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Baan Mankong: The national programme for upgrading and secure tenure in Thailand’s cities

 In January 2003, the Thai government announced two new programmes for the urban poor that seek to reach one million poor households within five years.  The first is the Baan Mankong (‘secure housing’) programme which channels government funds in the form of infrastructure subsidies and housing loans direct to poor communities who plan and carry out improvements to their housing environment and basic services. This is implemented by the Community Organizations Development Institute (CODI). The second is the Baan Ua Arthorn (‘we care’) programme through which the National Housing Authority designs, constructs and sells ready-to-occupy flats and houses at subsidized rates to lower income households who can afford ‘rent-to-own’ payments of US$25-37 per month. 

Baan Mankong is set up to support processes designed and managed by low-income households and their community organizations and networks.  Communities and their networks work with local governments, professionals, universities and NGOs in their city to survey all poor communities and then plan an upgrading programme to improve conditions for the whole city over 3-4 years. Once these plans have been finalized, CODI channels the infrastructure subsidies and the housing loans to communities. 

These upgrading programmes build on the community-managed programmes that CODI has supported since 1992 and on people’s capacity to collectively manage their own needs. They also build on what slum communities have already developed, recognizing the large investments that the communities have already made in their homes.  Upgrading existing settlements is supported whenever possible; if relocation is necessary, a site is sought close by to minimize the economic and social costs for households.  

Baan Mankong has set a target of improving housing, living and tenure security for 300,000 households in 2000 poor communities in 200 Thai cities within five years.  This would represent at least half the urban poor communities in Thailand: 

2003: 10 pilot community upgrading (1,500 units) and preparations in 20 cities

2004: Upgrading 174 slum communities (15,000 units) in 42 cities with preparation in 50 more cities. Also support for learning, the demonstration of different options and developing links between communities and city authorities.

2005-7: 285,000 units in 200 cities.

As of May 2004, 3,134 households had been reached in 31 projects with 66 per cent upgraded in the same place or very close by and with 78 percent getting long-term land security.

This programme imposes as few conditions as possible to give urban poor communities, networks and stakeholders in each city the freedom to design the programme. The challenge is how to support upgrading in ways that urban poor communities lead the process and generate local partnerships so the whole city contributes to solution.

METHODS: The design of the upgrading programme in any city and the city-network that is needed to implement it has certain key steps:

1. Identify the stakeholders and explain the programme

2. Organize network meetings which may include visits from people in other cities

3. Organize meetings in each urban poor community, involving municipal staff if possible

4. Establish a joint committee to oversee implementation. This includes urban poor community and network leaders and the municipality; also local academics and NGOs. This committee helps to build new relationships of cooperation to integrate urban poor housing into each city’s overall development and to create a mechanism for resolving future housing problems.

5. Joint committee holding a meeting with representatives from all urban poor communities

6. A survey organized to cover all communities with information collected about all households, housing security, land ownership, infrastructure problems, community organizations, savings activities and existing development initiatives.  Doing the survey also provides opportunities for people to meet, learn about each-others’ problems and establish links. 

7. From the survey, develop a plan for the whole city.

8. (While the above is going on), support community collective savings as these not only mobilize local resources but also strengthen local groups and build collective management skills. 

9. Select Pilot projects on the basis of need, community’s willingness to try them out and learning.

10.  Prepare development plans for pilots, start the construction and use implementation as learning centres for other communities and actors

11. Extend improvement processes to all other communities, including those living outside communities eg the homeless and itinerant workers

12. Integrate these upgrading initiatives into city-wide development. This includes coordinating with public and private land-owners to provide secure tenure or alternative land for resettlement, integrating community-constructed infrastructure into larger utility grids, and incorporating upgrading with other city development processes.

13. Build community networks around common land ownership, shared construction, cooperative enterprises, community welfare and collective maintenance of canals and create economic space for poor (for instance new markets) or economic opportunities wherever possible within upgrading.

FUNDING:  Infrastructure subsidies per family are available of 25,000 baht (US$625) for communities upgrading in situ; 45,000 baht ($1125) for reblocking and 65,000 ($1625) for relocating.  Families can draw on low-interest loans from CODI or banks for housing and there is a grant equal to 5 percent of the total infrastructure subsidy to help fund the management costs for the local organization or network. 

