A Big Plan for Small Homes: The Effort to Set Housing Standards in Turkey

2021 ◽  
pp. 009614422110174
Author(s):  
Emre Altürk

This article is about the short-lived space standards for urban housing in Turkey. Introduced in the 1960s, the standards were a crucial part of a policy that aimed to balance the housing demand and the development agenda by steering the market toward affordable housing. The Turkish state was not a significant actor in housing production. Nor had it ever before substantially intervened to regulate the housing market. The standards, however, exemplified a bold move stemming from a welfare and planning perspective. Although standards’ influence was curbed, the policy is important to address as it aimed to remedy a problem that continues today, namely, the disjunction between the housing provision and the means of the middle- and low-income groups. While a sixty-year-old policy does not provide immediate answers for today, it does offer insight into the history and context of some of the current housing issues.

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yusfida Ayu Abdullah ◽  
Julieven Nonoi Kuek ◽  
Hazlina Hamdan ◽  
Farrah Lyana Mohd Zulkifli

The year 2014 had witnessed the scenario where most of the states in Malaysia pledged to declare themselves as Zero Squatter state. Thus far, most of the states in Malaysia are still striving to achieve the goal. The government has therefore aspires to reach the target by the year 2020. The Malaysian government under its 5-years National Plan has since introduced the low, medium and high cost housing categories. The housing policy was therefore designed to provide the public of all income levels, particularly the low-income groups, with affordable housing as part of an effort to eradicate squatters. However, despite the various policies, the number of squatter families remains large, especially in the urban areas. This paper therefore, intends to examine the instruments put forward by the government to eliminate squatters and assess the roles of related parties assigned to achieve the government’s mission. Through a qualitative approach, results demonstrated that Malaysia has various types of polices and guidance at both the federal and state levels in relation to low-cost housing provision. These would have supposed to help reduce the number of squatters in the country. However, to date, Malaysia is still experiencing problems with squatters. This calls for further investigation.


2017 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yusfida Ayu Abdullah ◽  
Julieven Nonoi Kuek ◽  
Hazlina Hamdan ◽  
Farrah Lyana Mohd Zulkifli

The year 2014 had witnessed the scenario where most of the states in Malaysia pledged to declare themselves as Zero Squatter state. Thus far, most of the states in Malaysia are still striving to achieve the goal. The government has therefore aspires to reach the target by the year 2020. The Malaysian government under its 5-years National Plan has since introduced the low, medium and high cost housing categories. The housing policy was therefore designed to provide the public of all income levels, particularly the low-income groups, with affordable housing as part of an effort to eradicate squatters. However, despite the various policies, the number of squatter families remains large, especially in the urban areas. This paper therefore, intends to examine the instruments put forward by the government to eliminate squatters and assess the roles of related parties assigned to achieve the government’s mission. Through a qualitative approach, results demonstrated that Malaysia has various types of polices and guidance at both the federal and state levels in relation to low-cost housing provision. These would have supposed to help reduce the number of squatters in the country. However, to date, Malaysia is still experiencing problems with squatters. This calls for further investigation.


Author(s):  
Leandro Benmergui

As the number of favelas and poor residents of Rio de Janeiro grew quickly by the mid-20th century, they became the object of policymaking, social science research, real estate speculation, and grassroots mobilization. After a decade in which local authorities recognized the de facto presence of favelas but without legally ascertaining the right of permanence, the 1960s and early 1970s witnessed the era of mass eradication. Seemingly contradictory—but complementary—policies also included the development of massive low-income housing complexes and innovative community development and favela urbanization experiences empowered by community organizations with the assistance of experts committed to improving the lives of poor Cariocas (residents of Rio). Favelas in Rio were at the crossroads of a particular interplay of forces: the urgent need to modernize Rio’s obsolete and inadequate urban infrastructure; the new administrative status of the city after the inauguration of Brasilia; and the redefinition of the balance of power between local, municipal, and federal forces in a time of radical politics and authoritarian and technocratic military regimes, Cold War diplomacy, and the transnational flows of expertise and capital.


2011 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 16-26
Author(s):  
Urmi Sengupta

Since 1991 with the advent of globalization and economic liberalisation, basic conceptual and discursive changes are taking place in housing sector in India. The new changes suggest how housing affordability, quality and lifestyles reality is shifting for various segments of the population. Such shift not only reflects structural patterns but also stimulates an ongoing transition process. The paper highlights a twin impetus that continue to shape the ongoing transition: expanding middle class and their wealth - a category with distinctive lifestyles, desires and habits and corresponding ‘market defining’ of affordable housing standards - to articulate function of housing as a conceptualization of social reality in modern India. The paper highlights the contradictions and paradoxes, and the manner in which the concept of affordability, quality and lifestyles are embedded in both discourse and practice in India. The housing ‘dream’ currently being packaged and fed through to the middle class population has an upper middle class bias and is set to alienate those at the lower end of the middle-and low-income population. In the context of growing agreement and inevitability of market provision of ‘affordable housing’, the unbridled ‘market-defining’ of housing quality and lifestyles must be checked.


Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 004209802092783
Author(s):  
Matthew Palm ◽  
Katrina Eve Raynor ◽  
Georgia Warren-Myers

Governments worldwide have responded to housing affordability challenges with supply-side solutions. Proponents of these approaches often draw on the notion of ‘filtering effects’ to argue that new supply naturally trickles down to lower-income households over time, improving affordability. This study examines the characteristics of Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing in Melbourne, Australia, analysing how dwelling age impacts rental cost. We specify a non-linear relationship between building age and rents through hedonic rent modelling, reflecting a premium for historic properties in inner Melbourne. We also conduct a cluster analysis of rental listings and measure affordability by cluster. Our results problematise the notion of filtering, finding that most contemporary affordable housing was initially built in the 1960s and 1970s as social housing or targeted at low-income households. We argue that filtering in this instance is not natural but is instead a reflection of historic government expenditure and past construction choices, or ‘filter up’.


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 39-50
Author(s):  
Hussaen Ali Hasan Kahachi ◽  
Alison Brown

Low-cost housing, so-called affordable housing, is an important subject as it affects many aspects of people's well-being and city planning. The urban poor, who form a respectable percentage of cities' residents in many developing countries, are the most affected segment by the availability and affordability of housing. Governments often try their best to provide affordable housing through housing interventions and programs. However, many low-income people end up in informal settlements including slums and squatter settlements. This research analyzes state-led low-cost housing initiatives compared to informal affordable housing in developing countries. The importance of this research is mainly associated with understanding how governmental housing initiatives and laws affect the housing preferences of the urban poor. The research starts by providing a brief background about the subject and its importance from the literature. The research uses mixed methods approach and a case study of Greater Cairo Region following the massive migration during the period between the 1980s and the 2000s to provide an in-depth understanding of the situation. The research then analyzes/discusses some housing initiatives, and uses both quantitative/qualitative data in order to explain potential malpractice and issues. Finally, the research will highlight the key findings and provide some recommendations for change/improvement.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-122
Author(s):  
S Sunarti ◽  
Nany Yuliastuti ◽  
I Indriastjario

The needs land for urban housing construction was increasingly difficult andmore pricey, so for low-income communities for able owned a house was not easy.Limited of land in an urban area, especially in small cities such as Salatiga, its land wasnot all can be used in housing constructions. This condition needed an interventionfrom the local government to facilitate their needs for housing could be fulfilled. Basedon the problems, the goals of this research studied a providing of land for decent andaffordable housing for low-income communities in Salatiga. The method used was amixed method with a sequential explanation strategy, that is by overlaying secondarydata on the land potential map from various sources that can be used for decenthousing with primary data, such as interview and document review with localgovernment to reduce of housing cost. The results of the study figure out that housingused a land owned by the village government can be affordable for low-incomecommunities with price less expensive below the standard set by the government.


Marking 50 years since the passage of the Fair Housing and Civil Rights Acts, this collection both builds on and departs from two generations of scholarship on urban development and inequality. The volume’s contributors provide historical context for patterns of segregation in the United States and present arguments for bold new policy actions ranging from the local to the national. Evidence for the negative effects of segregation and concentrated poverty in America’s cities now exists in abundance. Poor and underrepresented communities in segregated urban housing markets suffer diminished outcomes in education, economic mobility, political participation, and physical and psychological health. Many of the aggravating factors underlying this inequity have persisted or even grown worse in recent decades. Yet the level of energy and attention devoted to them by local and national policymakers has ebbed significantly from the levels that inspired the landmark civil rights legislation of the 1960s. This book refocuses our attention on achievable solutions by providing not just an overview of this timely subject but a roadmap forward, as the twenty-first century assesses the successes and failures of the housing policies inherited from the twentieth century. Instead of introducing new theories or empirical data sets describing the urban landscape, the book’s editors have gathered the field’s first collection of prescriptions for what ought to be done. Topics discussed include community development, the Community Reinvestment Act, education triage, housing choice vouchers, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, mixed-income development, and tax increment financing.


Author(s):  
Clinton Aigbavboa ◽  
Wellington Thwala

The need to provide adequate, suitable, and equitable housing has remained an important priority of every successive Ghanaian government. Even though housing is a fundamental necessity of life, more than half of the Ghanaian population lives in inadequate houses. Hence, the objective of this paper is to discuss the fundamental philosophy underpinning adequate housing development vision in Ghana to provide a solution to the current housing problems faced by the low-income groups. The data used in this paper were derived from secondary sources only, through a detailed review of related literature on the subject to meet the research objectives. The study is an in-depth literature exploration on the fundamental philosophy underpinning housing development vision in Ghana. Unlike housing development in other African States which has its underpinning in its Constitution, the philosophical basis for housing development in Ghana is not completely supported in the Ghanaian constitution. The foundation is found in separate Ghana Development Plans as deemed necessary by the previous and even the current government as a follow-up to their manifesto before being elected into government. For instance, the present government involvement in housing provision is as a result of the manifesto’s declaration, which states that: every Ghanaian must have a home though not necessarily own a house, as a meaningful expression of the right to shelter.


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