Pruebas de hipótesis 158

Housing policies have passed through many permutations in the past 50 years, based on differing, even conflicting, approaches that, if one were to be totally truthful, have not really solved the housing problems faced by the majority of the world‘s population (Choguill, 2007). Internationally, housing policies have been used to try and address shelter problems, especially with respect to low-income earners, with a view to helping them access better shelter (Harris & Giles, 2003). These efforts can be traced in the evolution of housing policies internationally, and especially in the developing world.

Housing policies have varied substantially according to economic, social, demographic and urban changes, and in response to the expectations and wishes of individuals (Guerra, 2008).

According to Harris and Giles (2003) researchers have identified the following three phases in the evolution of international housing policy and delivery models since 1945: (i) public housing provision (1945–1960s), (ii) sites and services (1972–1980s), and (iii) market enabling (1980s–the present).

(i) Public housing delivery model

Although the role of the state in housing provision in developing countries has varied considerably since World War II, Harris (1998; 2003) asserts that the state has, in general, continued to play a significant role in the provision of low-income housing. Public housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is owned by a government authority, which may be central or local government, for low-income families and for the elderly and handicapped individuals (Aigbavboa, 2013). Social housing and housing allowances form the pillars of public housing policies in most of the developed countries (Lux, 2003). Social housing is an umbrella term referring to rental housing which may be owned and managed by the state, by non-profit organisations, or by a combination of the two, usually with the aim of providing affordable housing. Social housing can also be seen as a potential remedy to housing inequality. Public housing is named differently in different countries, for example, in the United Kingdom (UK) it is often referred to as Council housing and Council estate (Aigbavboa, 2013). Public housing was introduced during the first phase of housing policy development, more or less after World War II up to roughly the early 1970s when the World Bank entered the housing field.

The emphasis was on the building of houses or the public housing approach. Governments feared that poor housing, particularly in cities, might provoke political unrest. Harris and Giles (2003) referred to public housing as permanent housing for rent. Permanent, was meant to distinguish these units from most housing in colonial cities, which were built by owners from local materials. It also implied that this housing met basic standards of safety and health, and required modest maintenance (Choguill, 2007). In addition, some observers argued that publicly sponsored construction offered governments a means of nurturing a local building industry, providing on-the-job training in the handling of modern western materials such as bricks, dimensional timber and concrete (Harris, 2003).

Of equal importance is that governments used public projects as a means to consolidate political support by rewarding supporters through the allocation of building contracts and jobs, or through the allocation of housing units.

One of the positives about public housing was that to the public this policy gave governments an opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to the welfare of their people. However, the main weakness of this policy form was its cost. Cost to the state, if rents were subsidised, and its cost to its occupants when costs were not subsidised.

High building standards, often coupled with the use of imported materials, were expensive and for this reason, poorer countries never built public housing (Choguill, 1996). Additional problems often included the challenge of managing projects that were designed to suit European climates and cultural norms. Occupants had to adapt to unfamiliar living spaces while conforming to regulations that could appear, and often were, arbitrary. Typically, they had no say in defining or enforcing such regulations, and in general lacked control over their living space and, as a result, resentment and resistance created challenges that local administrators often lacked the skills and resources to handle. Eventually, in a number of countries the occupants of public projects were allowed to adapt and extend their dwellings in ways that made them both more affordable and more suitable (Tipple, 2000). The problem was that resources were rarely available, and when they were and were spent on housing, the housing was only provided for civil servants and the military (Choguill, 1996). Even if houses could have been built, the poor were rarely in a position to pay the true rents on such structures and few governments at that time were able to extend subsidies to housing for the general public. In 1953 an International Labour Organisation (ILO) study concluded that public housing was fine in principle but that high costs made it a low priority. With the realisation that providing housing for the poor was not going to solve the housing problem, international institutions and governments turned to a second phase based on experiments involving self-help.

