Editorial: Getting housing back onto the development agenda: the many roles of housing and the many services it should provide its inhabitants

This editorial considers the large range of services and other benefits that should be associated with housing residence or title. This includes the implications for housing policies that respond to the diversity of housing needs among low-income populations and for interventions on the ground. Assessments of housing usually focus on the quality of the housing structure and of infrastructure and service provision, and sometimes of tenure. Here, I widen this to include consideration of whether other critical housing needs are being addressed: a good location (in regard to labour markets and services), choice (within housing and land for housing markets), and a registered address or other home-related documents that allow access to public services and entitlements. Also considered are other factors important for getting housing needs addressed, including low-income groups being organized and having a productive engagement with government.

I. How Housing is Viewed

Housing can be viewed from so many different perspectives. Is it simply shelter or is it defined to include a range of housing-related services and other associated benefits? Is it a right, a commodity or an investment? Is its construction primarily a way to meet a basic need or is it more of an economic stimulus for job creation? Is housing a private good that households should be responsible for? And if so, who should be responsible for the land, infrastructure and finance it requires?

Housing of course is potentially all of these things and more – a need, a right, a commodity, an asset, a conduit to basic services and to legal status, a base for employment/working from home, an investment or security for loans, an economic stimulus, and an employment creator. There are, however, disagreements over the relative importance and even legitimacy of these different views of housing. No one disagrees that housing meets a fundamental need, though there may be differences of opinion as to what even this should include. Many view housing as a right, including many governments, although their commitments are not always evident in the way their policies play out on the ground. Governments can see their resettlement programmes as contributions to the right to housing, while those who are resettled against their wishes feel their housing rights have been abused. Housing is valued by its owners as an asset, a commodity that can be bought, sold or rented. But there can be disagreements on the extent to which housing should in fact be subject to market pressures.

In most urban contexts, housing should provide its inhabitants with benefits that go well beyond the building – including a location with good access to labour markets and services, a registered address (usually needed for accessing many services and entitlements and often getting on the voter register), and neighbourhood infrastructure. Yet it is rare for most of these to be considered when housing conditions are assessed. Box 1 is a reminder of the number and range of these services and other associated benefits that housing can and should provide. Many are the responsibility of city or municipal governments, although national government policies and support to these other levels of government are also essential.

Box 1

What should housing ideally provide for its occupants? The services and other benefits associated with housing

In-house/flat/shack

• Safe structure that provides protection from extreme weather and from crime

• Access to toilet, bathroom and kitchen facilities within the accommodation, including provision for (grey) wastewater removal; in some contexts, this is provided on the plot (e.g. cooking outdoors, pit latrines separate from dwelling)

• Privacy and quiet space

• Sufficient living space; in most cultures this requires separate sleeping spaces for adults, male children and female children

• Electricity or other needed energy source

• Accommodation providing the above at an affordable cost

Linked to the home

• A registered address: in many nations, this is needed for getting on the voter register and for receiving postal services; for realizing access to public services (preschools and schools, healthcare) and entitlements (e.g. a ration card in India, other social protection measures). It is also a key defence against eviction or for getting compensation or resettlement, if evicted. A registered address is needed for getting insurance and often for opening a bank account or obtaining a formal bank loan.

• Documentary proof of legal tenure (for owners); in the case of tenants, a legal contract to protect them from eviction and price rises by landlords

Home location within the larger city

• Good access to high-quality affordable public transport

• Good location for access to employment/labour markets

Delivered to the home/plot

• Access roads/paths serving each plot that enable safe movement throughout the year

• Regular, safe water piped to each home or plot

• Sewer connection or other forms of provision for sanitation (including latrine/septic tank emptying)

• Drainage

• Connection to the electricity grid

• Regular solid waste collection

• Emergency services when needed (fire service, ambulance access)

Delivered to the neighbourhood

• Piped water network serving plots or convenient kiosks

• Neighbourhood-wide sewer system to which households can connect

• Connection to the larger drainage system

• Public lighting

• Policing/rule of law – safety and security

• Good access to public transport

• Recreation facilities (including public spaces/parks)

• Community public space (including parks, small markets, faith-based activities, meeting rooms)

What residents expect from the city

• Local government with positive attitudes to informal settlements and to working with their residents and community organizations

• Security from forced eviction (for tenants as well as owner-occupiers)

• Inclusive upgrading strategy and support for new housing that low-income groups can afford

• Support for informal and formal tenants at risk

• Support for city-wide basic services to all formal and informal areas

• Investment in capacity for disaster risk reduction that is also mindful of climate change impacts; this includes building resilience in housing, infrastructure and services in informal settlements, working with their inhabitants

What residents expect from national government

• Support for secure tenure (and land information systems to support this)

• Land title policy that supports households (and in some places communities) getting tenure

• Investment in bulk infrastructure

• Support to city government to fulfil its multiple roles in relation to housing

SOURCE: Developed and expanded from Table 10.11 in Rojas, Eduardo (2016), “Housing policies and urban development: lessons from the Latin American experience, 1960-2010”, in George W McCarthy, Gregory K Ingram and Samuel A Moody (editors), Land and the City, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge, MA, pages 301–356.