HOW THIS DIFFERS FROM CONVENTIONAL APPROACHES:  1. Urban poor community organizations and their networks are the key actors and control the funding and the management; they also undertake most of the building (rather than contractors) which makes funding go much further and brings in their own contributions

2. It is demand driven as it supports communities who are ready to implement improvement projects and allows a great variety of responses, tailored to each community’s needs, priorities and possibilities (for instance communities choose how to use the infrastructure subsidy)

3. It promotes more than physical upgrading; as communities design and manage their own physical improvements, this helps stimulate deeper but less tangible changes in social structures, managerial systems and confidence among poor communities.  It also helps trigger acceptance of low-income communities in the city’s larger development process as legitimate parts of the city and as partners

4. It works to develop urban poor communities as an integrated part of city; people plan their upgrading within the bigger city development framework

5. Government agencies are no longer the planners, implementers and construction manager delivering for beneficiaries. 

6. Secure tenure is negotiated in each instance but locally – and this could be through a variety of means such as cooperative land purchase, long-term lease contracts, land swaps or user rights.

Pilot projects to nationalize learning. To explore new approaches, ten pilot projects with 1,525 units have been supported in communities that have organized themselves, have some experience with working with other organizations and have families with monthly incomes below 10,000 baht. All but two are on state land so implementation is easier.  These include:

Land purchase and reblocking:  Charoenchai Nimitmai has 41 families living on a 4.9 hectare site in Bangkok, bound by railway tracks, an expressway and a drainage canal.  They have been renting the land from a private land-owner for many years.  In 1998, when threatened with eviction, they negotiated to purchase the land for around a quarter of its market value and after establishing a co-operative, took a CODI loan to pay for this.  To bring down the cost per family, they developed a reblocking plan that accommodated 48 more families who were squatting nearby. The lay-out was developed with the help of a young architect with internal lanes, a community centre and a range of plot sizes (and plot costs).  All but 15 houses had to be moved to new locations to make way for roads. Many households built using material from their previous houses, and they will upgrade them gradually. Agreements negotiated with  different municipal departments brought individual electricity and water connections and building permits. A contractor was hired for the infrastructure that needed heavy machinery and they handled the rest of the work themselves, using paid community labour and this cut development costs by 30 percent.  The average cost per house: US$6,683 which included $500 for infrastructure, $1126 for housing and the rest for land purchase.

Reconstruction after fire with long-term lease: Bonkai is a long-established squatter community of 566 households living on land owned by the Crown Property Bureau in Klong Toey in central Bangkok.  In 2001, a fire destroyed 200 houses and the community used the crisis to negotiate a (renewable) 30 year land lease, after forming a cooperative.  This was the first community lease contract in Thailand (land leases are usually with single households and short-term so they do not provide secure tenure). The reconstruction was planned in three phases so no-one had to leave the site. To squeeze everyone in, three storey row houses are being built, each on plots of 24 square metres. The average unit cost (land, housing and infrastructure) is US$4901

Relocation to nearby land; Klong Tuey Block 7-12 is a long-established squatter settlement, mostly with port workers, daily labourers and small traders on land belonging to the Port Authority of Thailand. Over the years, the community experienced fires, chemical explosions and many attempts to evict them. Originally with nearly 400 families, the number had dwindled to 49 as some families took compensation and moved away and others moved to National Housing Authority flats or remote resettlement colonies. After 20 years of struggle, the remaining 49 families negotiated a deal to allow them to develop their own community on Port Authority land one kilometre away with a 30 year lease. This has room for 114 households and so includes homes for some renters and some who had already been evicted.  Average cost per unit (land, housing and infrastructure): $9039

Scaling up pilot projects:  In the Ramkhamhaeng area in Bangkok, two initial pilot projects sparked off a larger development process involving seven other communities.  The first was Ruam Samakkee, a squatter community of 124 families occupying 0.8 hectares of Crown Property Bureau land.  They negotiated a 30 year lease, after forming a cooperative and developed a new layout plan with architects with two-storey houses. Average cost per unit (land, housing and infrastructure): $4,260. The second was

Kao Pattana with 34 families living on a marshy 0.8 hectare site belonging to the Crown Property Bureau. They planned to build their own homes on this site but found that the landfill cost was too high.  Seven other communities joined them to prepare a redevelopment plan to provide for over 1000 households on 40 hectares, working with the Crown Property Bureau. These will create new residential areas, linked to markets and parks and will involve reblocking in some areas and nearby relocation in others. Everyone will remain in the area with long-term leases through community cooperatives.

Land sharing: The canal-side community of Klong Lumnoon formed 20 years ago when this was an isolated site; by 1997, the area was gentrifying and the landowner decided to evict them to develop the land commercially. Some households accepted cash compensation and moved away but 49 families who worked nearby refused. In 2000, two community members were jailed and the families who had filed a court case against the owner lost. The residents linked with a network of other canal-side communities in Bangkok who showed them how to organize, negotiate with the district canal authorities and form a savings and credit group. Eventually the landowner agreed to sell them a small portion of the land (at below market rates) in exchange for vacating the rest. After registering as a cooperative, the community took a loan from CODI to buy the land and worked with young architects to develop a plan for 49 houses and provide space for a community centre. Average unit cost: (housing, infrastructure and land) $7740

