the search for policies to support sustainable housing

8/7/2019 The Search for Policies to Support Sustainable Housing

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-search-for-policies-to-support-sustainable-housing 1/7

Habitat International 31 (2007) 143–149

Editorial

The search for policies to support sustainable housing$

Charles L. Choguill

King Saud University, College of Architecture and Planning, P.O. Box 57448, Riyadh 11574, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Housing policies have passed through many permutations in the last 50 years, based on differing, even conflicting,approaches that, if we were totally truthful, have not really solved the housing problems faced by the majority of the

world’s population. For most people, remembering that over half the world’s population subsists on less than $2 per day,

the challenge of housing is a simple one: the need for a healthy shelter at an affordable price. In recent years, the concept of

sustainability has become central not just in housing policy, but in the consideration of human settlements, employment,

infrastructure, transportation and urban services. In fact, the concept of sustainability may be one of the most overused

and misunderstood urban policy component in use today.

This paper attempts to clarify the concept of sustainability, leading to what is hopefully an operational definition that

can be used to measure progress toward this desirable state. The ideas developed are then applied to the field of housing

policies, that is, the guidance that governments can give to housing providers, whether they be commercial, public or self-

builders, placing housing activity within the overall framework of the sustainability of human settlements and national and

international economic activity. In the course of this discussion, certain criteria for sustainability will emerge, including the

need for poverty reduction and slum eradication, as well as the broader goal of environmental preservation and theimportance of developing channels for making viable finance available. Of course, without improvements in employment

opportunity and incomes, whatever is done within the housing policy area is likely to lead to disappointing results.

r 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Keywords: Developing countries; Housing policy; Poverty; Slums; Sustainability

Introduction

In 1948, 57 years ago, the United Nations, in its Universal Declaration of Human Rights, stated that

‘everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his

family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social servicesy

’ (United Nations,

1948, Article 25).

In 1966, nearly 40 years ago, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the International Covenant on

Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, including Article 11(1) which provides recognition of the ‘right of

ARTICLE IN PRESS

www.elsevier.com/locate/habitatint

0197-3975/$- see front matterr 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

doi:10.1016/j.habitatint.2006.12.001

$This editorial is a somewhat revised version of a keynote address presented at the International Conference on Sustainable Housing

2006, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, 18–19 September 2006.

E-mail address: [email protected].

http://www.elsevier.com/locate/habitatint

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2006.12.001

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2006.12.001

http://www.elsevier.com/locate/habitatint



everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and

housing, and to continuous improvement of living conditionsy’ (United Nations, 1966, Article 11).

Despite these high sounding resolutions of such an august international institution, it was still necessary in

September 2000 for the United Nations General Assembly to adopt Goal 7, target 11 of what is known as the

Millennium Development Goals, committing member nations to achieving by 2020 a ‘significant improvement

in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers’ ( United Nations, 2000). Given that the latest estimate(UNHSP, 2006: 16, for 2005) of the number of slum dwellers in the world is just under 1 billion, one cannot

help but wonder which 10% of the poorly housed in the world will be the winners in this international lottery

and just how the lucky winners will be chosen. Obviously even with the best intentions of the international

community, 90% are expected to remain in housing that is over-crowded, unsafe, temporary, unhygienic, and

very probably illegal even after 2020 and the conclusion of the Millennium Development Goals exercise.

The object of this paper is to face reality from the perspective of the poor in the underdeveloped world.

Most of the efforts devoted by international institutions and governments to solve the world’s housing

problem have failed to produce the kinds of results that they promised. In economic terms, the ratio of benefits

to costs cannot be interpreted as being anything but negative. If these policies do not work, what would work?

The idea of developing sustainable housing policies is explored here. Although it is recognized that sustainable

housing policies in isolation will not overcome the urban problems that we face, it is suggested that without

such policies, there is no hope at all in finding a solution.Before we get to a consideration of policies, however, we must agree on what is meant by the concept

sustainability.

