Editorial: Acquiring housing – understanding outcomes,improving choices and “leaving no one behind”

I. Introduction

This collection of papers highlights the complexity of housing provision within the dominant model for development – that is, capitalism. The concentration on experiences in Africa reflects the research community’s interest in building knowledge both about what is happening in a still rapidly urbanizing region, and in the perceived enterprise opportunity. Some of what takes place responds to policy initiatives, but much reflects market and citizen responses to market opportunities. These actions are influenced by government, but often the connection is weak, and the actions can have unanticipated and unintended consequences.

The papers in this collection touch on a multitude of topics and concerns, but certain themes stand out, and the papers are introduced here primarily as they relate to these themes. The first concerns social reproduction, and the way the related daily activities so often mean a reliance on informal housing solutions for low-income urban dwellers. We discussed this in the previous issue’s editorial⁽¹⁾ and make only brief comments here, highlighting issues that COVID-19 has made more evident. The second theme is on housing as a commodity, presenting business and investment opportunities but also raising the need for financing for those who seek to access it. The third theme involves the underlying issue of land and the competition around it. The discussion of these themes is followed by a review of the solutions raised within these papers. Where they contribute to this discussion, we also refer back to several of the papers in the previous issue.

We recognize here that COVID-19 has sharpened our focus by highlighting housing needs in the context of this health emergency. Nor can we forget the associated economic emergency that has shed further light on the extremely low wages and precarious livelihoods prevailing in many urban labour markets. It is not possible to secure wellbeing in this context. Housing – both shelter and services – has to be affordable and acceptable. Some urban residents can afford to improve their own housing, and this needs to be facilitated by more appropriate government action. However, there are also those who are left behind, more than ever in the current COVID-19 context, and these households should not be forgotten. It is more evident than before that this is not only a question of justice. It is also a pragmatic response to our interconnectedness and what it means to thrive, individually and collectively.

II. Social Reproduction

Housing is the site of social reproduction, as discussed in the editorial in the last issue, where Box 1 elaborates on the range of benefits that are accessed primarily because of housing and its location.⁽²⁾ It is worth considering the heightened significance of these benefits in the context of COVID-19:

• As a dwelling, housing provides (or not) immediate safety and security for such basic human activities as family interactions and sleeping, affording access (or not) to the services required for eating, drinking, personal hygiene, socializing and working in the case of home-based enterprises.

• A formal registered dwelling provides access to such state entitlements as ration cards and water subsidies, and to legal protection.

• Through its location with respect to transport services and mobility, housing provides access (or not) to such essential services as health clinics and emergency services, as well as to income-generation possibilities and social networks.

• Its location with respect to other basic infrastructure determines the quality and cost of water, and access to sanitation, drainage (and flood protection), electricity and waste collection.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has made detailed recommendations regarding the ways that people can best protect themselves from COVID-19 and most of these are dependent on the quality of housing. Using data from the Demographic and Health Surveys, Caitlin Brown et al.⁽³⁾ in a recent paper have proposed an index of adequacy for the home environment in this context, and they estimate that 90 per cent of households in the global South are unable to comply with the WHO recommendations because of inadequacies in their dwelling-related circumstances. They use the following six measures: having internet, a phone, a TV or a radio; having no more than two people per room; having a toilet that is not shared; having walls and a roof of any material; having a water source in the house or yard; and having a place to wash hands with soap.

In this issue, Annie Wilkinson and Isabel Duque Franco, Catalina Ortiz, Jota Samper and Gynna Millan detail how COVID-19 has highlighted the challenges faced by those living in overcrowded and underserviced low-income neighbourhoods, and their capacity to conduct such basic family functions as childrearing and attending to health. These challenges, they note, are heightened by government responses to this emergency, in terms of both the enforcement of measures and the economic consequences of such enforcement. These authors go beyond the immediate health risks, indicating how in too many locations – formal and informal – overcrowding and a lack of privacy, along with other deprivations, also contribute to higher stress levels that can erode social relations and make it especially hard to provide children with the support they need. Wellbeing is rooted in responses at the neighbourhood level, although clearly grassroots organizations and local government cannot solve all problems without adequate support.

Our papers remind us of the continuing significance of housing informality if households are in fact to have the capacity to engage in the full range of activities implied by social reproduction. In the absence of affordable state provision of plots zoned for residential developments, with dwellings and services in compliance with building regulations and standards, informal settlements continue, their persistence reflecting the anti-poor nature of the state.

The scale of neglect is simply astounding. This is evident even in the relatively higher-income region of Latin America, where millions still live in precarious conditions, as documented in the paper by João Sette Whitaker Ferreira, Eduardo Rojas, Higor Rafael de Souza Carvalho, Carolina Rago Frignani and Ligia Santi Lupo. As Florencia Almansi, Jorge Martín Motta and Jorgelina Hardoy report for the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, the population living in slums⁽⁴⁾ and informal settlements grew by 50 per cent between 2001 and 2010, at present totalling around 200,000 people. Duque Franco et al. highlight the consequences of this neglect when they report that São Paulo’s COVID-19 mortality rate, according to city government figures, is 10 times higher in the lowest-income areas. In the previous issue of this journal, which was also themed around housing and land use, Andreasen et al.⁽⁵⁾ exemplify this for Africa when they report that formal land delivery channels routinely meet less than 10 per cent of the demand. Historically, some have considered this policy of neglect to be deliberate to discourage low-income migration to urban areas. Current findings, however, suggest new justifications. Esmail and Corburn’s analysis of unplanned settlements in Kigali, in the previous issue,⁽⁶⁾ argues that the perpetuation of ubiquitous spatial informality in cities in the global South is increasingly related to exclusionary visions of modernization. In seeking an urban form that reflects government aspirations in wealthier countries, governments further disadvantage their low-income residents, continuing to push them to rely on informal solutions.

