Abstract
Somsook Boonyabancha, former director of CODI (the Community Organizations Development Institute in Thailand) and now an advisor to the CODI board and chairperson of the Baan Mankong Program Committee, reflects on the evolution of CODI, the management of its fund, and the community-driven activities it has supported since 1992. The paper explains how substantial and large-scale changes can be brought about in the lives of the poor by supporting a community-driven process that opens space for negotiation and collaboration with government and other partners on housing and other aspects of community development. It describes the transitions that have had to be managed, as both the community networks and the support institution have navigated various challenges and opportunities. A centrepiece of this co-production is the Baan Mankong Program, which represents a dramatic change in the role of government – from a provider of housing to facilitator of community-driven local housing co-production.
I. Introduction
Since the Community Organizations Development Institute (CODI) in Thailand was set up in 1992, it has been engaged in continuous learning about how substantial change in the lives of the poor can be brought about through a process that opens space for poor communities to work with their local governments and other public and private stakeholders to deliver various development goods. Although co-production, as a term and a concept, was not familiar in Thai development until decades later, CODI’s work has manifested the principles of co-production all along, most notably in the delivery of housing – that toughest and most complex of public goods. But the co-production mechanisms CODI helped build have also addressed and linked together many other dimensions of poverty.
II. Background
The Urban Community Development Office (UCDO) was established in 1992, as a special programme under the National Housing Authority, with an initial grant of US$ 34 million from the Thai government as a special revolving fund to provide low-interest loans to community organizations for housing, livelihood and other purposes. This new fund was to be accessible to all urban poor groups that organized themselves to apply for loans for their development projects. Eight years later, over half of Thailand’s 2,500 urban poor communities were UCDO members, linked into 103 networks through a broad range of activities, including housing, income generation, environmental improvement, community enterprise and welfare.
In 2000, UCDO was officially merged with the Rural Development Fund to become the Community Organizations Development Institute (CODI), an autonomous legal entity with the status of a public organization (under the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security), providing direct access to government resources, more flexibility, and greater freedom than a conventional government institution. UCDO’s development activities continued unbroken under CODI, but the scope was greatly expanded, and the way the organization worked continued to evolve. For simplicity, we will use only the term CODI in this paper, which refers to all of UCDO’s and CODI’s work since 1992.
From the beginning, CODI positioned itself as a demand-driven institution. Its central guiding principle has always been that communities (the “demand side”) are the greatest and least-tapped development force, and so they should determine what they need, lead the development process, and set the direction and nature of CODI’s support. From the beginning, the organizational structures, the working culture and the ways of thinking built within CODI were all in line with this demand-driven principle: people are the centre, the key doers in all projects, and CODI’s role is to support them.
For a public institution to operate in a demand-driven way, however, in a society as centralized and hierarchical as Thailand’s, is not easy. There are no manuals, no models, no acquired wisdom to draw on. Most institutional templates and organizational knowledge are top-down and supply-driven. CODI is a new kind of institution, but at the same time, it is obliged to work within existing social and public structures. So we have had no choice but to find our own way by trial and error. We look, we plan, we try things and when we encounter problems, we analyse them, change things and adjust. In that dynamic process we all learn.
Beyond the principle of being “demand-driven”, several other elements were essential parts of CODI’s formulation from the beginning. These were built intentionally into the institution to make it less hierarchical and more collective, and to allow for the creation of a co-production mechanism and a co-production culture within CODI:
All of CODI’s structures and programmes are designed through an intense group process, involving both professionals and communities. That culture, embedded in the organization, helps keep CODI as unhierarchical as possible. There are occasional disagreements, and factions push for this or that decision, but that is a sign of health in a big, messy, collaborative process.
Collaboration is also built into all of CODI’s decision-making and management structures. CODI’s board, the highest decision-making body, has representatives from government agencies, civil society, NGOs, academia and communities. Almost all aspects of CODI’s work are managed by joint committees with representatives from all the relevant stakeholders and sectors. This is true of all sorts of working groups, issue-based committees, thematic committees and regional committees (many with their own set of joint sub-committees). The idea is to achieve agreement and a common understanding from these different actors, but also to build a broader base of support for a community-driven, demand-driven development process.