Defining sustainability in housing

The term sustainability has become the one of the most overused and all-too-frequently misused terms in the

development literature. We talk loosely about sustainable cities, sustainable transport, sustainable employ-

ment, sustainable energy, sustainable housing and a wide variety of other sustainable activities, using the term

whether we have thought of what sustainable means or not. At the UN World Urban Forum in Vancouver in

June and the exhibition accompanying the Forum, I even saw something labeled a ‘sustainable exhibit’,

whatever that meant, considering the conference lasted only 6 days.Virtually everyone is familiar with the definition of sustainability used by the World Commission on

Environment and Development in their 1987 study (WCED, 1987, p. 8), that sustainable development means

meeting ‘the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own

needs’. Yet the concept is a much more complex topic to apply in practice than this simple definition implies.

Actually operationalizing this definition and applying it to real-world human settlements situations are much

more difficult than one might expect.

The concept sustainable development was initially conceived as a term most relevant to macro economic

development (International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, 1980). It is only

more recently that it has been applied to a consideration of the quality of development in human settlements

and, by implication, housing (Choguill, 1999, p. 133). Given the world record with respect to urbanization and

the enormous expansion of residential areas, and the fact that it is in these very cities where the greatest

resource use occurs and from where the most waste products, that is, pollution, are generated, it is rather

surprising that it has taken us so long to apply this important concept to urban areas. Perhaps part of the

reason for this apparent delay is the complexity that accompanies this shift. Yet if we can do so, we can

supposedly reap the benefits that go with sustainability. Begin with the concept of the sustainability of human

settlements, and from there we will work our way into housing issues.

If the concept of the sustainability of human settlements is to have any meaning at all, it must be defined to

include staying within the absorptive capacity of local and global waste absorption limits (Foy and Daly, 1992,

p. 298), the achievement of the sustainable use of renewable (Daly, 1992, p. 253) and replenishable (Rees,

1996) resources, the minimization in the use of non-renewable resources (El Sarafy, 1989), and meeting basic

human needs (Hardoy, Miltin, & Satterthwaite, 1992, Ch. 6). It is this final inclusion, concerning meeting basic

human needs, that distinguishes this definition from the more general environmental approaches to

sustainability that, while interesting, give us limited guidance with respect to housing issues. Human beings are

ARTICLE IN PRESS

C.L. Choguill / Habitat International 31 (2007) 143–149144



a part of the system, and have requirements like every other part of the system. If these are not met, then the

human race will disappear—a glaring case of non-sustainability.

In an important paper, Tolba (1987), then head of the United Nations Environment Programme, observed

that sustainable development necessarily included:

(1) ‘help for the very poor because they are left with no option other than to destroy their environment,(2) the idea of self-reliant development, within natural resource constraints,

(3) the idea of cost-effective development using different economic criteria to the traditional approach; that is

to say development should not degrade environmental quality, nor should it reduce productivity in the

long run,

(4) the great issues of health control, appropriate technologies, food self-reliance, clean water and shelter for

all,

(5) the notion that people-centred initiatives are needed; human beings in other words, are the resources in the

concept.’

In a sense, then, Tolba has given us the criteria by which we can judge the human aspects of urban

development, which can readily be extended to housing. In order to be sustainable, housing initiatives must be

economically viable, socially acceptable, technically feasible and environmentally compatible. Governmenthousing policy must obviously be directed to achieving these desirable aims.

There is, however, another important element that needs to be cautiously included. As a country develops,

the first step on the path of improvement may be merely subsistence. No nation wishes, however, to be frozen

at this point of the development process, particularly when other nations of the world are already well past

that early, basic stage. Therefore, there must be a dynamic element in the definition (Choguill, 1999, pp.

136–38). We move from survival sustainability to something at a higher and more humanly appealing level,

realizing continually that each time economic progress occurs within a nation or city, the opportunities for

truly sustainable development open to the residents of other nations and cities may be constrained. The extent

of this constraint is determined by the amount of carrying capacity that various nations, particularly the rich

nations, are willing to shift to the poor. In other words, at some stage in the development process, a sharing of

development opportunities may be necessary, rather than having all of them accumulated and jealouslyguarded by just a handful of economically developed nations.