While these solutions have historically provided much of the housing required in towns and cities of the global South, this process has slowed in most major urban centres, as they have grown too large for peripheral locations to be viable (given transport costs). In smaller towns such as Bahir Dar and Hawassa in Ethiopia and Mwanza in Tanzania, this process is ongoing (as shown by Adam in the previous issue for Bahir Dar,⁽⁷⁾ and in this issue by Charlotte Bonnet, Erik Bryld, Christine Kamau, Mohamed Mohamud and Fathia Farah for Hawassa and by Samwel John, Gordon McGranahan, Mwanakombo Mkanga, Tim Ndezi, Stella Stephen and Cecilia Tacoli for Mwanza). This is also the case in Dar es Salaam (warning us again of the dangers of generalization). In all of these examples, families that can afford to purchase plots on land previously used for agriculture and informally subdivided will do so to gain a place in the city.

The focus on informality does not remove us from the formal realm. On the contrary, this is not a binary distinction, but represents finely graded processes on multiple continua. Every paper here refers to government involvement, whether in supporting housing acquisition (legally or illegally), in obstructing the efforts of households or in preventing or supporting regularization. As elaborated in the context of Tanzania by John et al., the government accepts, manages and legalizes informality (processes that Alison Brown notes are replicated in the informal livelihood economy).⁽⁸⁾ The potentialities that government provides – semi-formally in Tanzania (John et al.), or informally in Nairobi (as described in this issue by Baraka Mwau and Alice Sverdlik), have a significant influence on the possible housing options. Both informality and formality create and hinder opportunities for social reproduction, and both are critical to a remaking of built neighbourhoods and people trying to acquire what they need.

Social reproduction is about the range of activities that support daily household life, but also about the larger social forces that reproduce injustices and inequities. Many of our papers document this aspect, pointing to the multiple forms of discrimination that target certain groups in the context of housing. The paper by Faraz Hassan, Emma Grant and Sophie Stephens describes the difficulty faced by women and women-headed households, especially those with children, in securing accommodation in Hawassa, Ethiopia. Even when they can find accommodation, they may not be safe because the housing they can afford is often in remote locations. Bonnet et al. describe similar discrimination against women-headed households in Mogadishu. In Mathare (Nairobi), those with low incomes also struggle to find adequate accommodation although women-headed households are not disadvantaged (Mwau and Sverdlik). Here, young men, encouraged by tradition to establish their own households, but perceived as a poor risk by landlords, struggle to find rental accommodation. Young women also find it difficult, in their case because it is not socially acceptable to set up independent households. People with disabilities struggle to find accommodation as well. Ethnicity is an additional factor in Mathare, much of which is ethnically segregated. International migrants may also be discriminated against by their neighbours. These forms of exclusion extend to internally displaced people in Mogadishu. Tomer Dekel, in this issue, points as well to the role of xenophobia in the context of eviction. Further, the social reproduction of injustice and inequity is dramatically evident in the context of COVID-19, which has shed such a harsh and revealing light on existing disparities – and which, as both Wilkinson and Duque Franco et al. illustrate here, is exacerbating the structural discrimination already faced by billions of inadequately housed people around the world.

III. Commodity

In the urban context, there is little opportunity to address housing needs outside of the market. Households regularly spend 25 per cent of their incomes on housing, and many spend more. As a commodity, housing, with its multiple related enterprises, is a business opportunity for some. For others, who manage to invest in their own housing, it represents an important asset. For yet others, who struggle to secure access to shelter, it is the obstacle that challenges adequately supported social reproduction.

It is evident that the market costs of formal housing are beyond the reach of most low-income urban residents. In this issue, Justin Visagie and Ivan Turok reference Tipple,⁽⁹⁾ who argues that US$ 10,000 is the cost of the cheapest formal house that can be provided in sub-Saharan Africa. Esmail and Corburn⁽¹⁰⁾ find that the cheapest units available to those being relocated in Kigali cost US$ 11,000. Mwau and Sverdlik note that only 10 per cent of Kenya’s population can afford a US$ 10,000 unit without a subsidy. Also in this issue, Akunnaya Opoko, Adedapo Oluwatayo, Bayo Amole and Ekundayo Adeyemi note that 60 per cent of their interviewees in Ayobo, Lagos – all of whom bought land or buildings – earned less than US$ 114 a month.

Affordability is not a simple calculation. Jones and Stead, writing in the previous issue about financing through the social enterprise Reall,⁽¹¹⁾ argue that US$ 10,000 is affordable to the bottom 40 per cent, assuming no more than 30 per cent of income is spent on housing. If loan finance is required, then affordability depends on the interest. With a zero interest rate, a 10-year loan with a 10 per cent deposit means a household will spend US$ 75 a month on housing. While a zero interest rate is unlikely, this calculation illustrates the challenge. Jones and Stead’s examples of Reall partners clarify the costs. Those securing homes through LinkBuild in the Philippines, for instance, struggle with microfinance terms of 18 per cent annually for five years; they now seek government funding at 6 per cent annually over 25 years. Lumanti in Nepal has sought state loans at 8 per cent annually for seven years. In Mozambique, Casa Real faces commercial finance with at least a 20 per cent deposit and 30 per cent annual interest for 20 years. And in Pakistan, Ansaar Management Company developed a financing product with a partially state-owned company with annual interest of 12 per cent over 20 years and a 25 per cent deposit, offered to those with monthly incomes above US$ 160. This illustrates the significance of state intervention in growing the affordable housing market.