All of these platforms also mean that CODI’s operations are being scrutinized all the time, from all directions. The spotlight is never off. When some aspect of CODI’s support work causes friction, or when something gets stuck or has problems, everyone knows, and the many platforms offer people a chance to have their say. There are always opposing factions, letter-writers, radio call-ins, and angry phone calls to ministers and mayors – lots of clamorous politics. We take this as a sign of vitality. As an institution open to control from the demand side, we must have the capacity and courage to deal with all that, with tact and an open mind. Most government organizations, of course, are not inclined to deal with all the messy, difficult stuff that comes with participation.
On the one side, CODI supports the people’s process – messy, informal, illegal, unpredictable and constantly in flux – and this requires sensitivity, understanding, flexibility and a light organizing touch. At the same time, CODI must answer the demands imposed by government – bureaucratic, hierarchical and inflexible. Because its budget comes from the public purse, CODI must report to the Ministry of Finance, the Budget Bureau, the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security and the National Audit Office, all with different rules, regulations, procedures and hierarchies. As the political winds keep shifting in Thailand, CODI must also manoeuvre with tact and persistence to ensure its survival. Despite its unconventional ways, CODI’s work is now accepted by government because of the wide-scale change and clear results in the people-led projects it supports.
Cultivating political support is crucial. We have to understand how to negotiate proactively and positively with whatever politicians, government officials and administrations are in power, whether they are supportive, neutral or more difficult. CODI has had ample opportunities to refine those skills. There have been three military coups d’état and 18 changes of government since it was established in 1992. These may sound like the worst possible circumstances to function in, but in fact political crises can open space for new possibilities that would normally be stopped dead by bureaucratic obstacles.
UCDO was set up after a coup, by a civilian administration that was mandated to address poverty and other important issues. Because the military could ease bureaucratic complexities, some unconventional, potentially progressive programmes and funds were established in a short time, including UCDO. CODI was formed during another political crisis, when the government elected after the 1997 Asian economic crisis was tasked with addressing severe economic hardship and strengthening support mechanisms effective in supporting vulnerable communities at scale – like CODI’s predecessor, UCDO. So it got new funds, a new autonomous status and a marriage with the Rural Development Fund, allowing it to work without boundaries across the country.
Thailand is now under another military junta, which also came in with a reform agenda, and CODI has received strong support. This is the first time housing for all has been a primary government agenda, with a 20-year strategy built into the national and provincial planning process. Committees in each province deal with land problems and can seize public land illegally appropriated by rich families and politicians and redistribute it to the rural landless poor. CODI is now partnering with the Land Reform Department to use this process to build new and more sustainable rural communities.
When CODI began its Baan Mankong citywide community upgrading programme, for instance, we started by supporting upgrading projects in as many poor communities as possible, bringing in as many local actors and supporters as possible.(2) All that citywide activity in turn strengthened and expanded community networks and led to new collaborations. Eventually, the momentum began to create changes in many cities that were much greater than the benefits enjoyed by the families in those upgraded communities: the projects brought about changes in the city system and in the way poor communities and their city governments related to each other. This was more achievable because CODI is part of the government, but also supports that people-driven and citywide process. That is why it is so important and useful to be an institution that links both sides to achieve systematic change.
Up to now, CODI has supported the following key community processes at scale:
Citywide slum(3) upgrading in 1,051 projects (covering 105,000 families, in 2,557 communities, in 370 cities)
Community welfare funds in 5,949 wards (a total of 7,825 in the country) with 5.3 million members and combined resources of US$ 420 million (about 64 per cent from people’s own contributions)
Community councils in 6,645 wards (85 per cent of the total)
Community network platforms in five regions, in all 77 provinces in Thailand
III. Baan Mankong: Co-Production of Housing at Scale
One of the most substantial applications of the principles of co-production has been CODI’s Baan Mankong (“Secure Housing”) Program, launched in 2003 as part of the government’s efforts to address the housing problems of the country’s poorest urban citizens. The programme channels government funds, through CODI, in the form of infrastructure and housing subsidies, soft housing and land loans, and technical support, directly to poor communities. These communities then plan and carry out improvements to their housing, environment, basic services and land tenure; they manage the budgets themselves, through their savings groups. Instead of delivering housing units to individual poor families or individual communities, the Baan Mankong Program (BMP) puts Thailand’s poor communities (and their networks) at the centre of a process of developing long-term, comprehensive, citywide and varied solutions to problems of land and housing. As part of this unconventional programme, poor communities work in close collaboration with their local governments, professionals, universities and NGOs to survey themselves, identify possible land for communities that cannot redevelop their housing in-situ, and then plan a housing process aiming to improve all the communities in that city. Once these citywide plans are finalized and community upgrading projects are developed and approved, CODI channels the subsidies and loans directly to the communities.