In low- and middle-income nations, there are extreme examples of housing solutions that lack nearly all the services listed in Box 1. There are, for instance, individuals who rent beds by the hour in dormitories, households that have lived on pavements for decades, and construction workers and their families who sleep on construction sites – in all cases reflecting the need to be close to income-earning opportunities.⁽¹⁾ In Karachi and Pakistan’s other large cities, for the first time, there are now people sleeping under bridges, on roundabouts, on pavements, and in open-air “hotels”.⁽²⁾ These households and individuals are either unable to afford proper housing close to work or the transport costs if they moved to more distant, cheaper accommodation; or they are minimizing their expenses to allow more income to be channelled back to their families (often for housing in their home settlements). Those who build or rent homes on dangerous sites – whether on floodplains and riverbanks, on steep slopes, or along highways or railways – are all trading high risk for affordability and availability.

There is no data source on housing that allows a comparison of how well different groups in different cities are provided with all the housing-related services and benefits listed in Box 1. In high-income nations, a majority of the urban population has all or most of these, although many low-income households lack some of the most important services. Higher-income groups, in both the global North and South, can afford to draw on private sector provision if public provision does not adequately serve them. In most cities, wealth means a much wider range of housing options.

Our capacity to fully understand and assess housing conditions is also complicated by the fact that, as Box 1 makes clear, there are so many aspects to housing. The accurate assessment of most of these dimensions requires several indicators. Just for sanitation, for instance, indicators are needed on toilet proximity and accessibility, affordability, level of hygiene, and safe removal and management of toilet wastes. Comparisons of housing conditions across countries are even more complex because there is no agreed list of definitions or indicators, and in many nations limited or no data.⁽³⁾ Moreover, standards are in part culturally determined.

There is a new source of data on housing, however, generated by the 33 national slum/shack dweller federations that are affiliates of SDI (formerly Slum/Shack Dwellers International). These federations have developed methodologies to document and map informal settlements, and have applied these to thousands of informal settlements in over 500 cities, as part of “Know your City” campaigns.⁽⁴⁾ These contain a lot of detailed data on housing conditions and services – and on community priorities. In many cities, these provide the first map of informal settlements, making available the data needed by community organizations to plan upgrading and help initiate and build support and recognition from local governments.⁽⁵⁾

II. The Right to Housing

Box 1’s definition of what housing should include can very reasonably be considered within the context of housing rights. The recognition of housing as a right is gaining ground – but this is happening when so many cities worldwide face serious housing crises. The UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing noted that “housing conditions around the world remain extremely challenging, with homelessness on the rise including in most affluent countries, forced evictions and displacement continuing unabated, informal settlements that lack basic services and security of tenure growing, and housing markets forcing poor and low-income households out”.⁽⁶⁾ Conventional houses and apartments in the formal sector have become increasingly unaffordable for much of the expanding urban population and workforce. For most cities in the global South, including the cities covered in this issue of the journal, a large proportion of the population lives in very poor-quality informal housing.

So to what extent does the right to housing include all the benefits listed in Box 1? Housing was articulated as a human right in the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which demanded “a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being. . .including. . .housing”.⁽⁷⁾ During the late 1980s, the emphasis on housing as a right gained renewed attention, as development specialists looked for ways to apply pressure on governments to address housing issues.⁽⁸⁾ In 1991, UN General Comment No 4 elaborated on the dimensions of housing as a right. More recently, there was the strong statement in Sustainable Development Goal 11 (known as the urban goal) on housing: “By 2030, ensure access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade slums.”⁽⁹⁾ And in the New Urban Agenda, coming out of the Habitat III conference in 2016, governments committed to “promoting national, subnational and local housing policies that support the progressive realization of the right to adequate housing for all as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living”.⁽¹⁰⁾ But both of these recent agendas are so weak on how, with whom and with what funds and other resources these ambitions are to be realized. They give so little attention to the roles of local government and civil society.

Within the UN, there have been two significant and related changes since this right to housing was articulated in 1948. The first is greater attention to other dimensions of adequacy. The second is the recognition that housing is the means through which many other rights are met as well.

With regard to the first of these: the word “adequate” needs to be defined. The UN Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000, published in 1988, states, “Adequate shelter means more than a roof over one’s head: It means adequate privacy, adequate space, adequate security, adequate lighting and ventilation, adequate basic infrastructure and adequate location with regard to work and basic facilities - all at a reasonable cost.”⁽¹¹⁾ By this definition, “adequate” housing includes much of what is listed in Box 1, including concern with an adequate location. In 1991, UN General Comment No 4⁽¹²⁾ elaborated on the growing consensus that the right to adequate housing goes well beyond the housing unit itself.⁽¹³⁾ It emphasizes legal security of tenure, stating that “all persons should possess a degree of security of tenure which guarantees legal protection against forced eviction, harassment and other threats”, including “those in rental (public and private) accommodation, cooperative housing, lease, owner-occupation, emergency housing and informal settlements, including occupation of land or property”.⁽¹⁴⁾ General Comment No 4 also details other aspects of the right to housing, including availability of services, materials, facilities and infrastructure, with “sustainable access to natural and common resources, safe drinking water, energy for cooking, heating and lighting, sanitation and washing facilities, means of food storage, refuse disposal, site drainage and emergency services”;⁽¹⁵⁾ habitability (adequate space, protection from the elements and health risks); accessibility (adequate housing accessible to disadvantaged groups and victims of natural disasters); location (providing access to employment options, services and unpolluted sites); and cultural adequacy (enabling the expression of cultural identity and diversity of housing). This general comment also raises the issue of affordability (to protect tenants as well as owners), which was previously mentioned in the 1988 Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000, and which is emphasized again in SDG 11.

