'Government must monitor housing project'

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Thu, 06/26/2008 10:33 AM  |  City

CITY LIVING: Motorcylists pass an advertisement for low-cost apartments in Kalibata, South Jakarta. More middle-income earners are looking for low-cost apartments in the city due to increasing transportation costs. (JP/J.Adiguna)

Experts say tough monitoring is necessary to control the implementation of numerous low-cost apartment projects in the city.

Benjamin Ginting, from the Indonesian Property Study Center, said providing decent residences for low and middle-income earners required a monitoring body for support and to ensure all targets were met.

"So the most important thing is that the program has begun. We must now support it. Whether the 1000-tower target will be achieved or not is an issue we can address at a later stage," he said.

He doubted the target to significantly improve the lives of the poor and the city's productivity could be met by merely building more apartments in the city.

"The government must choose one of those two targets, because removing illegal houses in slum areas and increasing productivity are two different issues that need different approaches," he said.

Benjamin said the target to increase productivity was more likely to be met than the target to significantly reduce poverty because low-cost apartments in the middle of the city might reduce traffic jams. Alleviating poverty, he said, was a much more complex task.

"It is almost impossible for people who live in slum areas to afford the cost of living in low-cost apartments, which is almost the same as regular apartments. Living in a high-rise building is more expensive than living in a house," he said.

The facilities offered in the apartment blocks are unaffordable for the poor. Tap water and electricity will cost the same amount in the low-cost apartments as they do in other apartments.

He urged the government to focus on helping commuters find accommodation closer to their workplaces, rather than reallocating residents from slum areas.

He said government subsidies were insignificant compared to the private sector's role, which involved planning and selling the units.

He said because the government had such a small role in the project it was unable to control how it was being run.

"They are only focusing on providing subsidies, while there are actually other things that they could do, like prepare the infrastructure for the low-cost apartments, especially in areas far from the city center," he said.

Urban planning expert Yayat Supriatna of Trisakti University said areas on the city's periphery were more feasible for the development of low-cost apartments because land in the middle of the city was more difficult to purchase.

"Developing high-rise apartment buildings is the only choice for Jakarta to overcome its housing problem. But to develop low-cost apartments in the city center is very difficult because of the expensive land prices," he said.

He said given the apartments were best located outside the city center, transportation would then be a problem.

The integration between the 1000-tower program and the program to build comprehensive city infrastructure, he said, was important because both programs could support each other to work effectively.

"The integration is important to persuade more low and middle-income earners to buy the apartments that have already been built in Jakarta's outskirts. So people who don't have private vehicles can still buy them," he said.

The current development of low-cost apartments is not yet integrated with other development programs involving infrastructure, transportation, green areas river embankments, he said. (uwi)

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