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Bernard Lefebvre
Joined: 02 Jun 2004
Posts: 20
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 Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2004 12:11 am Post subject: Low Cost Housing |
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Self-help and mutual aid construction techniques are generally considered to be the only way for low-income families to become house owners in less developed countries. In the next 20 years, most of the population growth in these countries will occur in urban areas and there is no indication that the immediate future will bring any relief to the existing deficit in housing. In general building materials account for 65-70 % of the cost of housing and for self-help housing their cost can represent as much as 85% of the cost of the house.
In less developed countries, traditional construction methods used for building houses were based on locally available materials such as earth or organic materials such as bamboo and wood usually collected in the immediate environment of dwellers. As most of these traditional building materials are not available within urban areas they need to be replaced. Many of the houses built in squatters or slums areas are often partially built using recycled materials collected from various sources and used in conjunction with manufactured materials. A large proportion of building materials are either imported as finished products, or the main inputs and the production technology are imported.
One has to understand that in most cases the self-built house is an on-going process. Houses are built progressively; households erecting first one or two rooms in which they live while slowly expanding the house horizontally or vertically. Self-help builders tend to buy building materials in small quantities as and when they can afford them. Consequently, they buy the majority of their building materials from building material distributors or from small local building materials producers.
NGOs have been instrumental in the establishment of building material distribution centers for building materials in low-income settlements with the aim of reducing costs for self-help builders. If space is provided within the community for building materials producers to sell directly to self-help builders then most intermediary distributors and transporters can be eliminated. This way, self-help builders can obtain building materials at a lower price.
The cost of building materials can be reduced at the production stage in two ways: either by the production of alternative cheaper and easy to put in place building materials and/or by self-help builders producing the materials themselves. If the building materials are manufactured by the self-help builders under mutual aid techniques, this reduces their cost as wages and middlemen are eliminated. On the other hand, if the building materials are manufactured by small production facilities established in the community, then they create local jobs in the community and provide income for these persons. Furthermore, small-scale building material production units can join forces and take the form of a cooperative distributing other building materials and offering building material loans to members in the community.
It is well known that self-help construction receives mostly unpaid help from family and friends but that at some points skilled labour is hired in building process. When considering what types of building materials to produce, the building materials and the corresponding construction methods should be specially suited for easy placement by unskilled labour. Lightweight modularly compatible building components can be produced using simple machines and moulds to deliver inexpensive, solid and durable, quickly and easily erected houses.
Applying principles of industrialization to the delivery of housing and social infrastructure building is possible through micro and small-scale local production units. These units would by definition have few employees, require a small capital investment to start production and shows characteristics such as production with locally available materials, produce for local markets, have intermittent levels of production and a limited volume of output.
Those offering these solutions must be aware that they are only facilitators, filling a gap that must legitimate expectations and incubate new micro and small-scale enterprises giving access to technology, building capacity and propagating it through the raising of funds.
Habitech has been involved in self-help and mutual aid housing projects for the last 20 years. The Khao Kho Housing project is an example of a successful housing project in Thailand where communities produced all of the building materials used in the construction of their houses under mutual aid techniques. The houses are basic two storey core-houses of 56 m2 (560 sq.ft.) including living, dining, kitchen and bathroom on the ground floor and two bedrooms upstairs. Their cost was US $1,200. per unit.
Additional housing projects can be seen at: http://www.habitech-international.com
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