Crucially, the concern with housing location in relation to work challenges the validity of so many public housing programmes and resettlement schemes over the last few decades.⁽¹⁶⁾ If housing “adequacy” is also expected to include attention to such factors as accessible healthcare centres, schools, markets and so on, as well as connection to such infrastructure networks as piped water, sewers, drains, roads and electricity, then the common government response of funding public housing, often of poor quality, in peripheral locations without services or proper infrastructure, does not measure up as a full response to the right to housing.

With regard to the second significant change, the UN recognition of housing as a means to accessing other rights: this goes well beyond the services and amenities listed above. Housing should also provide occupants with a registered address – proof of which is often needed to fight against eviction or get resettlement or compensation if eviction cannot be avoided. A registered address is often needed to get on voter rolls or to access government schools and other services and entitlements, such as social protection and subsidized food and pensions. A registered address is also needed for getting insurance for homes and possessions, often for opening a bank account, and for getting housing finance (although the address may not be a sufficient condition – and microfinance may not require a registered address). Not having a registered address is one way that individuals and households are denied their rights to the city.

Housing is also recognized as having a role in supporting other important rights, such as the right not to be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with one’s privacy, family, home or correspondence and the right to freedom of association (critical for civil society including grassroots organizations). This acknowledgement of the many roles housing can and should play is nothing new – John F C Turner’s 1976 book Housing by People⁽¹⁷⁾ emphasized many of these rights, including the fact that individuals and households have the right to have and make choices about the housing they purchase, build or rent, as the subtitle to the book makes clear: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments.⁽¹⁸⁾ This recognition that housing contributes to other rights elevates the entire housing debate. So too does its suggestion that the right to housing includes the right to make choices. Resettlement programmes generally deny those to be resettled any choice while removing the option they want – not having to move and upgrading.

The rest of this editorial will discuss various of these rights-based concerns as they are expressed in the papers included in this issue.

III. Land, Tenure and Informality

Box 1 mentions location, accessibility, tenure and land titling. All have to do with land and property rights, an essential component of the right to housing. The way land and housing rights are viewed within national and local government influences policy and the understanding of the government’s roles and responsibilities. Much of this relates to attitudes towards low-income residents’ informal solutions. Three papers in this issue involve governments hostile to informal settlements and their inhabitants even as these make up much of the city’s workforce. The paper by Shakirah Esmail and Jason Corburn describes the precarious status of informal settlements in Kigali in the context of large-scale planning-induced expropriation. Even residents who have legal tenure and live in long-established settlements, as described for the study settlement of Bannyahe, can be subjected to this. It is estimated that over 60 per cent of Kigali comprises informal settlements. These are anything but unplanned and spontaneous; they have long histories of development and some date back to the colonial period.

The paper tells the story of 728 property owners in Bannyahe who took the city of Kigali to court to contest the way the expropriation of their land was being handled, and the plans to resettle them in high-rise apartments in a distant peri-urban area. They were worried about losses they would incur from relocation to an area far from the city centre, where, in addition, apartment units would be smaller, precluding or limiting rental prospects. Their grievances included not just the inadequate consultation over expropriation but also the ways their properties were being undervalued. Bannyahe residents who visited the houses being built to rehouse them said that they were like a refugee camp. Yet the city government may well assert that it has respected these property owners’ right to housing simply by resettling them. The importance for low-income groups of accommodation in a good location within each city is obvious – but as this paper discusses, it is difficult to define this “spatial” right.

Two other papers in this issue are on the struggles by informal settlement dwellers to obtain tenure and avoid eviction. In Istanbul, Yves Cabannes and Göral Özgür Sevgi note that more than a million people are under serious threat of their houses being demolished. The population in informal settlements has no legal documents, but these residents feel that having built a house and enhanced a vacant plot constitutes the basis of a legitimate right. This is backed up by policies that in the past were supportive of informal settlement upgrading.⁽¹⁹⁾ The paper by Yves Cabannes and Göral Özgür Sevgi describes the land disputes between informal settlement dwellers and the state on the outskirts of Istanbul. Most of this relates to the demolitions and forced evictions imposed by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, which has long sought to reshape Istanbul into what it sees as a global city. Upgrading informal settlements is certainly not part of that mission. But there is one informal settlement (in Yakacık) where the inhabitants managed to obtain legal tenure and avoided resettlement. This paper explores how and why they succeeded when so many others did not, including two other informal settlements covered in the same research.

