The Baan Mankong Secure Housing

Project, Thailand.

The Baan Mankong Community Upgrading Program was launched by the Thai government in January 2003, as part of its efforts to address the housing problems of the country’s poorest urban citizens. The program channels government funds, in the form of extremely flexible infrastructure subsidies and soft housing and land loans, directly to poor communities, which collectively plan and carry out improvements to their housing, environment, basic services and tenure security, using budgets which they manage themselves. Instead of delivering housing units to individual poor families or bringing in a few standardized infrastructural improvements, the Baan Mankong Program puts Thailand’s slum communities (and their community networks) at the center of a process of developing long-term, comprehensive solutions to problems of land and housing in Thai cities. Under this unconventional program, which is being implemented by the Community Organizations Development Institute (a public organization under the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security), poor communities develop their upgrading plans in close collaboration with their local governments, professionals, universities and NGOs.

Introduction

To play supporting role in community development process

People, not CODI, are the owners and key actors of the process

To coordinate with govt. agencies, NGOs, other civic groups

To promote community-based savings

To use finance as a tool for development

Parties Involved

Slum Communities The government CODI Professionals Academic Institutions NGOs

Participatory Approach. The approach used in this

program was by bringing on board all the stake holders in the society, with the slum communities at the center of all activities.

The communities were provided with loans to lease/buy land and build their own houses.

The public was fully involved in the program at all stages.

Focus

The main focus of this project was to provide secure housing to the poor communities of Thailand. Due to a lack of sufficient and affordable housing, communities had settled into the cracks, eliciting a diagnosed social and institutional ‘pocket-urbanism’ that forms barriers of interaction among communities, and certainly between communities and authority figures.

The government through CODI provided infrastructural facilities and services; i.e. roads, sewerage, water and power and facilitated the slum upgrading process.

There are three components of BMK financing:

Local communities’ own savings (10% of project cost)

Government subsidy-USD2,667 per family

Housing loan from CODI

Subsidy is given to community not to individual family

Allocation of USD2,667 - Infrastructure development 55%

- Financial support 30%

- Project management (incl. 15%

meetings, training, exchange visits, etc.)

A collective loan to community organization, not to individual household

Collective land tenure

Loan maturity is 15 years and is payable in 180 equal monthly installments

Interest rate is fixed at 4% p.a.

Maximum loan amount per household is USD10,000

CODI finances up to 90% of the project cost.

The cost per unit ranges between USD 6000 and USD10000.

To join the Baan Mankong program, communities have to have fairly well-established savings groups.

SAVINGS GROUPS :

Land Tenure System

The communities created collective saving groups that collectively bargained for land tenure and managed the building process. Title deeds were awarded to 10 households and therefore cooperative ownership of the land and housing. Families would only buy/lease land through the saving groups.

Baan Mankong Chantaburi Before and after

Bangbua Community before upgrading

Bangbua community during completion

It promoted strong community leadership. Provided flexible, affordable financing for

the poor. It was a people process which suits poor

community livelihood.

Successes of the Project.

Future funding for the program

Scarcity of affordable land

Linkage between formal and informal financial markets.

Challenges

Baan Mankong’s underlying rationale is that poor communities’ most valuable resource is their collective power. Keeping communities together puts them in a stronger position to build wealth and bargain for their needs. Additionally, communities that lead their own planning processes increase the likelihood of successful upgrading, because they determine the kind of living environment that best meets their economic and social needs (Sarah, 2010).The re-building process is more efficient and cost effective, because only what is needed is built and because the community leverages its own sweat equity, collective savings, and former building materials to re-build together. The initial results achieved by Baan Mankong through its focus on flexible finance, savings groups, collective everything, horizontal support, and technical support are worth learning from.

Conclusion

CODI website: http://www.codi.or.th/housing/aboutCODI.html

Community Organization Development Institute, “Baan Mankong 80 Projects.” October 2007.

Mrs. Nutta-CODI, Low-income Housing Finance CODI Experience, http://www.docslide.us/documents

Sarah, Nusser “THAILAND’S BAAN MANKONG – AN URBAN POVERTY HOUSING STRATEGY FOR THE AMERICAN CITY?” GH Bank Housing Journal, April 2010.

References

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