Affordability is linked to both the absolute price and the availability of finance to spread the cost over some years. But most households lack access to finance and depend on savings. At least in Africa, the growth in housing investment appears unrelated to access to housing finance, as it is widely financed by people’s own savings, thus limiting what is affordable. (This is demonstrated by Andreasen et al. for Tanzania⁽¹²⁾ and Opoko et al. for Nigeria.) Culwick and Patel, in the previous issue,⁽¹³⁾ also note the importance of savings and self-finance in the expansion of rental units in Cape Town, although some landlords borrow from family members in addition. The lack of access to formal finance primarily reflects the perceived riskiness of such borrowing, the lack of interest by commercial financial companies, and the lack of long-term finance for mortgages (for any income group).

While housing is commodified in all the papers considered here, housing markets are contextual and opportunities reflect both economic possibilities and political interests. Hence in Hawassa, where the Hawassa Industrial Park has produced a specific group in need, the park has encouraged the development of shared rental rooms for single persons. Simultaneously, the federal government’s reaction to political opposition and the impact of urban boundaries on the composition of the electorate have encouraged informal housing on the city’s periphery (Hassan et al.). In Nairobi, housing outcomes reflect former Kenyan President Moi’s strategy for political dominance with the use of land to secure elite support, and a resulting multi-tiered housing market dominated by structure owners and landowners. In these informal settlements, over 90 per cent of residents are tenants (Mwau and Sverdlik). Ferreira et al. explain how, in Latin America, the devolution of responsibilities following democratization underpinned such improvements as tenure security and access to housing and services. But even in this context, substantial challenges remain.

The real estate market is active in low-income settlements, a reality long recognized,⁽¹⁴⁾ and one that gets attention here in several papers. Many of the land and property transactions discussed here and in the previous issue are facilitated by brokers (discussed by Adam for Bahir Dar, Ethiopia;⁽¹⁵⁾ Andreasen et al. for Dar es Salaam and Mwanza, Tanzania;⁽¹⁶⁾ and Opoko et al. for Lagos, Nigeria). There is extensive evidence of the trading of informal land. While John et al. write about the recent emergence of land markets in Dar and Mwanza, it is evident that more generally they have long been in place. Some of these papers, especially Opoko et al.’s, consider the complexity of market transactions within informal settlements and the many actors that can be involved in processes both formal and informal.

As households become more affluent, they seek to acquire land for multiple reasons. First, the insecurity of renting – as well as the poor conditions – makes freehold ownership important. Second, there are opportunities for income flows and asset accumulation and for speculation in the context of increasing land prices. Third, as is evident in Mogadishu from the paper by Bonnet et al., where there are limited alternative ways of securing savings, residential investment is seen as a relatively safe way of securing assets. Andreasen et al. also note the minimal risk of theft and the avoidance of pressure to support family members when assets are tied up in land.⁽¹⁷⁾

Insecurity, it should be noted, can motivate sales as well as purchases, as described by Opoko et al. for the periphery of Lagos, where farmers fear compulsory purchase for urban expansion. A survey of more than 1,000 landowners found that almost half the sellers were from original farming families, and over 20 per cent had acquired plots from those who had bought from the original landowners. Some of these purchases were for speculation; in other cases they related to changes in circumstances.

The purchase of plots in both formal and informal settlements is described in several papers. John et al. describe the processes involved in peripheral informal neighbourhoods in Tanzania’s two largest cities, with “pioneer” settlers securing plots on land already owned and used, and typically zoned for agriculture, then self-building shacks (with potential for later development for rental income). In the previous issue, Andreasen et al. explain that 60 out of 68 self-builders surveyed in Dar es Salaam and Mwanza had previously been tenants or lived with family elsewhere in the city.⁽¹⁸⁾ This is the most feasible route to homeownership for these lower-middle and middle-class income earners. Informality lowers the costs of acquisition and is associated with incremental construction, as rooms are added and modified when finance is available (van Noorloos et al. in the previous issue,⁽¹⁹⁾ Opoko et al., and Visagie and Turok). While incremental construction need not be regulated against, it frequently is.

John et al. differentiate between those who purchase plots for rental income, and middle- income households that acquire plots for their own use, to avoid being tenants or for the quiet life. As some families manage to consolidate wealth, they may accumulate multiple properties. Forty-nine of the 68 self-builders in the previous issue’s Tanzanian study⁽²⁰⁾ own more than one plot. Many then develop single-storey shack rooms for rental income, as illustrated also in the papers on Kigali⁽²¹⁾ and on Hawassa (Hassan et al.), where farmers develop rental rooms on the city’s periphery.

The Kigali paper shows that this long-established strategy for social mobility is now under threat. Aspiring urban dwellers can no longer afford plots for shack building in peripheral but still accessible locations. Rather, housing is shifting to apartment blocks (walk-ups with generally ground plus five or fewer storeys). These apartments (an indicative one is valued at approx. US $38,000) offer no potential for income generation.