This housing programme in Thailand grew out of a process that had been evolving since the early 1990s. It started with CODI’s support for community savings activities around the country, then formed and strengthened large-scale networks of poor communities, supported a range of scattered community-driven housing projects, and finally used these people’s managerial skills to address housing problems at citywide scale. By creating space for poor communities, municipalities, professionals and NGOs to look together at their cities’ housing problems, the BMP has changed how the issue of low-income housing is perceived and dealt with in Thailand: as a structural issue that relates to the whole city and that can be resolved. The local partnerships that the programme helps create can integrate poor community housing needs into the larger city’s development and then resolve other issues of poverty as well as future housing problems, as a matter of course.
Because communities are empowered to plan and implement the improvement projects themselves, according to needs and priorities they identify, and because the programme gives communities control over the finances and the form the housing takes (on-site upgrading, reblocking, reconstruction, or building a new community on land leased or purchased elsewhere), the BMP makes more efficient use of state resources for the poor, and promotes variation rather than standard solutions. The programme represents a dramatic change in the government’s role, from being a supply-driven provider of housing to being a facilitator of a demand-driven local housing co-production mechanism in which communities, their local governments and other local stakeholders are the essential partners in that solution-making mechanism.
The BMP brings together poor communities, local governments, local stakeholders, universities, architects and landowning agencies, as well as the crucial resources and support of CODI, to create a housing co-production mechanism that can be replicated in any city. CODI is both a partner and facilitator, and brings government funding to the housing projects, essential fuel for this process of change. All the ingredients of the citywide process (networks, surveys, inclusion of all, etc.) and all the BMP tools are there to help communities find solutions. The programme also provides a government policy umbrella for the informal communities, so the projects they undertake are legitimized. This merging of public policy, government funding, local partnerships, and the creative energy of large numbers of poor communities creates not only a lot of good housing projects, but an inclusive, citywide platform for collaboration that can address many other urban development issues as well.
In the BMP’s first six years, the performance graphs all zoomed upwards.(4) After the first 10 pilot projects tested the model and showed what variations were possible, the process was launched in 13 pilot cities. New collaborations flourished there, and then in many other cities. Agreements were reached with three of the largest public landowning agencies (the Crown Property Bureau, the State Railways of Thailand and the Treasury Department) to lease public land to communities doing BMP projects around the country, at nominal rates. Community savings groups were strengthened and housing cooperatives were registered as important managerial and legal mechanisms within communities for planning and constructing their housing projects.
The concepts were all being tested and proved through this implementation. This was no longer a scattered, informal process: it was happening at scale, supported by city governments and by government and civil society institutions. Since 2003, the BMP has spread to more than 300 cities, in 74 out of the country’s 77 provinces. Communities have implemented 1,033 housing projects, providing decent, secure, permanent housing to 104,000 urban poor families. The government has supported all this with policy, nominal leases on public land, and housing and land loans (total US$ 266.5 million) and housing subsidies (total US$ 221.6 million) through the CODI fund.
The implementation of the BMP generated substantial momentum and led to the emergence of other important demand-driven co-production initiatives that addressed other aspects of poverty and development, as described in Section VI.
IV. The Baan Mankong Program Slows Down
By 2009, the citywide upgrading process was being implemented some 260 cities and towns, and housing projects covering 80,000 households had been approved. The large scale of the programme’s operation was a clear sign of success, but with it came a new set of problems. By then, the CODI fund had been almost completely drained, with most of its capital tied up in long-term BMP housing loans. To find new funds, an experimental link between CODI and the Government Housing Bank brought a modest infusion of fresh capital into the CODI fund, by refinancing 20 of the completed housing projects. Soon after that, demonstrations by the national urban community network persuaded the government to inject an additional US$ 94 million into the CODI fund. But despite these capital infusions, the programme began to slow down, and the factors that combined to cause this slowdown offer some important insights and make an interesting preamble to the BMP’s later reforms.
