H

undreds of thousands of apartments have been built over the years to meet the need for centrally located housing, but many have failed to convince Jakartans that high-rise living is for them.

Besides ownership status, discouraging aspects include a lack of protection for customers who make down payments, poor design, expensive supporting facilities and building safety issues. There have also been reports of residents witnessing cases of homicide, suicide and individuals falling to their deaths.

'Living in apartments is like the best of the worst options. My apartment is too small, the walls are thin, the supermarket and food stalls downstairs are expensive and there is no park,' Olivia Sinaga, an apartment resident in Kalibata, South Jakarta, said.

She said the proximity between her husband's office and the apartment as well as privacy in taking care of her newborn baby were the reasons the family continued renting the apartment.

Other young parents working in Jakarta have opted to commute.

Nandra Janniata, a graphic designer and entrepreneur living in a housing complex in South Tangerang who commutes to South Jakarta for work, is just one of millions who spend hours to reach their workplaces.

'I consider a landed house a safer investment because we get full ownership to the land and house. Besides, many low-cost apartments lack open space for kids,' she said.

However, after giving birth to her first child a few years ago, she thought of buying an apartment. 'I could rent it out or use it if I work until late at night,' she said.

Others are also considering buying or renting an apartment downtown while retaining the family home in the suburbs.

Dutch architect David Gianotten, a partner at an architecture firm, the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), said Jakarta lacked long-term planning for high-rise housing that would give the same satisfaction as living in the suburbs.

He said efforts to build many apartments in the past lacked social concepts and only provided a shortcut for residents not willing to cope with the worsening traffic.

'Build the apartments, but think of the future because if you only do this ' the quick solution ' the next problem will be on the horizon in two years from now,' he said.

He cited in China where people demolished buildings built less than 10 years ago.

According to the 2013 first quarter report by global property consultant Colliers International, the cumulative supply of strata-title apartments in Jakarta is 121,255 units.

The effort to move low-income people to apartments faces similar problems.

As of 2012, the city's Housing Agency built 11,120 subsidized rusunami (low-cost apartments) and rusunawa (low-cost rental apartments). The city started building rusunami in 1994 before halting the program in 2001.

Housing Agency head Yonathan Pasodung said his agency had learned from the failure of rusunami, where many residents entitled to the apartments rented them out instead of occupying them.

'Our priority now is building rusunawa for riverbank squatters, flood and fire victims. The main problem now is to ensure they will not lose their income after moving into an apartment,' he said.

He was referring to squatters at Pluit Dam in North Jakarta who will be relocated to rusunawa in Marunda.

He said besides providing buses and boats to their workplace, the city also hoped to find employment for the squatters with PT Kawasan Berikat Nusantara in the nearby industrial area.

Another effort, he said, is developing thematic rusunawa for future development of high-rise low-cost rental apartment buildings. Projects for the thematic apartments will be carried out on Jl. KS Tubun in Central Jakarta, Muara Angke in North Jakarta and Pasar Rumput in South Jakarta.

'Street vendors in KS Tubun mainly sell textiles, so we will use the first three floors in the apartment building as a textile market,' he said.