The rental sector is also in flux. It is well established that many low-income households are renters and, although Andreasen et al. suggest there is little difference between homeowners and tenants beyond stages in the life cycle,⁽²²⁾ it is also clear that some tenants will never be able to afford homeownership.

Several papers highlight the intensified commercialization of the rental sector. In the previous issue, Scheba and Turok⁽²³⁾ summarize previous academic analyses in the global South, highlighting the relative lack of attention the rental sector has received, and recognizing the need to differentiate rental housing by the landowner’s motivation, social status and scale of property ownership. Their mapping of this diversity warns us against generalization. They go on to discuss the evolution of backyard renting in Delft South, Cape Town – an area of low-income formal housing consolidated by state-financed housing subsidy development – drawing on the experiences of landlords or micro-developers, tenants and others involved in the sector. After noting the low rents charged under, and immediately following, the apartheid government, they describe increasing commercialization in more recent years, with greater investment in brick buildings. Owner-occupiers add rooms incrementally, financed in part by rental income. Despite constraints on the sale of subsidy-financed units, some sell to developers who demolish the original subsidy-financed house and build a new structure, usually of two storeys. Interviewees report relatively good relations between landlords and tenants and increasing professionalism. The changes reflect a transition away from relations of solidarity during apartheid towards market-based relations. Demand comes from rising numbers of lower-middle income Black tenants seeking adequate, affordable accommodation. With monthly incomes between US$ 235 and 680 they can afford rents of US$ 100+.

Culwick and Patel’s study of households benefitting from the government housing subsidy⁽²⁴⁾ also demonstrates this phenomenon in Gauteng Province (which includes Johannesburg). Twelve per cent of households in government housing in their research areas have rental income, compared to 3 per cent in the informal settlements studied for comparison. The authors recognize that these rental rooms provide better access to basic services and employment opportunities than rooms in informal settlements, but they also note that infrastructure provision may be overloaded, and that landlords may constrain tenants’ access to services.

The intense commodification of rental housing is also evident in Nairobi. Tenant blocks cost about US$ 360,000 to construct, with an estimated four-year payback period (Mwau and Sverdlik and the previous issue’s editorial⁽²⁵⁾). Mwau and Sverdlik argue that this rental housing is more profitable than more up-market units (although the value at the end of the rental period is not considered). Whatever the costs of accommodation, Mwau and Sverdik also note that increasingly high densities put pressure on infrastructure and services.

Notwithstanding differences in context, the papers document a broadly consistent set of rental charges across African towns and cities, with a notable premium charged for higher-quality accommodation:

• In Kibario I, Kigali, monthly rents start at US$ 32.⁽²⁶⁾

• In Cape Town,⁽²⁷⁾ monthly rents for backyard shacks start at US$ 20. Sites for backyard shacks in Delft (Cape Town) are rented for US$ 35 with limited access to services (toilets in the landlord’s house), and rooms in “modern” buildings with shared services are rented for US$ 105–150.

• In Hawassa, monthly rents average US$ 39 a month in formal areas and US$ 11 in informal areas. This represents approximately 37 per cent of the average wage income for formal settlement residents and 30 per cent for informal settlement residents (Hassan et al.).

• In Mathare, Nairobi, monthly rental charges for a single shack room are US$ 18–30, while rooms in tenement blocks are rented for US$ 30–50.⁽²⁸⁾

As higher incomes permit more housing choice, and as developers (formal and informal) respond to market opportunities, a further transition is taking place from informal to formal, supported by state action to regularize informal settlements and address the demands of higher-income residents. While small-scale developers can operate informally, paying off elected officials and government staff as required, this is not possible as commercial construction companies grow. Complex regulations on the built environment and permanent construction constrain informality. Also, if lower-income households use formal finance, the housing they acquire needs to be formal.⁽²⁹⁾ However, it is important to recognize how much housing continues to be provided informally. Even when the housing is formally acquired, the construction of additional rooms to rent may be informal, as illustrated in South Africa.

The transition from informal to formal in specific locations happens through regularization – defined by John et al. as “a process whereby informal settlements are upgraded and land rights formalized to the point that they are officially accepted by the government” (page 431). This status offers access to public goods (infrastructure and services) in addition to greater security through some form of title. The authors analyse processes of regularization in Tanzania and identify problems faced by low-income landowners (who cannot afford to take part or may need to sell land to afford it) and tenants (who cannot afford to stay on as rents increase to reflect improvements in services). In neither Dar es Salaam nor Mwanza are there efforts to protect these households (and women-headed households may be particularly adversely affected). Governments may introduce subsidies to enhance affordability – as discussed for Latin America by Ferreira et al. – but this may not benefit the lowest-income households that may be renters, or find the costs of regularization unaffordable. The vulnerability of households – if they remain informal – is further illustrated by Esmail and Corburn in Kigali.⁽³⁰⁾ While households able to secure informal land and construct dwellings may benefit from incomes, their asset and hence future income remains insecure and they risk displacement.

IV. Competition

Commodification, where the commodity is scarce, implies competition. As van Noorloos et al. argue,⁽³¹⁾ land is especially and increasingly scarce, and competition is intensifying. Well-located land is a commodity like no other in the processes of capitalist development, and competition can be especially intense in larger cities. As enterprises seek the advantages of agglomeration and proximity to other industries and services, they create economic opportunities, reflected in the shift from rural to urban settlement. Land development, like urban development more generally, is dynamic, and opportunities result in positive urban regeneration as well as displacement.