The focus on output bedevils so many NGO-driven projects and government programmes, which all come with their lists of indicators. Accountability to those indicators leads to one project here and one project there, then everything may die when the project ends. Worse still, those isolated projects may have too many problems to be successful. Even community leaders can get stuck in that way of thinking. People need an active ground-level mechanism to make their own change. After a few projects, when they understand how their mechanism works, they tend to realize it is not too difficult and have the confidence to take on more. Then the demand side naturally generates the kind of numbers the government wants to see.
Projects implemented in isolation like this invariably meet with problems. A housing project in which a poor community moves from informality to secure, legal housing is always complex, because it involves structural issues of land, finance, construction standards, building bylaws, permits, planning regulations, municipal infrastructure, house registration and citizen rights. All these urban structures involve different agencies and departments, different rules and ways of working, and different local actors. To deal with those complex structures, a community needs allies, even with a strong community network behind them.
All of these factors combined to slow down the BMP and the housing co-production mechanism in most cities. Many newly approved projects stalled for various reasons. As of July 2018, of the approved BMP projects in over 400 cities, about 45 per cent are complete, 35 per cent are still underway and about 20 per cent have been cancelled.
Meanwhile, the pace of urban development in Thailand keeps accelerating, land prices keep increasing, and development pressures keep intensifying. Problems continue to grow in those cities with just one housing project. A quick survey by the network found some 500 urban communities around the country are facing the immediate threat of eviction, and thousands more potential evictions looming in the not-too-distant future, with powerful forces of urban development continuing to push poor communities out. The time had come for the BMP to be reviewed and reformed, to keep pace with real needs and changes on the ground.
V. A New Stage of Reform for Baan Mankong
Sometimes it is useful to get into some serious hot water if the crisis can move everyone into a new way of thinking. The stagnation in the BMP led to much collective reflection by the community networks and CODI staff. There is now a common understanding about what changes are needed to bring it back to vigorous life, and a national reform process is under way.
In the past, the city-based community networks would survey all the slums in a city and select a few as pilots. But other communities were left behind, as many cities settled for one or two projects, and then the process stalled. Now we are getting back to the BMP’s original concepts of citywide partnerships and co-production, with clearer understanding and more maturity. When community networks survey all the slums in their city now, as many communities as possible start actively working on their housing solutions right away: planning, saving, negotiating for land, setting up cooperatives, linking with helpers, and setting up task forces to deal with various aspects of their housing projects. In the process, the community networks in each city develop clear plans for solving all of that city’s housing problems within three to five years. Working at this citywide scale is the way to deal with actual and potential evictions, find solutions, and cultivate the local partnerships that can make secure housing possible for all. Every city has to set up a joint city committee now, with representatives from the local authority, communities and other actors, and that committee has to discuss and approve every single housing project, and review the citywide survey information and citywide upgrading plans. The intent of this joint mechanism at city level is to somewhat institutionalize the citywide aspect. The expansion of the BMP into rural areas is also bringing in a lot of new possibilities, and this rural side of the programme will be more fully discussed in Section VIi.
VI. Other Co-Production Initiatives Supported by Codi
a. Community welfare funds
For many years, urban community networks around the country have run their own community welfare funds, with each savings group member contributing about US$ 1 a month. Some urban poor community members cannot access any government social welfare programme, and these community-managed and community-funded funds allow communities to provide quick, responsive help to their neighbours in times of need. In 2005, CODI began supporting these efforts with small seed grants to sub-district-level welfare funds that cover such things as medicines, hospitalization, elderly and disabled people’s needs, children’s scholarships, HIV programmes and health promotion schemes. In 2007, the Thai government recognized the potential in this people-driven welfare movement and initiated a national policy whereby local governments would match what people contributed. By January 2018, community-managed welfare funds were operating in 5,600 rural wards and 67 cities. Some cities broadened the welfare concept to include supporting housing for the poorest families or those affected by disasters, or to support income generation and community enterprises.
