BARGAS

“One community on its own will not achieve much, we need to form networks and turn up and make demands as a larger group” – A SOC member

The SOC (Sahapan Pattana Ongkorn Chumchon Konjon Muang Chart) was founded in September 2006, with CODI’s backing, formalising an existing informal network of community residents who had participated in Baan Mankong. The two core aims of SOC are:

1) to solve the problems of community organisations of the poor in cities;

2) to collectively push forward policy changes with the state.

The SOC website¹ emphasises that community residents need to be at the core of Baan Mankong upgrading.

SOC works closely with CODI. Because CODI lacks staff to deal with the full scale of the Baan Mankong programme, it delegates many of its community-level functions to SOC. SOC is staffed entirely by volunteers who are reimbursed for their expenses for attending meetings, up to 300B per day, funded by CODI and contributions from community cooperatives. SOC is a national network, with seven regional teams. This study only examines the Bangkok team, through participant observation of SOC meetings at CODI and within communities.

The need for SOC is recognised by community members and CODI staff. As Khun Roy, head of CODI operations in Bangkok and Eastern region, explains, “the BMA has two or three people working in 50 districts, which is impossible to cope with, so we need to get community members to solve their problems themselves. Plus we have SOC working on this, on loans and savings.” He recognises that there are separate roles for community members and government staff, saying that “staff may be more educated so they can help with writing things up, and can also help to think about things. Staff and communities need to work as a team, it’s not for staff to boss people around or just give money”. There is a mutually beneficial relationship between CODI and SOC members helping to facilitate their work.

This close relationship facilitates the access that the urban poor have to other government agencies, through the vertical linkages that CODI can provide as a public organisation.

1 http://www.nulico.com

SOC links the urban poor, which is central to bridging social capital, as it gives access to more resources, as well as sharing of experiences, and with this they can achieve change. The network members have created an identity for themselves around their ability and willingness to upgrade, calling themselves the chao chumchon baan mankong prachar samakee: the united citizens of Baan Mankong. It seems they have been collectively empowered by the upgrading project. Khun Lek from CODI explains that the distribution of society means “the poor get a very small plot, politicians get half, and civil servants get some. SOC joins up these small plots held by the poor so that the poor people have more space in the city, so that the poor can come out and speak at the district level”. The process of fighting for their communities has brought residents together: “they have all been fighting, have been squeezed, by government offices, land owners, they have gone to jail and so on, over 10 years. ... They have gained more than houses, they have friends, they know each other for at least five years so they have closeness from fighting together, the poor are like relatives. … To be heard they have to be numerous. They get power from numbers. People won’t listen to one community, won’t listen to 10, so they need 100.” Khun Lek is also a community activist from Klong Toey 7-12 community, as his repeated use of the phrase of communities “fighting” against the state and land owners suggests.

Community residents active in SOC explain its importance in terms of the limitations of CODI’s ability to help the poor, despite being a government agency. According to one, “poor people are getting together to fight for land because they don’t have back up, CODI doesn’t have the strength and manpower to help everyone, so they are getting poor people to help themselves”. For another, “Desperate community members set up SOC because no one was helping them, the CODI organisation used to be small. … If we don’t work collectively, the government doesn’t care about people”. SOC emerged from the community residents, as a reaction to the lack of representation and solutions from the state, as another member explained: “We have to help others who haven’t done Baan Mankong yet… Before Baan Mankong we struggled to find people to help us, this way there is no need to wait for government or district help”.

According to Khun PR from Bang Bua, “CODI doesn’t have much strength, so the community residents have to use their strength. … Khun Somsook is leaving, her replacement will come from the government, so community residents need to demonstrate now that they

maintained the momentum to keep the Baan Mankong project going, and now, “people look at us as the heart of Baan Mankong”. However, this does mean the network is very narrowly focussed.

Because community residents suffer directly from unfriendly policies, changing policy is one of their core aims. Khun Lek explains that “land policy is SOC’s main problem. [They] need to change how land is used, for example, why do new roads always pass through slums? Why?

So the poor have to get reform, so that they can rent government land or buy private land.”

Khun Lek also describes other SOC goals, which include forming community welfare funds, ending a dependence on the state, and promoting better linkages between different government policies such as city planning and building regulations. Khun Lek sees these three issues as the “misfortune” that unites SOC members, and consequently they put their heart in it, making SOC the “most independent of the poor peoples organisations”. The formalisation of the linkages between the urban poor communities by the SOC and CODI cements the network’s role as an agent for social change.

What does SOC do? How does it do it?

SOC works through specialised “teams”: management, information exchange, social welfare, construction, infrastructure, inspection, and finance. The Bangkok region holds a monthly meeting for all members, as well as meetings for the different teams. SOC representatives also facilitate discussion at meetings of more localised networks, such as the Bang Bua canal network.