As argued by Visagie and Turok and by John et al., urbanization involves maximizing the benefits of agglomeration to produce goods and services, and managing associated processes to determine the distribution of associated costs and benefits. In an idealized form, larger populations and higher densities expand labour and consumer markets, attracting private investment, enabling specialization, and supporting a virtuous circle of productivity growth, higher incomes, more jobs and further population growth. This positive feedback loop is hampered or reversed when congestion or bottlenecks reduce connectivity and deter investment. Critically it is also hampered by low wages that mean workers cannot secure safe homes or the basic services they need for health.

Land is a critical resource, perhaps the critical resource. Land in this context is not virgin land, but is provided with essential infrastructure and services, most of which are public goods (energy, water [and drainage], waste management, roads and transport for goods, workers and consumers) and public services to manage such negative externalities as pollution and congestion. The nature of this infrastructure means it is unlikely to be provided by the market due to the cost structure and/or non-excludability of users. Hence provision must be collectively managed, meaning that in most cases to ensure essential and adequate provision it must be managed by the state, even if the provision happens through the market. From another perspective, the state enables urbanization to take place, adding value to land for the benefit of producers in search of capturing the gains associated with agglomeration. And it is state failures that impose the costs on those least able to protect themselves, exacerbating inequalities.

Densification. Urban transition in Kigali illustrates the pressures to densify in the context of rising land values,⁽³²⁾ a theme repeated across the papers. One-third of shacks in the low-income informal neighbourhood of Mukuru (Nairobi) are now double storey.⁽³³⁾ Increased density adds to housing costs because multi-storey dwellings cannot easily be built incrementally. Mwau and Sverdlik argue that interests in Mathare have resulted in “informal planning and an extremely speculative shelter market with high demand for land, insecure tenure and increased conflict. In turn, Mathare’s built environment is now characterized by densification (vertical and horizontal) and extreme population densities” (page 494).

Visagie and Turok argue that these higher population densities, if they are to support the benefits that are sometimes associated with densification, must be accompanied by appropriate governance frameworks and investment in infrastructure and services. However, in sub-Saharan Africa, where 78 per cent of the residential areas developed between 1990 and 2014 are informal and unplanned, there are obvious challenges. Plot owners can densify buildings, but cannot improve infrastructure and services. And upgrading is expensive if the existing built environment is respected. Once the physical structure of a settlement emerges, it is resistant to change – we have only to consider medieval and early industrial reference points in European cities. These forms are expensive to retrofit as well as to maintain. It requires a strong local community process to ensure ownership, as exemplified by community reblocking in South Africa. The work of the National Slum Dwellers Federation (NSDF) and the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC) in Pune is also notable here.⁽³⁴⁾

Gentrification, a concept developed in the global North, represents processes by which higher-income residents move into low-income areas and upgrade them through investment in the built environment, displacing lower-income residents (John et al.). The rising land values may not be led by powerful elites, but rather by private individuals making choices about locations where they seek to reside or to accumulate assets for capital appreciation and/or rental income. In some cases, this is led by government investment. John et al. explore how gentrification is happening in Dar es Salaam and in the smaller urban centre, Mwanza, identifying the winners and losers, and contrasting the gentrification trajectories in each city in inner-city and peripheral urban neighbourhoods. The authors emphasize that gentrification is not inevitable, and settlements may consolidate without this process.

Displacement and eviction. The risk of displacement and eviction faced by low-income and disadvantaged citizens as competition for land intensifies is evident in this collection. Informal urbanization, as Dekel reminds us, is inherently tied to threats of eviction. In Mogadishu this is a deliberate process whereby low-income households and internally displaced people (IDPs) move into neighbourhoods to establish economic activities, and then move out as land values increase (Bonnet et al.).

Evictions take place when competition is acute, and vulnerable residents are unprotected. Cabannes and Göral, in the previous issue,⁽³⁵⁾ illustrate this for Istanbul and identify three reasons. Population growth, economic growth and the political visualization of Istanbul as a global city have resulted in the destruction of older neighbourhoods, rising land prices and land speculation. The authors analyse outcomes in several neighbourhoods to understand processes of displacement, resistance and survival. Households occupying land owned by the local municipality do better than those on land owned by the city authorities and national government. Also in the previous issue, Adam offers another example of how governments exacerbate the vulnerabilities faced by long-standing informal settlement dwellers, using expropriation to acquire their land for developments related to “public interest”.⁽³⁶⁾

Government upgrading programmes – as discussed further below – offer protection to informal landowners from unfettered competition and help secure the rights of those already on the land, at least for a limited period. Newly legalized homeowners may be prevented from capitalizing on the advantages of regularization by selling their land. Access to loan finance and subsidies helps to make this process more affordable. Tenants, however, are less likely to be protected by this managed process of land formalization.