The first reason was that about 80 per cent of the Yakacık land belonged to the local district municipality, which could issue ownership titles to residents; in the other two settlements, land mainly belonged to the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and the Treasury, both of which refused to transfer ownership to the district municipality despite being legally bound to do so. It is also more difficult for residents of informal settlements to negotiate with metropolitan authorities – especially when these are promoting informal settlement evictions. The second reason for the success of the Yakacık residents revolves around the mediating role and political commitment of district municipalities, whether for the benefit of residents or the benefit of private interests. For Yakacık, the district municipality (and one municipal officer in particular) was in favour of supporting resident requests for tenure. The third reason relates to the organization of residents. In all three settlements, people organized and resisted, but under different forms and with different levels of success. The capacity to transform a protest and resistance movement into a formal organization, able to negotiate and persist through time, seems important here. More recently, political changes in Istanbul in 2019 have led to uncertainty and some hope in relation to land access and tenure for informal settlement dwellers.

It is interesting to see the commonalities between this case and lessons from the national slum/shack dweller federations working with governments, and frequently documented in this journal: residents of informal settlements have to be organized; they have to demonstrate their capacities and potential contributions, especially to local authorities; and these authorities need to support community-led upgrading and contribute land to federations’ housing initiatives.⁽²⁰⁾ Initiatives with local authorities can also be kept below the radar of higher levels of government, where these are unsupportive or hostile.

The third account in this issue of the struggles by informal settlement dwellers to get tenure and avoid eviction in the face of government hostility is the paper by Achamyeleh Gashu Adam. This looks at competing and conflicting interests for peri-urban land conversion and development in Bahir Dar City (Ethiopia). Three key sets of players (the state, the private sector and the local peri-urban communities) compete for peri-urban land access and security in formal and informal markets. They have very different capacities and motivations. The state, which has the monopoly power to own, manage and expropriate land, is making land available for housing, but to the highest bidder. So unauthorized land-use conversions and informal settlements have mushroomed in peri-urban areas that offer cheap but underserviced land for people who cannot afford formal land and housing. Most low-income groups live in self-built, unauthorized and substandard houses on informally purchased parcels that were previously agricultural land. These residents press the government to provide public utilities – and to officially recognize their settlements. If this happens, settlers may be moved to a nearby place or provided with tenure and basic facilities. But if the government decides to reject their request, the settlement is demolished. Demolition is still the main response by the government to informal settlements, and without any compensation or alternative land sites. The paper notes that the authorities come on surprise visits to measure the land they want and inform the local landholders that it is needed for development projects. Landowners cannot oppose their decisions; if they do, they are labelled development saboteurs and are subject to threats or abuse by officials, including detention or exclusion from benefits. Compensation is inadequate and is only paid to those with legal rights to the land.

In all three cases – Kigali, Bahir Dar and Istanbul – there are all the classic (and long-understood) mistakes made in resettlement efforts:

• Ignore tenants (who get nothing) and use arbitrary criteria to reduce the number to be resettled or to receive compensation (for instance proof of long-term residency).

• Arrive at resettlement “solutions” that provide no choice, and that are developed without consultation with those to be resettled.

• Place resettlement locations far from the city centre and from livelihoods and services.

• Undervalue the properties expropriated to keep down compensation claims.

• Construct inappropriate resettlement buildings.

• Require the resettled population to contribute to costs, which for many are unaffordable.

In three other papers in this issue, the government is seen as tolerant or supportive of informal settlements (Gobabis, Namibia; South Africa in regard to backyard shacks; and Dar es Salaam and Mwanza in Tanzania). While most accounts of settlements without formal tenure stress the precariousness of informality, the Tanzanian paper by Manja Hoppe Andreasen, Gordon McGranahan, Alphonce Kyessi and Wilbard Kombe, which focuses on self-builders’ investments in informal land and housing, takes a different perspective, one that would only be possible where the government takes a tolerant stance. This paper argues that the informal housing and land system has far more advantages than are appreciated by proponents of formalization. This will be discussed further below in Section VIb. For now, it is simply an indication of the ways in which tolerance on the part of government can provide the space for people to confidently develop their own solutions.

The papers from Namibia and South Africa also illustrate the benefits of government tolerance and support, although the fact that these are accompanied with funded initiatives is of course an additional benefit.

IV. Housing as a Provider of Services and Amenities

Box 1 makes it very clear how central services are to adequate housing, despite generally being assessed separately. In-house connections to regular safe piped water supplies, good-quality sanitation and electricity are obviously part of a home, yet their provision is measured separately from the assessment of housing as accommodation. Water, sanitation and electricity have their own SDGs, although it is mostly through upgrading and other housing initiatives that these particular goals are met. Other key requirements are good access to such public services as healthcare, emergency services and easily accessed affordable public transport, as well as the kind of public space that serves community needs.

Most of these services are the responsibility of city or municipal governments, although national government policies and support to these levels of government are also essential. When these are not provided, residents have to pay for a range of private service providers, including informal providers, or go without. This generally results in higher costs and/or much poorer-quality provision for water, sanitation, drainage, and collection of households’ solid, toilet and other wastes.⁽²¹⁾ It often means having to pay school fees to poor-quality informal schools and high prices for private healthcare providers. The failure of the government to provide these services creates many opportunities in the informal economy – including for land agents, developers and landlords as well as the providers of basic services.