SOC puts into practice the Baan Mankong ideals of information exchange and learning by doing. As community residents who have already completed upgrading and know best what the experience entails, they are better placed to inform their counterparts than government bureaucrats who view things from afar. As one SOC member said, “sometimes I go visit two or three communities in one day”. SOC team members can advise communities, for example those drawing up an application for Baan Mankong funding, or by checking cooperative accounts, or inspecting the building work carried out by contractors.

SOC is setting up learning centres, funded by CODI, in 18 Bangkok upgraded communities, embodying the programme’s learning-by-doing ethic. Upgraded communities are visited by

slum communities, so they have to be able to present their experiences clearly, both good and bad. SOC also have plans to set up a ‘Baan Mankong university’, because as Khun Jan of Klong Lumnoon community says in Thai rhyme, “we may not have paper degrees, but we have degrees of the heart”. For those without higher education, the process of upgrading is perceived as teaching them the equivalent of a university degree, and learning centres serve to disseminate information.

SOC also run meetings, in conjunction with CODI, providing training for communities in how to prepare funding applications and their component parts, such as new community layout plans (Figure 7.1). A community applying for CODI funding for Baan Mankong must first have its application approved at a SOC meeting, hence it is in the network’s interest to ensure applications are complete before they reach the meeting. Some of the advice provided at a SOC training day² is outlined below and illustrates what SOC members have learnt:

• CODI charges a 4% interest rate for 15 years. Each cooperative must decide how much interest to charge on top of this, and justify it to the community. The cooperative is a tool for all residents – it must not overcharge members but it needs enough income to survive.

• Baan Mankong is for true residents of the community so allocation of rights is an important issue. Residents need to have lived in the community permanently for at least 5 years.

• Housing rights can only be sold back to the cooperative. The committee can’t sell rights on the side to their relatives. It is important for the residents to trust the committee, and the committee to respect their community

• The committee usually has 9 to 15 members, split into different roles. It’s better for the committee not to all be related, e.g. the father is the leader, the mother collects savings and the son does the accounts! There should be working teams, for social, data-collection, management, infrastructure, construction.

• The maximum CODI loan is 300,000B. If the land costs 200,000B and the house costs 180,000B, there will be a shortfall of 80,000B, so either save more money or buy less land and have a smaller, cheaper house, or build the house gradually.

Figure 7.1: SOC training day at CODI (28/4/08)

The advice given by SOC members reflects their own experiences, and is realistic in expectations. As one member said during a session on drawing up community layout plans,

“we are not gated estates!” referring to the necessary lack of space between houses. SOC meetings are learning and exchange platforms³, as many communities are ill-prepared: one community had 140 households hoping to get a CODI loan, yet only 25 households were members of the savings group, which is a loan requirement.

There are also teams of builders, composed of community residents with masonry, carpentry, plumbing skills, who can be hired to build houses in other communities, at lower rates than those offered by contractors, thereby generating jobs and collective business skills. In Bangkok, there are 52 teams of community builders, composed of 2000 people (Community News, 2008, 112:3). These teams have built 38 upgrading projects, covering 5609 units⁴.

3 These large meetings were attended by representatives from a dozen communities. As each community presented its plans, not much attention was paid by the other representatives, who chatted amongst themselves.

There is scope for finding a more efficient meeting style where not only the SOC moderators participate in discussion.

4 http://www.codi.or.th/housing/selfbuild.html, accessed 12/2/09

SOC also runs its own welfare fund, to which members can contribute. Additionally, events like a community sports day are held to build team spirit outside the context of housing.

Members all wear green shirts, symbolising their unity, and there is a SOC song. Therefore, SOC performs a “family” role for its members, providing support in areas other than upgrading. SOC are creating an identity for the urban poor, as a group capable of providing for their own welfare and development.

Demonstrations

SOC as an organisation is not afraid to make its views known if it feels that the community members are being neglected by the powers above. Because the needs of the poor stay the same despite constantly changing governments with differing policies, SOC plays a role in ensuring continued funding for Baan Mankong projects. In January 2009, approximately 100 SOC members demonstrated at the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security to request funding for Baan Mankong, led by Khun PR and other SOC leaders, because “we have a new government and minister, we’re not a mob⁵ or protesting, but we want to meet him [the minister]”. Though the tone of the demonstration was very friendly, the leaders were clear that if their demands were not met, “we will fight, not just four regions like today, but [representatives from] all seven regions will come”. Their rhetoric emphasised the distance between the government officials and the poor: “if they [the government] don’t believe us, we can send them to see our projects, to compare the NHA and Baan Mankong, and which meets the needs of our people”, and “Mr Minister, you are sitting in your ministry, you should come and look at your brothers and sisters on the ground”. The demonstrators also clearly identified themselves as lower class people: “for human security, you need to look after everyone, not just high and middle class people, you have to look after the bottom class”, reflecting the fact that social identity is defined by the networks a person belongs to.