(ii) Aided self-help housing delivery model

Jacob Crane coined the term aided self-help in 1948, after realising that the government through the public housing policy could only build a very few excellent houses which would actually accomplish almost nothing as measured against the housing deficit (Harris, 1998). In spite of the fact that self-help housing is as old as humankind itself, and that it was practised in different parts of the world before World War II (Harris, 2003; Pugh, 2001; Parnell & Hart, 1999; Ward, 1982), it has since received varied institutional backing and even more prominently so since the early 1970s because of the World Bank‘s influence in this regard. Aided self-help housing generally revolves around the idea that governments might help families to build their own homes (Harris, 1998). Abrahams (1969) distinguishes three types of owner-built housing, namely (i) self-help housing, (ii) aided self-help housing, and (iii) organised self-help housing. He described self-help housing as the earliest form of construction by communities; aided self-help housing as official self-help programmes implemented by governments in developing countries; and organised self-help housing as mutual aid projects implemented by the third sector (NGOs and charities) in which self-builders are taught building skills and work in all houses of the project without knowing which one belongs to them.

Similarly, according to Ntema (2011), there are three different forms of self-help, namely (i) laissez-faire self-help (virtually without any state involvement), (ii) state aided self-help (site-and-services

schemes) and (iii) institutionalised self-help (cases where the state actively supports self-help through housing institutions). As an alternative to public housing, aided self-help housing was meant for governments to offer beneficiaries financial and technical assistance. John Crane in the 1940s (Harris, 1997), Charles Abrahams (Abrahams, 1969) and John FC Turner (Turner & Fischer, 1972;

Turner, 1976) have been key advocates of theoretical developments of incremental construction and self-help housing. Aided self-help housing means where governments provide land for construction, urban services, capacity development and the option to construct own houses by beneficiaries themselves (Bredenoord & van Lindert, 2010). The key departure from other housing delivery approaches, such as contractor-driven low-cost housing or subsidised housing is that aided self-help housing recognises the ability of the low-income households to build their own houses, provided an opportunity and support are provided (Ramovha, 2012).

Triggers for the need for self-help housing internationally are the realisation that providing a complete serviced house by government agencies is not possible, particularly in the face of the failure of the conventional housing approaches. A number of studies also pointed out the creativity, skill and perseverance of squatters to house themselves (Ramovha, 2012). Some nations introduced self-help housing programmes where government played a supporting role, over government playing a role of housing developer when they recognised that being the housing developer was unsustainable due to high construction costs, cost escalations, poor quality of houses constructed, and constraints of finance, labour and building (Joshi & Khan, 2011). It was also the realisation that housing constructed by the households themselves were cheaper and better suited to their needs (Ramovha, 2012).

Throughout the developing world, millions were obtaining shelter by building their own homes. This type of programme had first evolved in an ad hoc way in Europe, but only in the late 1940s did it come to be regarded as a distinctive type of programme (Harris, 1998). It was argued that if the poor actually built their own houses, even with appropriate external assistance, the cost could be reduced sufficiently to allow them to enter the home ownership market. From an institutional point of view, this initiative was championed by the World Bank with its sites and services projects, beginning in 1972. The sites and services concept was a simple one, in that governments would provide tracts of urban land divided into plots and basic support services, and let the poor build their own houses on those plots (Choguill, 2007).

Another merit was that aided self-help was singled out as a cost-effective strategy and that it promoted owner occupancy, which many believed would encourage social stability, give people pride in their homes and a stake in society, while promoting savings and investment. According to Turner (1976:6), ‗when dwellers control the major decisions and are free to make their own contribution to the design, construction or management of their housing, both the process and the

environment produced stimulate individual and social well-being. When people have no control over, nor responsibility for, key decisions in the housing process, on the other hand, dwelling environments may instead become a barrier to personal fulfilment and a burden to the economy‘.

Critics and most housing experts argued that because owner builders used methods and materials with which they were familiar, unless compelled to do otherwise, they produced dwellings that were regarded as temporary and some condemned as substandard, and therefore self-help produced instant slums. The more serious criticism of aided self-help was that it made inefficient use of under-utilised labour. Housing experts believed that the building industry was an industrial backwater (Harris & Buzzelli, 2002). Deploring the persistence of small producers and handicraft techniques, they argued for prefabrication and large-scale production. This ideal was universal, and suggested the need for specialisation. To some, the idea that governments might encourage construction by amateurs seemed absurd and unworthy of serious attention.