The large and diverse range of services that should come with housing is discussed in the paper by Christina Culwick and Zarina Patel. This considers access to these services in informal settlements, in government housing projects and in other types of housing in the province of Gauteng, South Africa. Government housing programmes have delivered housing with secure tenure and in most cases with much improved provision for water, sanitation, electricity, healthcare and schools (much of what is listed in Box 1 under “in-house/flat/shack” and delivered to homes, although tenants’ access to services within the household may be restricted). These programmes were found to perform less well in terms of the convenience of their location – defined as living within a 15-minute walk of a range of services: somewhere to buy groceries, a bank/financial services, an internet café, a post office, a park/green space and a library; within a 20-minute walk of public transport; and within 30 minutes of a school. The study also recorded monthly transport costs. Accessibility index scores vary a lot across different government housing developments in Gauteng, but overall are better in government housing projects than in informal settlements. But most have poor access to economic opportunities and train or bus stations. This may reflect the division of responsibilities across sectors or levels of government, which can make it problematic to coordinate service provision with upgrading or new housing development.

Many of the services listed in Box 1 are provided through upgrading programmes. There is the obvious (and sometimes forgotten) need that upgrading fulfils – not having to move. Of course, the value of these interventions depends on what upgrading is undertaken. It is not much help if it is rudimentary – consisting for example of a few communal water taps with irregular supplies, with no attention to providing or improving such essential services as schools, healthcare and transport links. Good upgrading practice supports safer structures, provision for in-house water and sanitation, drainage and often electricity, as well as more living space, privacy, connection to infrastructure, access to public services, street lighting and more secure tenure (often with land titles). It does not have to involve identifying and acquiring well-located land, because residents are already on the site they want. But some schemes that are said to be upgrading are actually displacement.⁽²²⁾

Upgrading can also build or strengthen community organizations, build their confidence, and build good relations with local governments and, where relevant, utilities. A good account of a productive upgrading programme is the paper by Guillermo Delgado, Anna Muller, Royal Mabakeng and Martin Namupala on Freedom Square, an informal settlement in Gobabis (Namibia) with 4,173 inhabitants on a 60-hectare site. This effort involved the collaboration of these inhabitants with the local government and demonstrated what this approach can achieve. The upgrading here cost about one-fifth of conventional approaches (although this was due in part to not reaching the whole settlement with full services and the uncompensated contribution of labour to installing infrastructure and providing services). But some degree of coverage in basic services was attained, along with secure tenure. Other very positive benefits included the empowerment of those who took part, the technical skills acquired, the social organizing and the engagement with municipal authorities. Another advantage was the consensus that was generated for the necessary reblocking plans, which can be very contentious. While Freedom Square received national government support, there is still insufficient state support for bottom-up initiatives in general.

The upgrading of Freedom Square and other initiatives by the Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia, working with a support NGO (the Namibian Housing Action Group) and municipal authorities, include valuable lessons – not so much in what was done but in how it was done and financed, including the roles of the local government and of the Namibian federation. These include the federation drawing on the methods developed and used by the federations that are affiliates of SDI. For instance, community-driven enumerations of informal settlements provide groups within the settlement with the data needed to prepare plans for upgrading (and where needed reblocking) – then these are integrated into a settlement-wide map. In Freedom Square, the reblocking plan meant that most had to move but all were accommodated on the site.

V. Diverse Solutions for Diverse Needs

One characteristic of a well-functioning city housing market is a diversity of choices affordable to and suitable for those with modest incomes that do not at the same time bring large disadvantages – such as a peripheral location with a long and expensive commute, or a dangerous site. Low-income individuals and households have to make trade-offs to get costs down to what they can afford, which limits choice. While perhaps no one looking for accommodation goes through the complete list in Box 1, they do look at how well different housing options perform in terms of the characteristics or benefits that they prioritize, whether these are proximity to jobs and labour markets, sufficient space to accommodate a family or rent out a room, or access to healthcare or schools. The housing requirements of young migrants are generally very different from those of families with children. The needs of low-rank public employees usually differ from those of day labourers or street vendors, or from those employed at home. Seasonal or circular migrants have still other priorities. In deciding where to live in a city and under what terms (for instance, as a tenant, owner-occupier or squatter), individuals and households have to make choices based on multiple preferences and balanced against what is available and what can be afforded.

We need a better understanding of what different low-income groups need and prioritize and the choices they make, as well as how these may change over time. We also need a better understanding of the financial constraints they face, as well as the non-financial barriers – for example, the discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, clan, gender or caste⁽²³⁾ that can inhibit access to land, housing and finance. And it is important to understand who has power in controlling or influencing housing and land markets, whether as a function of resources, or based on the authority that politicians and traditional leaders can exercise.

VI. Housing as a Commodity

Housing may be a right, and low-income groups may need a diversity of housing options to meet their needs. But housing is also a commodity in that it is not a household’s rights or needs that determine access, but the capacity to pay. Urban housing markets demonstrate the degree to which all the dimensions of housing (land site, tenure, location, registered address, structure, connection to infrastructure, access to services) can become monetized. Housing is viewed as a commodity both by homeowners and by private business interests, including those involved in constructing, buying and selling housing.

Housing is heavily influenced by demand, for both housing units and associated services, that is of course concentrated in cities. City economies and government departments depend on low-income workers and service providers, all of whom need accommodation. If formal housing markets are unavailable or unaffordable, low-income groups usually turn to informal land and housing markets for buying, building or renting informal housing. Formal, informal and illegal land and housing markets, including the rental market, the owner-occupier housing market and the housing finance market, are all influenced by income, assets and access to finance. They are also shaped by government rules and regulations and how they are applied, and by government attitudes to informal settlements.