The evolution of housing policy

Before it is possible to define a housing policy that is consistent with the definition of sustainability that has

been suggested, it would be beneficial to try to determine just where policy makers are with respect to housing

policy formulation. Perhaps the most convenient way to do this is to make a brief review of housing policy,

particularly with respect to the developing world. The reason for this latter focus is that this is where the most

serious deficiencies in generating adequate housing have occurred in the past and where they seem to exist at

present.

In fact, government officials are relatively limited in the number of policy-supported actions they are able to

take in supporting the housing aspirations by their citizens. First, governments can build residential units and

rent them at full or subsidized rates, or give them to recipients. Second, government can take steps to lower the

price of housing, making it more affordable to residents. Third, governments can improve the workings of the

market to facilitate home ownership among citizens through steps as making mortgages and other home loans

more readily available or through improvements to the access to residential land. If one reviews the housing

policies that have been suggested by international agencies and followed by governments around the world,

these three sets of actions, referred to here as phases, despite the danger of over-generalization, appear to have

occurred almost in chronological order.

During the first phase of housing policy development, more or less beginning after World War II up to

roughly the early 1970s when the World Bank entered the housing field, the emphasis was upon the building of

houses, or the public housing approach. Harris and Giles (2003, p. 174) refer to this as ‘permanent housing for

rent’, using the British variation of the approach, as it followed the model developed by the United Kingdom

ARTICLE IN PRESS

C.L. Choguill / Habitat International 31 (2007) 143–149 145



for its own people but which it also encouraged in its colonies when resources were available. 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, 1992, p. 214). 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. A contemporary World Bank study (Grimes, 1976)

examined the lowest cost house constructed by governments in six cities (Amedabad, Bogota, Hong Kong,Madras, Mexico City and Nairobi) and concluded that the median incomes of residents was below that

threshold where one could hope to afford such a ‘cheap’ house in all six cities. Even with significant subsidies,

in most of the cases, affordability was still elusive.

With the realization that providing housing for the poor was not going to solve the housing problem,

international institutions and governments turned a second phase based on to experiments involving self-help.

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: governments should provide tracts of urban land

divided into plots and basic support services and then let the poor build their own houses on those plots. Full

cost recovery was basic to the approach and essential in that few governments had the funds to subsidize such

housing.Sadly the results were predictable. Even with minimal government investments, such projects were still too

expensive for at least 20% of most urban populations and, in some cases, a considerably higher proportion

(Swan et al., 1983; Kearne and Pariss,1982). Efforts to reduce standards, a step that was opposed by many

local governments arguing that in such cases sites and services would be little more than instant slums, led to

no more than minimal improvements on this cost recovery record. Emphasis on up-grading of existing

housing rather than the more comprehensive sites and services, also failed to meet the required cost recovery

objectives.

The third phase began in the mid-1980s when the World Bank realized that this sites and services approach

to housing was unlikely to work on the scale that was required to meet the housing shortages that existed.

Thus, along with other international institutions which seemed to have so much influence on housing policy

during this period, thinking shifted toward the creation of an ‘enabling environment’, within which individualnations could develop policies to solve national housing problems. Attention was directed toward devising

ways of providing the economic, financial, legal and institutional environment that was needed to support the

housing sector (UNHSP, 2005, p. 25).

By 1993, this shift had resulted in the formal adoption of a new housing sector policy statement ( World

Bank, 1993) which emphasized enablement, the sector’s contribution to macroeconomic development, and

pro-poor policies involving targeted subsidies where required. Whereas earlier policies, such as constructing

housing and self help were aimed at directly solving the housing shortages in various countries, the so-called

enablement strategy more realistically was directed at removing bottlenecks from the quest for housing

solutions.

At the present time, then, one could say that of the three possible approaches to solving the housing

problems, each has been emphasized for a period over the last 50 years. Has success been achieved in this

process? According to the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (2006, p. 16), the number of slum

dwellers in the world has increased from 715 million in 1991 to 913 million in 2001 and to 998 million in 2005.

