City-wide Community Driven Housing Upgrading for and by the Urban Poor

Background Information

Vinh city has 142 collective housing areas, built during the 1970s, in which over 30,000 inhabitants (or about 10 percent of city population) have been living, who are/used to be employees of state-owned companies and/or are public servants. These collective dwellings are now seriously degraded, threatening the lives of the inhabitants. Most of the inhabitants living there are people with low incomes, and therefore upgrading the housing is a major challenge for them, as well as being a concern for Vinh city and the Nghe An provincial authorities.

Goals of the Initiative

The ultimate goals of the initiative are:

•to upgrade/build low-cost housing for the people and by the people themselves; 

•to change the attitude of the government and improve the self-confidence of the community in their capacity to improve their living conditions;

•to change the role of the government from doer to facilitator, and the role of the community from recipient/beneficiary to actor in a community-driven process of upgrading the area’s affordable housing;

•to advocate policy change in housing development strategy and toward low-income communities.

Parties and Partners to the Initiative and Resources Used for Implementation

The community plays a central leading role in the initiative to improve their living conditions.

Government assists the community in providing a legal environment for the community to participate in and make decisions regarding their housing development.

The NGO plays the role of:

•a bridge between communities for experience sharing and replication;

•a bridge for dialogue between community and government.

The resources used for implementing the initiative include:

The major resources come from the community itself, including financing the project through a community savings process, and labor. The management of the housing development project from planning to construction was done totally by the community. Besides, a team of community architects also volunteered to help the community in translating the community’s ideas into technical drawings from planning to housing design and construction. External funding accounted for less than 10 percent of the total cost, which was provided in the form of a low-interest housing loan, a trigger to support this initiative that was provided by the NGO "Asian Coalition for Housing Right" through the Association of Cities of Vietnam. 

Innovation for the Initiative

The project learned from Thailand’s good practice in slum upgrading. In Thailand, this has been mainly supported and funded by the government. In Vietnam, however, it was mainly driven by the community and funded by community savings (Community Development Fund, CDF).

The project has left behind rigid urban planning and housing standards that pegged down the government and the communities to ambitious conditions of housing improvement that proved too expensive to fund.

The main resources come from the community savings network (CDF), which reduced the financial burden on the city government.

With a community-driven upgrading process, the government’s role was changed from a provider and doer to facilitator, and the role of community from recipient to actor and owner.

Planning and design is done by the community throughout the project cycle from planning, housing design and construction with the support of voluntary community architects.

At a February 2009 workshop, the lessons from the Thailand program were shared with community representatives from all collective housing projects. Huu Nghi Collective Housing in Cua Nam ward of Vinh city was the first to volunteer to apply this approach. The new housing was inaugurated on World Habitat Day 2010. The success of this community is a very convincing practice and inspiration for other urban poor communities and city governments throughout Vietnam. Now, a nationwide network of communities in need of housing upgrading has been formed for mutual experience sharing and assistance. 

Obstacles and Solutions for Innovation

The key obstacles were regulation and funding.

Provincial housing standards stipulate that the minimum size of a land plot is 60 sq m, whereas the size of the land plot of each house after redevelopment would be only 47 sq m. If the standards had been complied with, several households would have had to move out. Wanting to preserve their social relations, the community negotiated with the government to accept smaller plots.

The funding problem was overcome through a large number of different methods: Saving, planning and design, demolishing the old houses and clearing the site, recycling of old materials, sharing foundation and common walls, purchasing of construction materials, using community labor, constructing infrastructure (drainage), supervising construction, maintaining community activities, and sharing experience.

Outcomes and Assessments

Outcomes achieved are as follows:

•It is a feasible approach for a community to have new affordable housing and thus contribute to city renovation.

•The community has strengthened its internal relationships and mutual support among its members.

•The attitude of the poor has changed to being confident in their capability to improve their living conditions by themselves with their own resources.

Housing standards have changed from rigid to more flexible, and have thus created a possibility of replication in other communities in Vinh city and the whole country.

This initiative has changed totally the image of this poor community from being “unknown” to an example of housing upgrading by the community. The city itself, an average provincial city, is now known regionally and internationally by academic institutions and individuals, which have visited and learned from this practice.

This in turn gives strong motivation for Vinh city and its communities to address the issue of low-income community housing.

Assessments are as follows:

•the number of communities in other cities wanting to upgrade their housing with this approach;

•the change in housing upgrading policy of Vinh city;

•the change in policy of other city governments in Vietnam; and

•the use of this experience for policy advocacy at national level through the Vietnam Urban Forum. Besides, the project has been evaluated as a successful case in the regional network of low-income urban communities, is used in a training course for graduate students from the UK, and was presented at the 2012 World Urban Forum in Naples, Italy. The Haiti Unit for Construction of Housing showed strong interest, and preliminary ideas about technical support were discussed in Naples.

Methods Applied

The key tools used include a citywide survey of low-income urban communities by mapping with community participation, thus helping to identify housing problems and give the city government a panorama of the housing issue. This was followed by the planning and housing design process by the community with the support of community architects. Finally, there was the community process of saving, construction management and supervision.

Benefits to Other Cities

The key for the success of this initiative is the solidarity of the community in doing everything together, or the community process from commitment to action. With that process, the community could convince the city and provincial government of the feasibility of their plan.

•Saving together: Each poor household had to save in order to show its capability to repay the loan, otherwise they would never be able to be in a position to borrow money either from the formal financial system or from the community fund.

•Planning and designing their dream houses together: This process helped the community to build its strength and encouraged its members to negotiate with each other in order to create a living environment beneficial to the community as a whole. This in turn helped them to have a strong position vis-a-vis the city and provincial government in negotiating a plan that, though not meeting planning and housing standards, was feasible and was the best solution for their housing problem.

•Working together to demolish old houses, reuse old materials and buy new materials; having shared foundation and walls; and using community labor where possible. Altogether, this helped to reduce construction costs by 46.7 percent.

•Supervising the construction together to ensure construction quality.

•Further building the community's friendship and solidarity.

•Sharing experience and helping other communities in the city, country and beyond that can replicate this approach.