Planning – the function of organizing land within neighbourhoods, between neighbourhoods and at the city scale – must be recognized as a public good.⁽³⁷⁾ Even private developers, at least in the formal world, must plan neighbourhoods to public standards and with publicly recognized boundaries. Good planning affects the value added to the land. Visagie and Turok argue that many upgrading programmes are undermined by a focus on basic services to the neglect of the settlement’s internal layout and links to the rest of the city. Planning, in this context, has to be publicly provided. As Klosterman argues, planning is complicated by the need to “recognise the fundamental constraints on private and organisational decision-making, the inherently political and ethical nature of planning practice, and the organisational, social and psychological realities of planning practice”.⁽³⁸⁾ Planning is inherently political. The reality that planning has not served the interests of low-income and disadvantaged groups does not mean that those interests can be addressed without planning. The potential of planning is summarized by Ferreira et al. in a range of contexts across Latin America, with particularly notable positive experiences in São Paulo, Medellín and Bogotá.

Planning is important for the value it adds for those occupying the land, but also for the public good – in at least some cases – through land-based taxation related to planning gain. This is evident in Medellín and Bogotá, where these funds have supported the expansion of the transport-related infrastructure (Ferreira et al.). A government’s ability to capture at least a share of the added value is critical to an equitable sharing of the costs associated with the benefits of agglomeration.

Standards and regulations and their enforcement are a further public good. While this suggestion may seem naïve (at best) to the many informal settlement dwellers who have been penalized both legally and illegally for contravention of regulations, it is inappropriate regulations and the lack of accountability of those enforcing them that are fundamentally problematic. Visagie and Turok remind us that standards, often inherited from the colonial era, may be both unaffordable and inappropriate. In the absence of appropriate regulations and their enforcement, low-income households usually bear a disproportionate share of the costs.

V. What can be Done – Improving the Options

The authors come with solutions as well as problem analyses. There are concerns, already noted, that the processes surrounding housing for the urban poor exacerbate inequalities. They can also contribute to the absolute deprivations that threaten good health and wellbeing. Good housing solutions are fundamental to countering these powerful structural forces.

a. Government involvement

The primacy of local government is recognized in several papers in this collection, reflecting its role in planning urban territory and providing infrastructure and services (see Visagie and Turok, Ferreira et al., Almansi et al. and, from the previous issue, Cabannes and Göral⁽³⁹⁾). In Latin America, devolution and financial flows from national governments to local authorities have enabled more extensive informal settlement upgrading with housing improvements. Ferreira et al. remind us, however, of the dangers of generalization, outlining the different distribution of expenditure between central and municipal governments across this region. They distinguish among:

• Centralized policymaking and financing of housing policies and implementation by the private sector without involvement from local governments

• Centralized policymaking and financing of housing policies, but with implementation managed by local governments, even when in partnership with private agents

• Policymaking, financing and execution led or managed by local governments

Formal titling

Formal titling is discussed in several papers and recognized for its enhancement of the value of individual plots and the one-off capital gain for those able to verify their claim. In the absence of pro-poor housing policies and poverty reduction programming, however, the downside is the subsequent rise in prices, especially in well-located areas, which may result in displacement of low-income households (Ferreira et al.).

Through research in four neighbourhoods in Tanzania, Andreasen et al.⁽⁴⁰⁾ analyse formalization debates and examine de Soto’s thesis that land – once formally titled – will act as collateral to facilitate urban economic development. Tanzania, where the government has bought into de Soto’s hypothesis, set the ambitious target of increasing the number of regularized properties by 300,000 between 2015/6 and 2025/6.⁽⁴¹⁾ The authors conclude that “the informal housing system has far more advantages than appreciated by de Soto and other proponents of formalization”.⁽⁴²⁾ However, they also recognize that this conclusion may reflect the relative security of informal land in their case study locations.

Ferreira et al. also critique these titling programmes, offering as an example Peru’s programme to provide titles to 1.5 million households. This delivered neither the anticipated increase in lending, nor the associated benefits expected for livelihoods and enterprise development. The authors explain that this is because formal financial institutions do not want low-income housing as collateral. Moreover, as Andreasen et al. find in Tanzania,⁽⁴³⁾ households are reluctant to take out loans because of perceived risks of repossession.

Cabannes and Göral argue that options around land tenure must go beyond freehold titles and that collective land tenure models should be explored.⁽⁴⁴⁾ The vulnerabilities associated with individual tenure can be addressed through some form of collective land tenure that – while not preventing individual households from leaving the neighbourhood – preempts land speculation and ensures that low-income households do not sell in times of crisis. The options facilitated by national government are key here. The flexible land tenure system in Namibia, as Delgado et al. explain in the previous issue,⁽⁴⁵⁾ is a significant opportunity to build knowledge about alternative approaches that meet this acknowledged gap. The principle here is affordable progress towards regulatory compliance, enabling existing residents to remain in situ with tenure security. It introduces a starter title and a landowner’s title, both individual and collective, with the potential to progress to a freehold title. Ferreira et al. describe a further example, that of cooperative ownership through the Federación Uruguaya de Cooperativas de Vivienda por Ayuda Mutua (Uruguayan Federation of Mutual Help Housing Cooperatives – FUCVAM) and its communitarian approach to building houses (with or without public support). Policy reforms in 1969 led to government support, and more than 300 Uruguayan cooperatives are now members of the federation, with hundreds of thousands of housing units in well-located areas.

Financing

Government also plays a critical role in various financing models. On this front, national government plays an essential role, ensuring the redistribution of resources between cities and regions and thus contributing to equity and social justice. National governments also set the frameworks for land policy and planning, provide infrastructure and services, and enable governance and accountability.