Projections to 2020 suggest that the world will have 1.4 billion slum dwellers. Although slums are technically

defined in a slightly broader manner than inadequate housing, even the United Nations Human Settlements

Programme (2006, p. 26) refers to slums as the ‘shelter dimension of urban poverty’. Certainly if the number of

slum dwellers is increasing year on year, it seems rather clear that best practice housing policy is deficient, and

seriously so.

Housing policies for the future

Any future policy package designed to achieve sustainable housing would necessarily have to be designed to

meet three primary objectives. The first of these is that future policies must provide the basis for household

ARTICLE IN PRESS




improvement. Although improvement itself is a value-laden word, few poor families of the developing would

fail to notice if the effect of such policy action led to an improvement or otherwise in their particularly case.

That is, after all, the acid test of housing policy for the lower income groups. Sites and services failed because it

left the lowest one-fifth of the income distribution behind. If progressive improvement in the Turner (1967)

sense is to have any meaning at all, it is essential that this forgotten fifth of the population participate in

improvement as well.The second objective of the policies which could result in sustainable housing improvement are concerned

with the empowerment of poor people. At least 50% of the urban population in the developing world has been

economically and politically marginalized. Until they can be brought in from the cold, so to speak, it is

unlikely that they will be able to achieve empowerment and, as a result, this must be one objective of such

policies. Not only must they be heard by urban decision makers but they must also have influence on matters

that affect their destinies and future.

The third objective of such policies must be to psychologically give this lower segment of the urban society a

feeling of self-worth. Some might even consider this to be one of the basic foundations of the state of

development. If these people have pride in what they are able to achieve, it is likely that the other two

objectives concerned with the achievement of improvement and empowerment will also be met.

In order to achieve sustainability in the housing sector, then, certain policies in five areas must be devised

and implemented. These will differ in form from place to place, as the underlying causes of present conditionsthemselves vary from place to place. There is no such thing in housing as universal ‘best practice’. Reliance on

best practice is simply a substitute for thinking and analysis.

1. The first of these policy areas is the involvement of the community in all steps concerned with planning,

constructing and maintaining planned improvement. Just because this policy issue was central to the self-

help phase of housing policy during the 1970s and 1980s, this is no reason why it should not be maintained

in the future. Designing good housing is much more than just carrying out post-occupancy surveys. The

advantages of such involvement are more than cost savings; they result in the kind of satisfaction that all

housing project recipients deserve.

There is much that government can do in this area. Government can encourage and nurture the creation of

community organizations. They can then work with them to mutually design and carry out housingprojects. When the private sector is involved, government can act with and on behalf of the people to insure

that quality housing is produced. Once constructed, government can offer technical assistance for

maintenance of housing units and the associated residential infrastructure.

I am sympathetic with those who argue that the people should not be obliged to build their own housing

and infrastructure. Unfortunately, experience has shown that if they are not involved, first such housing

will never materialize, second they cannot afford it, and third, even if it is built, without consultation they

will be dissatisfied with it. The involvement of communities is designed to overcome these potential

constraints.

2. The second policy area concerns insuring that those who build housing, whether they are self-builders or

private sector firms, have access to good quality building materials at a cost they can afford . In far too many

situations, it is inadequate access to building materials that limits the kinds of construction activity that

could contribute significantly to the solution of the housing problem.

There is an environmental problem that needs attention within this policy area. Too often building material

suppliers are the greatest destroyers of the environment in the near periphery of rapidly growing urban

areas. Building stone quarries, brick clay pits, brick kilns and the cutting of timber for construction are

anything but environmental-friendly activities. Thus, government, in addition to overseeing certain pricing

and supply issues related to building materials, must also act on behalf of the public with respect to

environmental preservation, insuring that adversely affected areas are restored once building material

production ceases, as this too is an essential component of sustainability.

3. The third policy area concerns building standards. It should not be necessary to even mention this area, as it

has been discussed as a constraint on residential development of poor areas for well over 30 years, yet it is

still with us today. Everyone has their favorite story about some intervention on standards by local and

central governments that restrained in some way finding a solution to a local housing problem.