Seeing housing as a market commodity may be one reason that most aid agencies and development banks have given housing such low priority, or no support at all, for over 50 years. Perhaps it has been seen as too expensive. Or perhaps it is because of an assumption that development would produce higher incomes, making formal housing affordable. But there are too many examples of cities where house prices have increased much faster than incomes; formal housing in these cases becomes even less affordable. It is a challenge to see how to act on housing as a right or entitlement for populations unable to afford market solutions.⁽²⁴⁾

If housing conditions are to improve, it is important to recognize the many factors that influence, and often constrain, affordability and diversity of choice, as well as the measures households take to manage these factors. It is important to recall, too, that housing is not only a cost. For homeowners, housing is usually their most valuable asset by far. It is a form of wealth or capital that can be transferred (for instance to the occupier’s children) or mobilized in times of economic hardship. It can provide collateral for loans (although proof of a formal job and regular wage is usually more important). Housing is also often a source of income when residents rent or sublet part of the home or plot – for instance backyard shacks, as the paper in this issue by Andreas Scheba and Ivan Turok explores for Cape Town.

a. Access to finance

One daunting obstacle for those who want to build or purchase their own housing is the lack of access to formal housing finance for low-income residents. Even if they are able to access a loan, whether formal or informal, they may be reluctant to use their homes as collateral because of the risk of losing them if debts cannot be repaid.

A variety of initiatives have taken innovative approaches to addressing this problem. The paper by Andrew Jones and Lisa Stead in this issue reviews the experience of a UK-based international development organization (Reall) in financing, building and promoting affordable housing, working with partners in India, the Philippines, Mozambique, Nepal and Pakistan. Reall’s partners strive to deliver formal housing that adheres to relevant laws and regulations and uses permanent building materials, while keeping the cost down to around US$ 10,000 per unit. Its case studies show how housing and housing finance can be made more affordable for lower-income groups – and at a considerable scale.

b. Informal solutions: incremental and self-built housing

As the supply of formal housing (and land for housing) fails to keep pace with demand, so informal provision increases. Historically this has happened mainly through buying or building in informal settlements. The paper by Andreasen and coauthors stresses some of the advantages of self-building in the context of informality. Formalization of land and housing, they argue, means high upfront costs and a slow process that may be subject to malpractice. Interviews with households in four informal settlements highlighted how, in contrast, self-built housing in an informal settlement provides a secure place to live and invest in that many low-income groups can more easily afford. It is the primary route to homeownership. It is seen as a safe investment, and these authors highlight how, in some contexts, tenure security is largely unaffected by the lack of land title. Self-builders value the stability, privacy and comfort of living in their own home. Homeownership is also a source of pride and prestige. Self-builders highlight the benefits of not having to pay rent and avoiding disturbances of renting, including those over access to basic services where these are shared. Self-built housing can also generate rental incomes and many established self-builders have bought additional plots for renting out. Self-built housing may be a primary source of security for its owners where job security is limited, income sources are often unreliable and social security schemes are highly limited. It is also a reserve of wealth that can be passed onto children or used as an emergency fund in case of adverse life events. But secure tenure for self-builders may mean less security for their tenants.

Self-building often takes the form of incremental housing, developed over time through the addition of rooms or storeys as and when they are wanted and can be afforded. This common practice, which can produce larger and better-quality housing at a pace that can be managed by its owners, is not restricted to informal settlements – many middle- and upper-income groups live in incremental housing on plots they own.

Incremental housing has important financial implications, providing a way to adapt to fluctuating and uncertain incomes. If it is financed by loans (rather than savings), the interest charges on small repeat loans are lower than those incurred by households taking a single larger loan. It can also generate more income if it includes rooms for renting out. But the value of self-built or incremental housing is influenced by the risk of forced eviction, as is the scale of investment. Another constraint is that it cannot address deficiencies in government infrastructure and service provision.

The paper by Femke van Noorloos, Liza Rose Cirolia, Abigail Friendly, Smruti Jukur, Sophie Schramm, Griet Steel and Lucía Valenzuela reminds us of the importance of incremental housing and its potential for low-income groups (and other groups). The paper focuses on the need for a better understanding of the phenomenon and the way it is influenced by and embedded in larger systems of land and labour markets, finance, infrastructure and building materials.

c. Rental housing

In many cities, as it has become more difficult and expensive to acquire land in new informal settlements, rental units in existing informal settlements increase in number, although it is also common for low-income tenants to rent in more convenient locations. As the demand for rental accommodation increases, existing neighbourhoods, including better-located informal settlements, densify. Rental units are added, either on extra floors that owners add or, if the settlements are near job markets, through agreements with formal or informal developers who turn their homes into multi-storey apartments, a few of which may be provided to the owner. This is happening now on a large scale in informal settlements in Karachi and in many cities in India, including Delhi, Mumbai, Pune and Chennai.⁽²⁵⁾ This high-density housing, often informally built without reference to building regulations, can have many problems related to poor design, inadequate plumbing and sanitation, poor lighting, no ventilation and poor maintenance.