b. City-based community development funds
Some networks had set up other kinds of community funds as well – housing savings funds, children’s savings funds, and environmental savings funds. These funds gave community members more ways to save, participate and build community-based systems for addressing their immediate needs, using their own pooled resources. Then, CODI’s 2009 funding crisis made it clear that CODI, like all government institutions, is vulnerable to the whims of national politics, and that community networks should develop their own independent financial mechanisms. A series of national meetings were convened to explore ways for networks in each city to stand on their own feet, as much as possible. City-based community development funds (CDFs), managed by community networks and linking all the savings groups in a city, are not just locally controlled financial systems for the poor, but are a way to pool local resources, strengthen relations and collaboration with local governments, and pull other poor communities into the citywide development process. CDFs allow community networks to respond flexibly to urgent needs and provide scope for addressing poverty in more locally driven, partnership-based ways.
The first city-based CDFs were set up in 2009 by two pioneering community networks in the town of Chum Phae and in Bangkok’s Bang Khen District, where the smaller funds they were already running were brought together under one umbrella and topped up with small capital seed grants of US$ 30,000 each from the Asian Coalition for Community Action (ACCA), a programme of the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR).(5) Five more cities followed in 2010, with ACCA seed grants of US$ 20,000 each. These first city funds generated a lot of excitement, and the concept was taken up by community networks across the country. CDFs are now fully functioning in 116 Thai cities.
When the CDFs started forming, it seemed natural to bring the community-managed welfare funds under the CDF umbrella, and CODI began channelling seed grants of US$ 670 per city for community-managed welfare through these new city funds. Little as this sum was, it was sufficient to bring people together to discuss needs and set up their own community welfare system. Community networks also began adding their own regular contributions to these funds to finance other community projects, including housing, upgrading, livelihoods and community enterprises. Most of the Thai CDFs are now composed of several distinct funds for specific purposes, which are managed together under the umbrella of one city-level CDF. In most cases, these funds are kept financially separate, with separate community contributions, membership, accounts and audits, but managed by a single committee of representatives from the member communities and networks. Many CDFs started with the welfare funds described above, and many also include savings funds for both community savings groups and individual savers.
c. Community housing insurance funds (Raksadin Raksabaan)
Since it was launched in 2003, the BMP has helped 104,000 poor families get secure land and housing in 1,033 projects, mostly financed by CODI loans. It is no surprise that some of this large number have faced difficulties repaying their loans, leaving their tenure and housing in danger. So in 2010, a new scheme was launched: a national housing insurance fund called Raksadin Raksabaan (“Keeping the land and house”), which is owned and operated by networks of community borrowers around the country. CODI seeded this fund with a US$ 670,000 grant, and each family that borrows for housing or land contributes US$ 6 per year. Half the money is kept at national level, and half goes into city-level housing insurance funds, managed by the urban community networks under the umbrella of their city-level CDFs, where all decisions about local insurance payouts are made. If a community member cannot make repayments (because of problems like illness, loss of jobs, accidents, death or disasters), and if nobody else in the family is earning enough to take over, then the insurance fund will cover the repayments and keep the family in their house, until someone can resume making payments. The 128 housing cooperatives registered with the insurance fund so far have 17,217 members, and the fund has supported housing loan repayments for:
166 families whose main income-earner died (US$ 277,500 in total)
18 families whose main income-earner was ill and could not work (US$ 21,875 in total)
746 families who faced disasters (US$ 71,250)
d. Community councils
Community councils are platforms that strengthen the network of communities within a rural or urban ward, giving residents a legitimate, collective platform to discuss development issues, work together and initiate development projects of their own. Initially organized on an informal basis, the 2008 Community Councils Act gave legal status to these citizen bodies. They include representatives from communities within the ward, which typically includes several rural villages and small towns as well as all kinds of community groups. Besides meeting regularly to discuss local issues and develop policy recommendations for local government, community councils develop community master plans and implement their own development projects, including welfare programmes, livelihood projects, and programmes to support sustainable agricultural production. Through CODI, which supports the national community council process, councils have access to the national government and cabinet. Today, community councils are registered in more than 5,000 rural wards around Thailand.