ARTICLE IN PRESS




Standards affect costs, and what is necessary in solving the low-income housing problem is to reduce costs

to a minimum. Of course, some standards are necessary. They are required to ensure good health, thus

being concerned with water, sanitation and drainage. In addition, certain standards are required to reduce

the danger of fire, which usually implies a minimum separation distance between housing units. However,

at the lower end of the housing market, it would seem that few other standards are really required. If they

are to be imposed, the effect is to raise costs, thus excluding the poor from having a house.Governments at all levels should recognize their negative powers when indulging in over-regulation.

Flexibility, subject to health and safety requirements, should be the operational guide for such an activity.

4. The fourth policy area where attention is required is in the realm of housing finance. This is an area that is

considered so important by the international institutions concerned with housing matters that it was the

focus of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme Global Report on Human Settlements 2005.

Despite this concern, there is considerable pessimism as to whether this area can be adequately developed

even over the medium term future if current trends continue. As the United Nations Human Settlements

Programme notes, ‘in the next 20 years, there is little likelihood that in many developing countries

conventional sources of funds will be available for investment on the scale needed to meet the projected

demand for urban infrastructure and housing’ (UNHSP, 2005, p. xxiii).

Finance for housing is almost certainly a central government policy issue, although with strong local

ramifications. What seems to be needed most if finance for housing is not to prove a binding constraint onprogress is imagination. Although conventional mortgages are likely to remain central to any area of

housing finance, it is necessary that loan periods be lengthened, that staged mortgages be developed to

assist the poor who so frequently built their houses incrementally, that wherever possible interest rates on

such loans should be subsidized, and that informal sector income be recognized by lenders as justification

for the granting of a mortgage loan. New areas of micro-finance are required to help those still excluded

from the conventional mortgage process, as will be a continued supply of finance to construct public

housing units for rent for the poorest of the poor. This may take the form of community-based shelter

funds where a blanket loan is made to the entire community for the development of housing and

infrastructure.

What is apparent from even this overly brief discussion of urban finance is that much of what is being

mentioned here was virtually unheard of 30 years ago. The demand for new financial products to supporthousing will continue to grow, and require the cooperation of the public and private sectors if the needs of

the poor for housing support are to be meant.

5. The final set of policy issues to be mentioned here concerns the fundamental problem of land . There is very

little doubt that this is the major area in which the government must be involved as any transaction

concerning transfer, trade or sale of land almost certainly involves central authorities. Government must

ensure the availability of adequate land for residential construction at a price that householders can afford,

even if it means that government agencies should free up some of their own surplus land holdings. Secure

tenure must be granted in such cases and, once granted, must be respected by urban authorities. Basically

this means that unambiguous titles are granted to land so that the poor are not sucked into legal disputes

over land that are not of their making.

Finally, it seems necessary that governments seriously consider the possibility of capturing planning gain of

their own investments which can then be devoted to community purposes through the existence of an efficient

tax management system. Obviously, if society builds a road through a residential area, the subsequent rise in

value of land adjacent to that road should in fact belong to society and not to the private person who

coincidentally owns land along its route.

Conclusion: will sustainability solve the problem?

If these five policy areas were developed and implemented, it could be said that housing would go some way

toward achieving the title of sustainable, particularly as defined earlier in this paper. Yet the most important

question that needs addressing is not whether housing policy is sustainable, but whether the housing needs of

the poor have been met. Given that 50 years of housing policy development has not solved this problem and

ARTICLE IN PRESS




since the number of people in inadequate housing in the developing world increases each year, there is little

reason to believe that just because we label something ‘sustainable’ it will be any more successful.

The reason for this pessimistic conclusion is that although we tend to think of housing as a distinct and

identifiable sector, in fact it is little more than one sector of the overall urban development challenge, which, in

turn, is no more than one sector of the comprehensive economic development of a nation. Although we can

treat these various sectors in isolation, they are all interrelated and we are unlikely to achieve success in onewithout succeeding in others.