The paper by Scheba and Turok stresses the diverse range of options in terms of locations, conditions and costs that informal rental housing usually encompasses. It describes how the supply of informal rented housing in many South African townships is undergoing a dynamic process of upgrading and intensification, with substantial impacts on household living conditions, neighbourhood environments and social relations within communities. Homeowners and entrepreneurial landlords are building better-quality units predominantly for young white-collar workers. Benefits include expanding the stock of decent affordable housing and more choice, but these are accompanied by higher rents, unauthorized building techniques, and greater pressure on public infrastructure and services.

Also from South Africa, the paper by Culwick and Patel notes how in Gauteng, many recipients of government housing subsidies have built additional rooms and backyard shacks to rent out – an important aspect of incremental building and a source of income for these households, as well as being an opportunity for rental households. More than half the people living as tenants in backyard dwellings actually reside in government housing settlements, according to this paper.

VII. Widening the Range of What Low-Income Groups Can Afford: Approaches Governments Can Take to Act on Constraints

An important challenge for housing policy, then, is making rental and owner-occupied housing markets work better to accommodate diverse needs, and to widen the range of what inadequately housed communities and households can afford and the choices they can make. Since housing prices and availabilities are so influenced by the prices and availability of land, infrastructure, finance, housing standards and authorizations, there are various approaches government can take to addressing the obstacles.

A common practice in many high-income nations is providing funding to low-income groups in the form of housing allowances. But when the intended recipients lack bank accounts or registered addresses, this can be hard to implement. Individual housing allowances also do nothing to address deficiencies in provision for infrastructure and services. Moreover, individual allowances (rather than assistance to purchase dwellings) may not be popular in a context in which households wish to secure tenure and see the acquisition of assets as important for future financial security.

But there are other ways governments can remove barriers and support practical solutions. This does not always involve direct action – governments can also encourage and support a great range of private, cooperative, community and social housing producers whose housing better matches the needs and priorities of low-income groups. This is especially important for groups that face discrimination in accessing housing or land (often women and particular ethnic groups).

a. Reducing costs

The government has housing responsibilities far beyond supporting and enhancing the capacity of low-income households or communities to make their choices. As has been emphasized for decades,⁽²⁶⁾ city governments can heavily influence housing by increasing the supply and reducing the costs of all the components and dimensions of housing: land, legal tenure, building materials, infrastructure (water, sanitation, drainage, electricity), services and finance. City/municipal governments may have little role in funding “affordable” housing construction unless they get the necessary funds from central or state governments. Yet they are still involved through the expansion of infrastructure, the application of building codes and planning regulations, the provision of permits, and such land-use management responsibilities as maintenance of a cadastre, subdivision of land and titling. Local governments can use these responsibilities to boost the supply and reduce the cost of new serviced plots and housing and to support community-led upgrading of existing housing. This then allows them to address their responsibilities for most of the services mentioned in Box 1. And these plans need to connect and work with the city plan and the expansion of infrastructure; it is all too common for new residential sites to be built and occupied but with very rudimentary or no public services.

b. Partnerships and community solutions

Better access to practical housing solutions can also be tackled when government support goes to representative community organizations formed by the residents of informal settlements. Low-income communities can design and implement upgrading efforts, finding alternatives and addressing deficiencies in most of the housing-related services listed in Box 1. They can also plan and manage new housing developments, as shown by the many new settlements developed by slum/shack dweller federations.⁽²⁷⁾ Solutions developed and implemented by local actors should respond better to local needs, priorities and capacities.

There are excellent precedents. In Thailand, a government agency, the Community Organizations Development Institute, provides financial support to community organizations in informal settlements to design and manage upgrading, including securing tenure. This has transformed the quality of their housing, including most of the services listed in Box 1, at the levels of the dwelling, the plot and the neighbourhood. These have been, for the most part, well-located neighbourhoods with access to bulk infrastructure relatively close by.⁽²⁸⁾ In Solo, Indonesia, the local government has provided financial support to households living in regularly flooded sites to find and build on safer sites, so it widens their housing options.⁽²⁹⁾ There are also hundreds of cities that have city development funds jointly managed by community organizations/federations and local governments that support community-driven upgrading in informal settlements,⁽³⁰⁾ although these funds may need more capital to be able to reach all the households in need, and lack the services outlined in Box 1.

The paper from Namibia by Delgado and coauthors describes such an informal settlement upgrading effort, undertaken as a co-produced collaboration in the municipality of Gobabis. Delgado and coauthors argue that far from sacrificing efficiency to equity, this initiative aligned these two objectives, involving both a more effective use of available resources and decentralized power for urban development (although they also note that the balance of power remains biased in favour of the government).

The paper by Cabannes and Göral makes the important point that productive partnerships between communities and government are not always formalized. In the case of the Yakacık settlement’s successful avoidance of eviction, a key factor was the tireless commitment of one particular government employee.

c. Supporting wider responses

An important function for government is making it possible for solutions to go to scale and taking advantage of the greater efficiency and scope of city-wide or system-wide solutions. Sometimes this is a matter of understanding better how different systems work. Two papers in this issue point to the importance of such a system-wide understanding. The paper by van Noorloos and coauthors considers the larger “flows” that incremental house building depends on. A better recognition of the embeddedness of these local building practices within the broader context of industries, markets and practices of city-making should help to clarify where, how and why initiatives aimed at improving or developing incremental housing advance or get stuck. The paper by Scheba and Turok on rental housing also stresses the importance of a larger understanding of the processes underpinning the dynamics of informal rentals, which are becoming such an urban force in South Africa.

