The central government has told the city administration to allocate a bigger budget to housing construction and to press developers to build low-cost housing.
Mukhayar, a councilor of Commission D overseeing development and housing, said the city administration should make housing its top priority because it was a primary need.
"The city administration should propose the housing budget at 20 percent because Jakarta still has 80,000 families living on riverbanks. Instead, they spend most of their budget on apparatus expenditure," he said.
The city administration has submitted the 2009 draft budget, which amounts to Rp 21.65 trillion (US$1.99 billion), to the city council.
From the total proposed budget, the biggest chunk, Rp 9.77 trillion, will fund the operations of city agencies, while another Rp 6.52 trillion is earmarked to pay the salaries of city officials and employees.
The city administration allocated Rp 4.44 trillion to its physical projects in the draft budget, with Rp 325 billion for housing improvement. The number is slightly lower than this year's Rp 385 billion.
Agus Soebardono, head of the housing agency, said his agency only put forward a small budget because it planned to complete the housing projects by the end of next year.
"From the proposed budget, we will build low-cost apartments, hold kampong improvement programs and acquire land for the project. We plan to build between 1,000 and 1,500 units or between 10 and 15 towers," he said.
The construction of low-cost housing by the administration has been slowly increasing. In 2006, the number reached 1,700 units, or 85 percent of 2,008 total units.
Most of the units were built at Marunda apartments, North Jakarta, with 1,200 units. Some 280 units were built at Pinus Elok, East Jakarta, and 100 units were built at Pulo Gebang, East Jakarta.
"We have focused development in North and East Jakarta because the areas are known to have the lowest income rate," Agus said.
The apartments are part of the central government's target to build 100 affordable apartment complexes for low-income families in 16 locations around Jakarta by 2009, and 1,000 complexes by 2011.
Mukhayar said the city administration should form a team at the equipment bureau to urge developers to build low-cost apartments.
Developers previously asked the governor to issue technical guidance to allow them to build low-cost apartments of up to 20 floors.
Indonesian Real Estate chairman Teguh Satria said the governor had not yet made a decision on the floor area ratio even though they had submitted the draft.
According to the draft, he said, if low-cost housing were situated near transportation facilities, population density in the area should be 3,500 persons per hectare.
If housing were far from transportation facilities, he added, the required population was 3,000.
"Only three people can occupy a single unit, so we should build a maximum of 1,100 units in areas near roads and around 1,000 units in areas away from roads," he said.
"We can start build low-cost housing when the administration decides on the regulation."