Culwick and Patel,⁽⁴⁶⁾ analysing the outcomes of housing programming in South Africa’s Gauteng Province, illustrate both the potential and the drawbacks of the government subsidy. One of the most generous state housing programmes, providing 3 million dwellings, it has also been fraught with problems that provide insight into the challenges for effective housing programmes.⁽⁴⁷⁾ In summary, it has failed to address people’s concerns about location and has not used the funds to integrate different income groups, providing for good access to employment and public services for low-income households. The authors explain that more recent housing developments in Gauteng have tried to address this problem, but have not made essential transport investments, a provincial responsibility. The programme has failed to provide high-quality dense neighbourhoods, alerting us to the complex culturally and socially determined ways that housing form and spatial plans convey social status. In South Africa the preferred housing form replicates the single-storey detached suburban style of middle-income housing. This ensures the continuation of distant segregated neighbourhoods and high transport costs to access formal employment opportunities. It has promised, but failed, to deliver on participation – citizens are rather treated as beneficiaries. Even when informal settlements are upgraded there is no respect for the existing settlement; rather, people are removed, the site is returned to greenfield and construction takes place.

It has been exclusionary in two significant dimensions. First, despite numerous policy efforts, the process is dominated by new builds, which ignores informal settlements and the far more cost-effective potential for upgrading (as Delgado et al. show⁽⁴⁸⁾). New builds offer lucrative construction contracts and reinforce a modern vision of urban living that disadvantages those living and working informally. Second, growing numbers of people are not entitled to subsidies and hence are not included in redevelopment, including non-citizen migrants and those who already had a subsidized house but left it because it was distant from opportunities, or the construction quality was poor, among other reasons. Those who do secure access to subsidized housing, however, have significant needs addressed. Culwick and Patel document the improved access to services, although this is still relatively poor compared to higher-income households.⁽⁴⁹⁾

An alternative model for state support is that in Mumbai, where the transferable development rights (TDR) model uses money made by commercial developers providing high-income accommodation to subsidize housing for those living in notified slums. SDI’s Indian affiliate, NSDF, and its support NGO, SPARC, have made good use of this opportunity through their nonprofit construction arm, SSNS (or SPARC Samudaya Nirman Sahayak), and have constructed over 6,500 dwellings.⁽⁵⁰⁾ As Jones and Stead elaborate,⁽⁵¹⁾ the design of the programme requires that companies can access upfront capital. Reall has been critical in financing this nonprofit endeavour, with US$ 5 million in new and revolving monies.

A third model is offered by the Ethiopian government, which has built apartments for sale to low-income residents. However, Hassan et al. flag the lack of affordability of these options, a familiar problem with government projects. The Kenyan government seems not to have learned from this experience. While its new Affordable Housing Programme forms one of the four pillars of the Kenyan presidency, there is every indication that it will not be affordable.⁽⁵²⁾ A recent development prices the lowest one-room unit at US$ 10,000, with a 10 per cent deposit.⁽⁵³⁾

A fourth model is offered by governments across Latin America, which support housing improvement through soft loans to collectives and/or individuals to both construct and improve housing. Even in this region, with its extensive housing programming, it is notable that policies are based on property ownership, with few cases of support for social renting. Ferreira et al. emphasize the contribution of the region’s upgrading programmes, which enable qualitative improvements in existing dwellings. Colombia and Brazil have notable experiences offering integrated and comprehensive development.

A fifth (and final) financing model is that of co-production, an alternative to top-down development. It augments the approach of participatory budgeting, extending shared decision-making about finance to shared implementation of improvements. The potential of co-production to instigate appropriate community-led informal settlement upgrading, which capacitates local organizations and mobilizes residents to demand redistribution and public accountability, has been well documented.⁽⁵⁴⁾ In the previous issue, Delgado et al. describe this approach in Gobabis, Namibia, where it is supported by the municipality.⁽⁵⁵⁾ They also note the significance of state support for the SDI affiliate, the Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia, and its support NGO, the Namibia Housing Action Group. National government resources have equipped this alliance to reach out to the municipality in Gobabis while also building the skills and experiences of informal settlement communities through savings, data collection, and precedent projects related to infrastructure and service needs. The government has developed a flexible land tenure policy and developed modalities for co-producing infrastructure and services. The benefits of slow incremental improvements are their increased affordability in the context of low household incomes and limited potential for the municipality to subsidize essential services. The authors estimate that this approach has resulted in expenditures of US$ 1,000 per household for benefits (regularization and improved access to services) that would cost about US$ 5,800 if commercially contracted.

Almansi et al. also report on an intervention using co-productive and participatory approaches in Buenos Aires where, in the context of substantial past neglect, such methods have been necessary to address the resident mistrust towards the government. The discussion emphasizes the benefits of integrated development (across housing and urban and socioeconomic development), and the contribution of co-production to strong local ownership, with no invasion of cleared land or streets and 97.6 per cent acceptance and compliance with relocation.

