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Jakarta Post

Nowhere to live in Jakarta

With Jakarta’s landed house prices being beyond average people’s reach, many who arrived here in the 1980s to pursue their dream career chose to live on the outskirts, such as in Bekasi, Tangerang and Bogor

The Jakarta Post
Sat, March 25, 2017

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Nowhere to live in Jakarta

W

ith Jakarta’s landed house prices being beyond average people’s reach, many who arrived here in the 1980s to pursue their dream career chose to live on the outskirts, such as in Bekasi, Tangerang and Bogor. Millions of others who came later followed the pattern, but had to settle for housing complexes located as far as Serang in the west or Karawang in the east.

Unsurprisingly, landed houses in Jakarta are elusive for today’s millennials, who are setting out on their careers at a time when the price of decent property has exceeded Rp 2 billion (US$150,000), which they cannot afford. Of course there are exceptions, but they are limited to the children of wealthy people and the new rich on the block.

Skyrocketing house prices is a common phenomenon in capitals anywhere in the world, given the high demand and limited supply. Millennials are just unfortunate to have set foot on Jakarta soil, which was already occupied by those preceding them. First come, first buy is the rule when it comes to the search for a place called home.

For Jakarta city policymakers, however, the trend is a strategic issue that they need to address, simply because millions of people who commute from Jakarta’s satellite cities every day contribute to the city’s gross domestic product and even determine the life or death of the capital.

It is therefore the responsibility of the Jakarta administration and the central government to ensure smooth passage of commuters to the city, which is why the Transjakarta busway transportation network has been expanded to the borders between the capital and its buffer cities. State railway operator PT KAI also keeps increasing the capacity of its commuter trains. More outer ring roads are also being built to facilitate human movement from Jakarta’s outskirts to the capital.

But transportation infrastructure alone is not fair enough payback for the sacrifice of the commuters, who spend most of their time in Jakarta and on the streets. The easiest option the city government has is to build more apartments, either using the city budget or offering them to investors, to allow the commuters to move to Jakarta or to enable a new generation of paid employees who cannot afford to buy a landed house in which to settle down.

But living in Jakarta does not necessarily mean saving time, unless one’s place of work is within walking distance of one’s apartment. Jakarta traffic is becoming more hectic as the growth in vehicle numbers far eclipses that of the city’s roads.

Advancement of information and communication technology actually offers a way out. Working from remote distances from the office can be a solution that the city administration could promote, given that many service sectors are now digital.

The Jakarta government can incentivize employers who encourage their staff to work from home or at least reduce their presence in the office.

Such a work mechanism suits millennials the most and perhaps will help them boost productivity. Living outside Jakarta but enjoying facilities of metropolitan standard would be much better than enduring a stressful life in the capital.

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