Despite some criticism, aided self-help was consistently endorsed by the leading international housing agencies. The available literature indicates two main advantages pertaining to aided self-help or site and services. Aided self-help or site and services schemes have the potential to spread limited funds as widely as possible, using them for investments best undertaken on a large scale, and leaving individuals free to do those things that they can do for themselves (Ntema, 2011). This renders site-and-service schemes attractive not only to governments, but also to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) such as the World Bank and to the beneficiaries themselves. Furthermore, not only do beneficiaries benefit from these schemes, but there are also significant benefits to governments. By means of these schemes, governments, particularly in poor countries with histories of inadequate housing delivery, are relieved of heavy and unsustainable financial obligations to finance the construction of housing for the poor. By supporting site-and-services schemes, governments in developing countries are able to save large amounts of the public budget by providing serviced plots while leaving the rest to be completed by the poor themselves (Ntema, 2011). In spite of the progress made in respect of housing poor people through site-and-services schemes, this form of housing delivery could not escape criticism (Marais, 2003). A number of authors have alluded to the fact that aided self-help through site-and-services schemes generally proved to be ineffective as a strategy for low-income housing provision (Keivani & Werna, 2001; Stewart & Balchin, 2002). Like public housing, site-and-services schemes have often proven to be too costly both for governments‘ target populations and for the governments in the developing world. In urban areas, site-and-services schemes became unrealistic because the government had to acquire expensive land from private owners (Soliman, 2004). Thus, where the land was not owned by the state, much of the funding was spent on land costs rather than on the actual construction or on infrastructure investment, which

further made these schemes expensive to the state. The evidence shows that supply continued to be far less than the actual demand for housing (Ntema, 2011).

(iii) Market enabling strategy housing delivery model

The third phase began in the mid-1980s when the World Bank realised that the site-and-services approach to housing was unlikely to work on the scale that was required to meet the housing shortages that existed (Choguill, 2007). The origins of the enabling housing market strategy may be traced back to a number of earlier initiatives and policy developments from within and outside the World Bank.

These include the Bank‘s urbanisation sector Working Paper of 1972 which in its inception focused on harnessing market forces (Keivani et al., 2005). Thus, along with other international institutions that seemed to have so much influence on housing policy during this period, thinking shifted towards the creation of an enabling environment within which individual nations could develop policies to solve national housing problems. Attention was directed towards devising ways of providing the economic, financial, legal and institutional environment that was needed to support the housing sector.

The concept of the enabling approach to shelter was first introduced in 1988 with the adoption of the Global Shelter Strategy to the Year 2000 (GSS) (UN-Habitat, 2004). Before this, governments played a dominant role in formulating and implementing shelter housing policies and strategies. They also had primary responsibility for production and allocation of housing. In this notion, governments were in charge of housing development and improvement programmes and projects. The GSS introduced a new comprehensive framework for action towards the goal of facilitating adequate shelter for all by the year 2000. This called for a major shift in the role of government. This approach was subsequently endorsed and comprehensively elaborated on in the Istanbul Declaration and the Habitat Agenda, which provided a blueprint for achieving the twin goals of adequate shelter for all and sustainable human settlement development (UN-Habitat, 2004).

Whereas earlier policies, such as constructing housing and self-help, were aimed at directly solving the housing shortages in various countries, the enablement strategy more realistically was directed at removing bottlenecks from the quest for housing solutions. The essence of the market enabling strategy revolves around governments refraining from direct supply of land for housing to lifting of restraints from private market activity and the treatment of housing as an economic sector tied to the general macro-economic development (World Bank, 1993). More specifically, the enabling housing market strategy proposes developing property rights and mortgage finance, including lending and borrowing at market rates; rationalising subsidies; providing infrastructure for residential development; reforming building and planning regulations in line with expanding private market

activity; organising building industry by eliminating regulatory barriers; and developing an institutional framework for managing the housing sector (Keivani et al., 2005). According to UN-Habitat (2006), the underlying philosophy of the enabling approach is that governments should withdraw from direct provision of housing. Instead, they should enable other actors such as the private sector, NGOs and community groups to contribute fully towards the achievement of adequate shelter for all. However, this does not mean a lesser or no role at all for government, as is commonly misconceived. Decisive and coherent action on the part of government is required. This includes providing supportive institutional, legislative, regulatory and financial environments within which other actors can operate more effectively, and also intervening in land, housing and financial markets that are incompatible with the needs of the poor.