which makes housing and human settlements the root
of planning in their city, in their districts, in their wards and in
their individual communities.