In the case of housing, we have to recognize that the major constraint on meeting housing needs is the low

incomes of the economically weaker sectors of urban society. Low incomes are due to, among others causal

factors, an inadequate number of jobs available, the poor education available for workers and low

productivity due to poor health. Causal reasons for each of these factors could also be identified, and the

factors that in turn determine our new set of factors, etc.

My point is that sustainability in housing cannot be viewed as an end in itself. Sustainability in housing

alone is quite meaningless. Nevertheless, sustainability of housing policy can be viewed as a necessary if not a

sufficient condition for success in the housing area. Without thinking through housing policies and basing

them on sustainability criteria, that is, ‘meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of

future generations to meet their own needs’, there is no chance at all of success.

References

Choguill, C. L. (1992). Third world shelter policy, solutions and problems for housing the poor. In L. Kilmartin, & H. Singh (Eds.),

Housing in the third world (pp. 211–232). New Delhi: Concept.

Choguill, C. L. (1999). Sustainable human settlements: Some second thoughts. In A. F. Foo, & B. Yuen (Eds.), Sustainable cities in the 21st

century (pp. 131–142). Singapore: The National University of Singapore.

Daly, H. E. (1992). Steady state economics (2nd ed). London: Earthscan.

El Sarafy, S. (1989). The proper calculation of income from depletable natural resources. In Y. J. Ahmad, S. El Serafy, & E. Lutz (Eds.),

Environmental accounting for sustainable development. Washington, DC: The World Bank.

Foy, G., & Daly, H. E. (1992). Allocation, distribution and scale as determinants of environmental degradation: Case studies of Haiti, El

Salvador and Costa Rica. In A. Markandya, & J. Richardson (Eds.), Environmental economics. London: Earthscan.

Grimes, O. F., Jr. (1976). Housing for low-income families. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press.Hardoy, J. E., Miltin, D., & Satterthwaite, D. (1992). Environmental problems in third world cities. London: Earthscan.

Harris, R., & Giles, C. (2003). A mixed message: The agents and forms of international housing policy. Habitat International , 27 (2),

167–191.

International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. (1980). World conservation strategy: Living resource

conservation for sustainable development. Gland, Switzerland: International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural

Resources, United Nations Environmental Programme and World Wildlife Fund.

Kearne, D. H., & Pariss, S. (1982). Evaluating shelter programmes for the urban poor, principle findings World Bank Staff Working Paper

No. 547. Washington, DC: The World Bank.

Rees, W. (1996). Revisiting carrying capacity: Area-based indicators of sustainability. Population and Environment, 17 (3).

Swan, P. J., et al. (1983). Management of sites and services housing schemes: The Asian experience. Chichester: Wiley.

Tolba, M. K. (1987). Sustainable development: Constraints and opportunities. London: Butterworth.

Turner, J. C. (1967). Barriers and channels for housing development in modernizing countries. Journal of the American Planning

Association, 33(3), 167–181.

United Nations. (1948). Universal declaration of human rights, 10 December. /www.un.org/overview/rights.htmlS [accessed 10.07.06].United Nations. (1966). International covenant on economic, social and cultural rights, 16 December. /www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/

a_cescr.htmS [accessed 10.07.06].

United Nations. (2000). United nations millennium summit. /www.un.org/millennium/declaration/ares552e.pdf S, [accessed 10.07.06].

United Nations Human Settlements Programme. (2005). Financing urban shelter, global report on human settlements 2005. London:

Earthscan.

United Nations Human Settlements Programme. (2006). State of the world’s cities 2006/7 . London: Earthscan.

World Bank. (1993). Housing: Enabling markets to work World Bank Policy Paper. Washington: The World Bank.

World Commission on Environment and Development. (1987). Our common future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

ARTICLE IN PRESS


http://www.un.org/overview/rights.html

http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/a_cescr.htm


http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration/ares552e.pdf

http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration/ares552e.pdf



http://www.un.org/overview/rights.html

the search for policies to support sustainable housing

Documents