e. Housing for the homeless
The homeless network in Thailand links city-based networks of homeless people in three cities so far. It has been supported for many years by the Bangkok-based NGO Human Settlements Foundation (HSF) and the Four Regions Slum Network. Since 2003, HSF and the network have made frequent surveys of homeless people; most recently, they counted 1,093 homeless people in Bangkok, 136 in Chiang Mai and 166 in Khon Kaen. Without a secure place to live, bathe or cook, and without ID cards, these most vulnerable of all Thailand’s poor are shut out of most government welfare and health care programmes and face many dangers: being raped, robbed, beaten up, chased by the police, and forced to sleep in the rain.
In 2007, Bangkok’s homeless network designed and built its own shelter in Bangkok’s Taling Chan District, in collaboration with CODI, the State Railways Authority, the municipal government, HSF, the Four Regions Slum Network and the local community network. A departure from the government-run shelters, this shelter represented a new co-production strategy for addressing homelessness: the government provides the land and finances the construction, while the homeless people run the shelter, make their own rules and develop their own programme, according to the real needs of the residents, with support from partner NGOs and networks. Inspired by this shelter’s success, the government has allocated US$ 3.1 million for similar homeless shelters in Chiang Mai, Khon Kaen and other parts of Bangkok. Land has been acquired in two cities and the new shelter in Chiang Mai was inaugurated in June 2018. Meanwhile, 12 pioneering families from the Bangkok homeless shelter have moved into the country’s first permanent housing project designed and built by (formerly) homeless people themselves, on land leased inexpensively from the State Railways Authority, with housing loans from CODI.
f. Canal improvement programme in Bangkok
One of the most visited BMP housing projects in Bangkok is along the Bang Bua Canal, where a network of 13 canal-side squatter settlements have been redeveloping their houses in the narrow strips of public land along the canal, with canal-side walkways. In this win-win solution, canal-side squatters get secure housing in-situ on long-term collective land lease, and the city gets improved canal access for flood control and canal maintenance. Many other Bangkok canals are also lined with informal settlements, where thousands of poor families live.(6) For decades, the government’s only idea was to evict residents of these settlements, but the Bang Bua project has shown another way. In 2015, as part of its efforts to deal with increasing problems of flooding in the city, the government allocated a substantial budget to CODI to implement a special canal improvement project. Housing projects, some on-site and some in relocation settlements nearby, have been approved and are underway in 31 canal-side communities, home to 3,091 families. An additional US$ 6.7 million has been allocated to CODI to explore similar canal redevelopment in other cities.
g. Housing for the poorest (Baan Paw Pieng)
In 2017, the Thai government launched a housing programme for the country’s poorest citizens, urban and rural, called Baan Paw Pieng (“Sufficient Housing Program”), in which 9,000 poor families (about 200 per province) get a small subsidy of US$ 554 to improve or rebuild their houses. Normally, such a programme would involve government-designed model houses and construction contracts with commercial developers. But perhaps because the subsidy was so small, the new programme was passed to CODI. And for CODI, that small subsidy was an opportunity to demonstrate a more community-managed, collaborative way of addressing the housing problems of the poorest families.
Big meetings were organized in each of the country’s 76 provinces for all of the community networks in each province to discuss the programme and set plans. Networks then surveyed their own communities, identified their own poorest members and developed plans for housing them. Because the subsidy was too small for even a minimal house, they did a lot of leveraging and collaborating to raise enough funds to build good houses for those families. Local governments, district authorities, provincial governments, local businesses, NGOs and all sorts of civil society organizations chipped in an additional US$ 9.4 million, and in the first year alone, 10,370 housing units were built all over the country – 370 more than the target. The government increased the 2018 grant to US$ 10.4 million to subsidize another 15,000 houses. By February 2018, 14,000 units had already been approved and were under construction.
