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House owner stands ground despite being boxed, dwarfed by skyscraper
Staunch defiance: An old house owned by Elis, 60, peaks out from below an access road to the Thamrin Executive Residence apartment complex in Central Jakarta on Saturday
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taunch defiance: An old house owned by Elis, 60, peaks out from below an access road to the Thamrin Executive Residence apartment complex in Central Jakarta on Saturday. The owner has refused to sell her house, despite being offered a substantial pay-out.(JP/Narabeto Korohama)
It has been more than a decade since her neighborhood turned into a land of skyscrapers. While all of her neighbors have been forced out or voluntarily moved out of the neighborhood, Elis, 60, is the only one to have rejected the transformation.
All these years later, she is still holding out.
Her 40-square-meter house stands firmly next to the 45-story Thamrin Executive Residence apartments on Jl. Kebon Kacang, Kebon Melati, Tanah Abang, Central Jakarta.
From the apartment building' s entry gate, the house is seen "buried" with just its old red roof tiles sticking out above road level.
A half-meter wide ramp stretches from the house's terrace to ground level. The terrace is humid and packed with objects, mostly empty water dispenser bottles.
On a still Friday morning, the shadows of people walking past swept the house's front wall and the low-pitched hum of cars was heard, as the house is located next to the apartment's parking area.
Riding a motorcycle, Elis had just returned from picking up her youngest son from school, a fifth-grade student, when The Jakarta Post visited the location.
Speaking furiously, she said she had lived her entire life in the house and had an ownership certificate. She said the house had sentimental value for her.
“Even if I died, I wouldn't be willing [to give up the house] because it's proof of my family’s blood and sweat for years. I will stay here forever,” Elis said.
She recalled when the area was full of houses.
“The kampung here was occupied by newcomers. My ancestors were the indigenous ones,” Elis said.
Her neighbors moved out one by one and their houses were razed to make way for the apartment building, Elis said.
Unlike her neighbors, who she claimed were intimidated until they finally agreed to sell their homes, Elis has refused to sell her house to the developer.
“Residents were afraid. As time passed, [they] sold at the lowest price they [developer] offered,” she said without elaborating on the amount offered to her neighbors.
Elis’s husband, Chairul Bahir, 72, said that as far as he remembered, his wife was offered Rp 2.5 billion (US$174,216) or an apartment in exchange for the house.
Elis repeatedly emphasized that she was not tempted by the offer as she lived comfortably from the proceeds of the many rooming and rented houses her family owned.
A former neighbor of Elis, Wasroni, now the head of the neighborhood unit (RT) 7 in community unit (RW) 9 in Kebon Melati, said negotiations for land purchases by the developer began in 2004.
As all of her neighbors had moved out, he said he had no idea why Elis had insisted on holding onto her house.
“We were only neighbors so we don't know exactly [the reason]. Take the positive side. Each person has a different stance,” he said.
With more than a decade passed since the apartments were built, he opined that relations between the developer and Elis' family had been like the Betawi idiom lo lo gue gue (your business is your affair and mine is my affair).
The chief customer service of PT Inner City Management, the building management consultant for Thamrin Executive Residence, Emmy, told the Post there had been no complaints from tenants over the presence of the house within the compound.
"It's like your house and my house, right? We live harmoniously side-by-side,” she said.