It is not just the understanding of systems that is needed. Informal settlements need to be connected to larger systems – to roads, water and sewer mains, electricity and drainage systems. Community-led upgrading and new houses obviously need government provision of these larger systems into which their community-level efforts connect. If there is no trunk infrastructure to connect to, government partnerships are also needed to develop decentralized systems.

Attention to “city-wide” responses is becoming a hallmark of many of the solutions described above that involve representative community organizations. The Gobabis paper, for instance, describes the ambition to expand to city-wide planning for informal settlement upgrading. Working at a city scale means a need to cut costs of all the components of housing, including: land (for instance lowering land acquisition and development costs, shortening approval timeframes, avoiding delays that push up costs, reducing minimum plot sizes and facilitating access to affordable land); and finance (reducing or removing onerous deposit conditions for loans and extending the term lengths of housing loans, together with reducing the interest rates charged). There is also a need to keep down upgrading costs; the upgrading in Freedom Square was made possible by being a fifth of the cost per house of conventional development. Keeping costs down also means keeping down the size of loans needed. Working at a city scale additionally needs patient nurturing of partnerships with governments (that can facilitate access to affordable land) and drawing on the experience of low-income groups. It also needs the confidence of financial institutions to extend loans to those in the informal economy, and the careful design of such programmes to ensure that they do not exacerbate vulnerability.

VIII. Some Final Thoughts

There are vast differences among the cities that feature in the papers in this issue: in size, wealth, culture, forms of land tenure and government attitudes to informal settlements. Yet they do have two issues in common – the importance of informal settlements in housing a high proportion of the city’s population (and workforce), and the importance of the informal land and finance markets on which these depend. If these markets are so successful at producing housing at scale (even if of poor quality), what can be learned from them?

At the risk of stating (and repeating) the obvious, the critical lesson is to increase the supply and reduce the costs of all the components and dimensions of housing (land, legal tenure, building materials, infrastructure, services and finance), so that formal housing successfully competes with informal housing on price, quality and accessibility.

This can mean encouraging and supporting a great range of private, cooperative, community and social housing producers and upgraders whose housing better matches the diverse needs and priorities of low-income groups, while also supporting incremental upgraders. At the very least, the government should tolerate and not constrain the development of the informal housing that serves low-income groups – as in the case of the two cities in Tanzania. But much better if it actively supports this – and guides this.

How the government responds to the need to invest ahead of time is also critical. A growing and expanding city needs a government able to expand and extend infrastructure to new land and to allocate a portion of the land now connected to city infrastructure and services to low-cost housing and low-cost housing providers. Governments should also be able to generate funds to cover this (and more) through sales of land (whose value has been greatly boosted by the infrastructure) or development rights to commercial developers and other private enterprises.⁽³¹⁾ This management of land-use changes in and around cities can also address other key goals, including controlling sprawl and supporting compact city development.

As the paper on Reall shows, the cost of formal, legal housing and housing finance can be reduced to the point at which many low-income – or more realistically lower-middle income – households can afford these and choose them over informal provision. Then scale is not limited by the lack of subsidies. This will enable subsidies to be targeted towards the lowest-income households and the public services required by private households and companies. Reforms to standards that bring down costs are also important – for example, through serviced site programmes where smaller lot sizes and quite basic infrastructure and services bring down costs. The paper on the two cities in Tanzania describes the acceptance of much smaller lot sizes in its land regularization programme. We can learn also from the scale of new informal rental housing in government housing developments in Gauteng, including the building and renting out of backyard rooms.

The editorial noted earlier the hostility of governments in many cities to informal settlements, as described for Istanbul, Kigali and Bahir Dar City. Thus, it is not surprising that a core feature of the approach of the slum/shack dweller federations is to establish and nurture good relations with politicians and civil service – as described in many papers in Environment and Urbanization over the last 20 years,⁽³²⁾ and in the paper on Gobabis in this issue. Scheba and Turok’s paper also highlights the importance of changing official attitudes to informal settlements from indifference or enforcement to hands-on support and advice. The authors stress the need to create more responsive institutions and systems to facilitate upgrading and regularization of rental accommodation, so that this becomes a viable, enduring part of each urban housing system.⁽³³⁾

And finally, the case of Yakacık in Istanbul and the experience in Gobabis, along with the accumulating experiences of many other slum/shack dweller federations, emphasize the importance for the inhabitants of informal settlements of being organized, of making local governments see them as valuable and legitimate partners with whom they can work, and of showing the viability of alternative approaches to bulldozing.

Each case study within the papers in this issue highlights deficiencies in services and other benefits that housing should provide – and in the case of Gobabis, a positive response to these from a government–community partnership. Taken together, the papers highlight the importance for low-income groups of having not only a safe affordable house and the services listed in Box 1 but also a good location (in regard to labour markets and services), choice within housing and land for housing markets, a registered address or other dwelling-related documents that allow access to public services and entitlements, being organized and a productive engagement with government. We have all the case studies showing their importance, but they are not easily measured outside these local engagements and their particular local contexts.