The bulk of the speeches emphasised what the communities were capable of achieving themselves and their sense of ownership over Baan Mankong: “no one is forcing us to do Baan Mankong, we thought to do it ourselves, to upgrade our communities, to improve our environment”, and therefore, “we want the minister to know that we always solve our own problems, but funding never reaches us…we just want funding so that we can solve our own problems so you don’t need to send civil servants”. The speeches also show the extent to

which the movement believes it can influence Thai society: “It’s not just an issue of houses, of solving land problems, it’s an issue for the whole country, building the country and society”, and “we solve our own problems. If we cannot, the country will stay still”. Baan Mankong is therefore regarded as the panacea, providing not just housing solutions but also social development. In government-led projects like NHA flats, “before it is even finished the buildings are broken, and we can’t even use our own people to fix it, have to use their people”. By comparison, Baan Mankong gives the poor true ownership and security over their housing, as “we build it ourselves, we know how much it costs”. The SOC members clearly create a sense of “them” and “us”, by emphasising that it is the community residents themselves who know best what they want and how to achieve it.

The protestors make clear that they don’t want money for free, they are willing to pay interest, and they also contribute with their own community funds. One of the leaders emphasised that

“If we can get a budget, communities use it and then repay it so that other communities can borrow it too through a revolving fund”. By comparison “the budget that the government gives to various ministries always gets lost”: the implication is that residents are more trustworthy with money than officials, yet the state still does not see community residents as serious actors in housing provision.

Figure 7.2: SOC protest at MSDHS, 12/1/09

The demonstration concluded with a meeting between ten community representatives and the minister, the outcome of which was a promise of 1000 million baht a year, for five years, toward Baan Mankong. To celebrate, the demonstrators stood in a circle around the national flag and sang the SOC song. However, Khun PR reminded the demonstrators that this outcome was not enough – the following day a small group of SOC representatives went to lobby the Prime Minister, to ensure that the Cabinet would approve the budget.

Why do people join SOC?

A short written questionnaire was administered to SOC members during a Bangkok region team meeting attended by many of the “core” group of SOC volunteers. Of the 17 respondents, ten were female and seven were male, with an average age of 48. None were from a community which had fully completed Baan Mankong upgrading, though 11 communities were in the process of doing so. The information displayed in Table 7.1 below show that as most have informal jobs, this gives them the flexibility to do SOC work. They are generally not the main wage-earner in their household. Thirteen also hold positions on their community committee. The majority of respondents displayed a high level of commitment to their SOC work, a number of them regarding it as a full-time job.

Table 7.1: Demographics and time-commitment of SOC members

Occupation SOC team position Days a week on SOC work⁶

Vendor 4 Information 4 1-3 5

Seamstress/laundry 3 Infrastructure 4 3-5 7

Labourer 1 Social 5 6-7 5

Housewife 2 Management 3

Business 1 Not on team 1

No work 5

Other (bus driver) 1

Total 17 17 17

When asked why they were working with the SOC, the answers reflect a desire to help other

“brothers and sisters” in a similar situation of need, and by extension, to help Thai society as a whole: “To help society and develop housing, and develop strong communities”; “I was in need, and want others in need to have secure housing for their children, and to help Thai society”. Others see it as a way to change government policies: “to solve the problem of

6 Those who answered a range of up to 3 days were put in the 1-3 category, while those who gave a range of 3

getting government land for communities, and of regulations not being appropriate”;

“because I see the need of the communities, and government agencies taking advantage”.

Other responses reflect the lack of help from other parties: “[it’s] hard to find people to work on this, to solve problems of lack of secure housing”. There is also a sense of pride in doing things for themselves: “when working together with ordinary people, it makes us build up strength and pride”. These responses demonstrate the altruistic nature of the community residents – though they are themselves busy upgrading their own communities, they want others to benefit from their knowledge so that their lives can be improved too. Norms of self-sacrifice which exist within communities extend across communities. This is solidarity in action, and for many, the network represents not bridging social capital, but rather bonding social capital, due to the closeness they gain through their work.

When the SOC members were asked what they regarded as the main problems when helping community residents upgrade, the responses can be distinguished as in-community factors and external factors. Nine respondents cited a lack of understanding from the community residents themselves: “residents don’t understand, think it’s impossible”; “residents… think the leader wants to do it for own benefit”. Other community-based problems included a lack of participation, being taken advantage of by the leader, divisions within the leadership, and unwillingness to participate in savings groups. External problems cited included unfriendly building regulations, securing tenure, and lack of support from organisations. With a clear understanding of the challenges, they can develop a plan of action to resolve these problems.

Finally, respondents were asked for suggestions to improve the Baan Mankong scheme. The responses focus on in-community improvements, such as better management in communities, having clear community plans, improving understanding of the residents, and increasing participation. However, there is also a need to increase understanding from the government

Finally, respondents were asked for suggestions to improve the Baan Mankong scheme. The responses focus on in-community improvements, such as better management in communities, having clear community plans, improving understanding of the residents, and increasing participation. However, there is also a need to increase understanding from the government