h. Healthy community programme
In 2013, the government’s Thai Health Promotion Foundation entered into an unconventional partnership with the national network of urban poor communities to develop community-managed projects to grow safe, healthy, organic fruits and vegetables on the common land and around people’s houses in poor communities. The foundation provided budget and training for community members (and especially schoolchildren) on growing organic produce in small spaces, and the community network coordinated the project. In the first year, the 100 communities in the programme were mostly veterans of Baan Mankong housing projects, but it has since expanded into a more strategic citywide programme with over 400 communities in 40 cities and a few rural areas now working with their networks, CODI and local governments. They survey local food security problems and needs, and work together to develop a citywide culture of greater self-sufficiency in healthy food production.
i. Rural Baan Mankong
One of the most exciting recent developments has been the expansion of the BMP into rural communities, where a lot of families have lost their land because of debt, family crises, eviction, infrastructure projects, disasters or sheer poverty. The BMP can now work with rural community networks, local governments, NGOs, community councils and other stakeholders to help these families secure enough land for housing and livelihoods. The differences between urban and rural are blurring, as cities expand, rural settlements urbanize, and people move back and forth all the time. Focusing on one set of housing problems while ignoring another no longer makes sense. Rural areas also offer scope for working within a much greater variety of geographical contexts. Besides villages and small towns, there are forests, watersheds, coastlines and mountains. BMP planning is ward-wide, district-wide or forest-wide. And the programme is flexible enough to promote a broader form of housing security, including such things as secure livelihoods and access to healthy food, and to build on the range of work that has already been done by rural NGOs and government programmes.
Over the past year, CODI has been organizing regional meetings around the country, and its central team has attended to assist each region’s community networks to use Baan Mankong to explore new ways of linking together and working with other actors. The principles are the same: community networks survey their area, identify the insecure and landless people, search for land, and develop comprehensive plans to solve problems of landlessness and insecurity. It is similar to the citywide concept, but with more fluid constituencies – the whole ward, whole district or whole watershed. One possibility being discussed is allowing the community councils already operating in 5,000 rural wards to take charge of implementing the BMP in their wards. In the urban BMP, each family gets a subsidy of US$ 2,500 toward infrastructure and housing construction. In the rural BMP, the same subsidy can be used in more flexible ways, according to the particular context. Twelve pilot projects have already been proposed by the various regions (covering 1,145 families) and CODI has approved a budget of US$ 1.6 million to implement them. These early projects show a lot of variety and potential – many taking advantage of the government’s rural land reform scheme.
j. National 20-year housing strategy
Thailand’s government is now drafting a national strategy for solving all the country’s housing problems in the next 20 years. Every province and ward will be responsible for developing plans to address different kinds of housing needs – including those of the poor – within their constituencies. These plans will then be brought together under the national housing plan. Multi-stakeholder committees are being set up in each province to oversee this planning process, chaired by the provincial governors. Besides the National Housing Authority, local government and private sector actors, CODI has been able to negotiate an agreement that two poor community representatives – one rural and one urban – also be included. The policy is overseen by a national committee, chaired by the deputy prime minister, with representatives from the key government organizations involved in housing, as well as CODI and community representatives. There are also three sub-committees, on finance, housing policy and construction.
Nobody is clear yet on how committed the government is to this new policy, but it is useful to have a national policy umbrella to support all the work already being done by poor communities under the BMP, and to allow for new programmes, collaborations and links to strengthen the community-driven and citywide aspects of housing. This policy could influence the crucial issue of access to land, for instance, by coordinating different public landowning agencies under the housing policy umbrella, and creating room for many poor people to negotiate secure tenure for the land they occupy.
VII. Conclusions
All of these CODI support programmes will continue to be adjusted and refined, as circumstances change and new programmes, new partnerships and new opportunities for co-production continue to emerge. Poverty has many more dimensions than those being addressed by these programmes. But a small reality check may be useful here, by way of conclusion: no matter how many projects we co-produce, the only real achievement will be if the change belongs to the people, not to CODI. An intermediary institution like CODI can use the tools of finance and various support programmes to open up the demand-driven change process to scale, and make room for a lot more ideas from the community side, a lot more collaboration and a lot more action on the ground. Those of us on the support side can certainly play a part in facilitating, with support and resources, the unlocking of that great development force that exists within communities, but only up to a certain point. The shift in power and the change in relationships and structures that comes with empowerment – and which constitutes real development – is something that can only be done by people themselves.