Visagie and Turok, describing the spatial reconfiguration applied by SDI in South Africa, recognize the potential of community innovation in new approaches to government-supported regularization and upgrading. “Reblocking” is required in many upgrading processes and has a long history across the global South. The need to formalize this process in South Africa reflects local attitudes to upgrading. Careful negotiations are necessary among residents for plots to be moved and infrastructure installed. A government willing to amend standards, drawing on residents to work with professionals on existing regulatory frameworks, can facilitate this (as in the Million Houses Programme in Sri Lanka).

b. Citizen housing initiatives to challenge state neglect and anti-poor policies

Solutions involve not only ways to access housing and land – but ways to avoid being displaced or evicted. Esmail and Coburn⁽⁵⁶⁾ recognize that residents become active, claiming citizenship, as they defend their informal properties. In Kigali, the displacement of informal residents to more peripheral locations was inadequately compensated. Those displaced could not easily afford the additional purchase costs on top of travel to maintain existing livelihoods. The paper also recognizes the risks, however, that protesting residents face when contestation is seen as a threat to political authority rather than a legitimate grievance by citizens dispossessed of their assets.

Dekel builds on such experiences to create a four-part model of collective organization to help readers understand evolving approaches to eviction and displacement. He argues, with broader relevance to the building as well as destruction of urban neighbourhoods, that we need to take account of not just the physical city but also the ideas convened within the built environment and the emotions that are triggered. One is reminded, through his analysis, of the complexities of urban processes, and the efforts of scholars to capture those complexities with meaningful simplifications that add explanatory power. Dekel argues, “In other words, the way the poor organize determines the way they produce space” (page 403). But at the same time, he claims that the nature of the space around them influences their need to organize, their ability to organize, and indeed their very understanding of the form and purpose of organization. The context that residents face is also relevant. Duque Franco et al. discuss the ways Latin American civil society has organized to protect vulnerable households during the COVID-19 crisis, especially those who cannot afford to pay rent due to the livelihood impacts of restrictions on movement.

The ways governments manage resistance to eviction and dispossession of informal neighbourhoods are also evident in Cabannes and Göral’s account from Istanbul,⁽⁵⁷⁾ where a lack of transparency about court orders was used by the state to avoid legal challenges. This account also highlights, however, that the state is not a homogeneous entity. Some elected officials shared information that helped the resistance. One community (Yakacık Yeni) managed to secure land titles because their land was owned by a municipality that transferred title, while other land was owned by the Metropolitan Municipality and Treasury, which refused to help.

The vulnerabilities facing the residents of individual settlements are one reason that networks like SDI have long argued for the need to map all informal settlements in the city, since an understanding of the aggregation of spatial informality enables more effective interventions.⁽⁵⁸⁾ Visagie and Turok also emphasize that without a city-wide perspective, required improvements to infrastructure networks cannot be understood or implemented. SDI affiliates invest in city-wide processes for their political benefits as well, enabling organized residents to have new insights into urbanization processes, to create and strengthen solidarity, and to push for appropriate state actions.

Feedback

The feedback papers in this issue relate well to the topics covered by the thematic papers. Two of them discuss services that, based on our expanded definition of housing,⁽⁵⁹⁾ might well be considered housing papers. Carlos Rufín, Murilo de Miranda and Maurício Moskowicz draw on international experiences to investigate the impact of criminal activity on electricity provision. They find that this relationship holds where criminal activity is organized and has a feasible financial interest in interfering with provision. Overcoming such a situation, they argue, is beyond the scope of utility providers and calls for public intervention.

Peter M Ngau and Sharon J Boit consider community responses to fire outbreaks in Nairobi’s informal settlements, where combustible construction materials are paired with faulty electrical connections, a lack of access roads, and an absence of publicly provided firefighting systems. Even when there is some level of provision, the authors point out, fires spread rapidly and assistance generally arrives too late. While there is a substantial literature on coping strategies after fires, there has been limited research on community responses during a fire. In the settlement researched in this paper, where local residents are far less passive than used to be the case, the authors consider the factors that have contributed to the change.

There are also two methodological papers. One of these (by Ronak Patel, David Sanderson, Pamela Sitko and John de Boer) has particular salience in the context of COVID-19. This paper points to the need for applied integrated research to better support our understanding of vulnerability and resilience in rapidly growing cities, in the context of both chronic and acute stresses and shocks. COVID-19 is certainly an acute stress, and all indications are that it is poised to become chronic. This methodology, the authors argue, is critical in understanding the way many risk factors and protective factors converge and interact within a given political economy, contributing to or impeding the capacity of cities to perform their functions and to provide for the health and security of their residents. Although this paper was contributed before the pandemic, this kind of systems approach is clearly essential to responding to the far-reaching impacts of this crisis. The ultimate objective, say the authors (page 596), “should be to produce a roadmap, based on empirical evidence, that will provide insights and recommendations on how the political economy shaping risks in these cities can be reconfigured to enable city residents, particularly the most vulnerable, to capitalize on protective factors that enhance their resilience and support the capacity of city authorities to deliver on their core functions”.

The paper by Matias Garreton, Agustin Basauri and Luis Valenzuela is less immediately relevant to the concerns of this issue. It explores the spatial segregation of social groups, a phenomenon that the authors point out has resisted easy measurement. Drawing on census data in Chile, they present a methodology relying on spatial clustering algorithms. They find a correlation between segregation and city size, with implications for housing policies, especially for the central areas of big cities, where they find high levels of segregation.

Finally, our climate change section features an account by Catherine Sutherland, Debra Roberts, Joanne Douwes and Vicky Sim of Durban’s experiences as part of the 100 Resilient Cities programme. The discussion unpacks the trajectory of this relationship, pointing to conflicts along the way as the Durban team attempted to tailor a global approach to the very specific context of local vulnerabilities and experiences, and the action that they thought was required.