Gugun Muhammad, a community organizer at Urban Poor Consortium (UPC), said the group, along with the Jakarta Urban Poor Network (JRMK), had submitted a proposal to the Jakarta administration in late September and was currently waiting for approval from the City Council.

“We know we cannot rely on the regular provincial infrastructure program funds that are routinely allocated. Therefore, we are looking for grants from the city administration with a total of Rp 14 billion [US$989,000] proposed funds,” Gugun told The Jakarta Post recently.

However, Gugun said, the grants could only be given once, so if the building was damaged later, the responsibility would lie with the recipients of the grants.

Gugun added that in designing the new housing concept, UPC was accompanied by a community of architects engaged in social work called Architecture Sans Frontières (ASF) Indonesia, also known as Arsitektur Tanpa Batas (Architecture Without Borders).

Brahmastyo Puji, an ASF member who also accompanied the development of other kampung including Kampung Kedaung Kali Angke in Cengkareng, West Jakarta, said they had started working on the concept in September and now they only had to convince the administration why Kampung Kunir was a livable place.

“We are compiling better arguments to convince the administration that the location can be a place of residence, such as the fact that it is part of the tourism and heritage area of Kota Tua and the larger structure of surrounding old kampung,” Brahmastyo said referring to Jakarta’s Old Town heritage area, a popular tourist destination.

He argued the reconstruction was needed not only because there used to be a kampung there, but also because of settlement issues in the larger area of Kota Tua.

“Most buildings here are shop houses, and visitors only gather at one center. With the enhancement of the urban kampung including the cluster of Kampung Tongkol, Kampung Krapu and Kampung Lodan, as well as nearby Kampung Akuarium, visitors can walk around to enjoy the surrounding view as well,” he said.

Another ASF member, Kamil Muhammad, said the new concept of Kampung Kunir was a vertical kampung on 1,099 square meters of land from the bridge entering the kampung to the shelters where the residents resided at the moment.

“The least resistance to the proposal is for the construction from the bridge to the shelters because it is free state-land. Passing the shelter until reaching the end of the road near the railway, the land belongs to KAI,” he said, referring to state-owned railway company PT Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI).

He added that the vertical kampung was designed to have four floors with a total of 48 rooms, 36 of which were 36 sqm and the other 12 were 28 sqm.

The design would provide some extra units, exceeding the capacity for 33 families to be used for supporting facilities such as an early childhood education center (PAUD), community hall, library, community secretariat office, a mosque as well as green spaces, Kamil added.

He said the design was only a basic design for the sake of the proposal, so there would be further discussion to finalize some detailed concepts such as the room interiors, expected to be finished in early December.

However, he said the condition for applying for grants was that the recipients must be in groups. For that, the residents of Kampung Kunir have formed a community union called Koperasi Konsumen Kunir Pinangsia Sejahtera, members of which participated in designing the concepts representing the residents’ voice.

The chairman of the union, Marsha Chairudin, who is also a member of JMRK, said one thing that still prevented the proposal from being approved was that they were still handling the final administration of the union registration in order to obtain legal status from the administration.

Kampung Kunir recently came under the spotlight, as a member of Korean Solidarity for Overseas Community Organizations (KOCO), Yenee Han, made a documentary film about the evicted kampung residents.

UPC and KOCO are two members of the Leaders and Organizers of Community Organizations in Asia (LOCOA), an international network of community leaders and organizers from urban poor communities around Asia.

Accompanied by Gugun, Yenee documented some evicted kampung in Jakarta, with the film to be showed at the 50th anniversary of the community organization movement in Asia in 2021, along with other documentaries from other cities in Asia.

“In December, LOCOA’s annual meeting will be held in Jakarta. There will be representatives from all members across Asia coming to this city,” she said.

The chairman of a neighborhood unit, Uun Samiran, said he was beyond grateful that various communities were willing to help the residents. Even from the beginning before being evicted, he said, they had helped the residents negotiate with the city administration to stop the eviction plan.

“The eviction happened anyway and we had to go through that tragic experience. But we always believe that the help of the communities and the struggle together will be worth it later on,” Samiran said.

Taslimah, 40, a Kampung Kunir resident who lives with her husband and two children, claimed that after being evicted, they chose to stay because they knew it would be difficult for them to make a living in the low-cost apartment that the city administration had offered.

“Most of us are street vendors at Fatahilah [Square] in Kota Tua. By choosing to stay, we know that at least we can still earn some money even though we have to jostle in tents or in the 18 sqm shelter room,” said Taslimah, adding that she was looking forward to the ideas being materialized for her family to have a house again.

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