Relocation of mini-squatters with long-term lease: Boon Kook is a new settlement in a central area in  Uttaradit city where 124 households who had been living in many ‘mini’ squatter settlements are being rehoused. To resettle these households (who were identified by the community network in their city-wide survey), the municipality agreed to purchase a 1.6 hectare site with a 30 year lease to the inhabitants. The community network helped start daily savings schemes among the inhabitants, CODI provided housing loans to families that needed them and NHA provided the infrastructure.   Average unit cost (housing, infrastructure and land): $6415

Baan Mankong helps to reactivate citizen involvement. City authorities do not have much power but they have inherited a centralized style of governance. Most citizens still think that the municipality should manage the city – but this whole system needs to be opened up so citizens feel that it is their city and that they are part of the development.  Responsibility for different aspects of city management can be decentralized to communities – for public parks and markets, maintenance of drainage canals, solid waste collection and recycling, and community-welfare programmes. Opening up more room for people to become involved is the new frontier for urban management – and real decentralization.  Upgrading is a powerful way to spark off this kind of decentralization. When community people do the upgrading and their work is accepted by other city actors, this enhances their status in the city as key partners in solving city wide problems.

Scaling up: Six techniques are used for scaling up to reach the ambitious five year target:

Pilot projects organized in as many cities as possible, to get things going, generate excitement, demonstrate that community-driven upgrading can work – and become much-visited examples of how upgrading can be done.

Learning centres: Twelve cities with strong upgrading processes have been designated learning centres for other towns and cities in their region

Big events so when an upgrading process is launched or a project inaugurated, people from neighbouring cities are invited to see what is happening and what is possible.

Exchanges between communities, pilot projects, cities and regions involving community representatives, officials, NGOs and academics

Subcontracting: CODI subcontracts most of the support and coordination work to partners in cities.

Constant meetings:

Examples of Baan Mankong in some cities:

Uttaradit:  this started with a survey mapping all the slums and small pockets of squatters, identifying land owners and which slums could stay and which needed to relocate. This helped linked community organizations and began building a community network, supported by young architects, a group of monks and the mayor. Looking at the whole city, they sought to find housing solutions for 1000 families within the existing city fabric.  They used a range of techniques – land sharing in one, reblocking in another, in situ upgrading and relocation. Their city wide housing plan became the basis for the city upgrading programme under Baan Mankong and includes infrastructure improvement, urban regeneration, canal cleaning, wasteland reclamation and park development.  

Bangkok:  Bangkok’s 1,200 urban poor settlements house almost a third of Thailand’s urban poor and are spread across 50 khets (districts).  To make Baan Mankong manageable, each district will be regarded as a city and do its own survey, form a joint committee with all key actors and develop a 3 year upgrading programme. 

Khon Kaen:  69 poor communities identified of which the poorest 50 will be improved from 2004 to 2006.  Some of the poorest and most insecure are along the railway tracks; some will relocate to nearby land (mostly those living closest to the tracks) but most will stay and receive leases and upgrading.  

Ayutthaya:  This is Thailand’s old capital city and designated a world heritage site which is good news for historic preservation but a problem for many of the city’s poor who are in danger of being evicted.  In the oldest island part of the city, where most monuments and tourist visits are concentrated, 80 percent of the land is under government ownership and the poor’s only housing option has been to live in squatter settlements scattered within the ruins.  The community network has surveyed and mapped all informal settlements – finding 53 of them with 6611 households. It organized a seminar with city authorities where survey information was presented and this showed that it is possible to improve conditions in their settlements, bring basic services, construct proper houses and shift the settlements a little to allow the monuments to be rehabilitated. Some pilots are underway to show that poor communities and historic monuments can be good neighbours.   

Korat: Community network of 25 communities working with NGOs, the municipality and the University on a three year upgrading programme that will reach 52 settlements with 9,900 households.

Collective social processes: In a society that is becoming increasingly individualized, those who have limited incomes need the collectivity of communities as an important survival mechanism which helps them meet needs and resolve problems they cannot manage individually.  Many land owners do not want land to owned or rented collectively – but this prevents area being gentrified, keeps collective management, builds collective force.  See in Boon Kook resettlement, the people have designed into their community six units of communal housing for poor or handicapped members of their community. In Bangkok’s Klong Lumnoon community and in Udon Thani’s Wat Po community, the people have built central houses for old, disabled, needy and ill people.  These kinds of plans are appearing in many community-upgrading programmes because the programme creates space for people to think about these issues and provides tools and resources to translate their social development and community welfare ideas into facilities. So Baan Mankong is helping to strengthen collective social process that improves security and well-being in many ways other than physical assets.

SOURCE: Community Organizations Development Institute (2004), Codi Update Issue No. 4, June 2004.