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ABSTRACT
Formal housing provision is a pressing concern evident in the burgeoning informal settlements scenario that characterize most global south cities. Several studies establish the observed resilience of the informal housing sector to be reinforced by administrative, technical, fiscal, and contractual contexts which shape the governance of housing. This research examined the resilience from the perspective of contractual context of informal housing system as alternative frameworks for enhancing low-income housing. The methods used were literature reviews and interviews with respondents from two informal settlements in Lusaka, Zambia. The study demonstrates contractual practices which shape the general context of housing governance to be reinforcing factors of the informal housing resilience. It indicates mortgage, land, labor arrangements, and rental housing access policies present serious impediments. But the informal housing sector, where social support networks and local credit practices are dominant features of contractual arrangements, provides affordable, simple, flexible, accessible, and convenient means for acquiring land, contracting labor, finances, and leases. Accordingly, the study shows enhancement of housing that adequately cater for different needs, uses, and income abilities that require adaptation, and institutionalizing of social-cultural contractual arrangements that do not involve tightly prescribed contracts, which impact on affordability for majority builders and renters.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the Ministry of Local Government and Housing (Zambia) and the University of Dundee for granting the scholarship for the doctoral research project which has resulted in this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. A dwelling that initially started as squatter settlement but acquired official or civic recognition for the purpose of improvements in the dwelling conditions of informal settlements through provisions of infrastructure, services, and title to land.
2. An area within urban setting on which people unlawfully establish homes on land that do not belong to them.
3. Subdistrict structures which exist to facilitate development at grassroots level through coordination of community members.
4. At the time of the study, 1US$ was equivalent to 7000 Zambian Kwacha.
5. Land is supplied through informal subdivision by land owners and local level ruling party functionaries, popularly called “party cadres,” through the processes of annexation from farmers, absentee land owners, or individuals. As narrated by Chawama Ward Development Committee chairperson, “All that it takes is to simply approach a chairperson or party cadre to negotiate with and there and then, the land is offered.” Additionally, the chairperson observed that whereas City Council land supply conditions are tied to applicants’ capacity to build, for the study settlements, such conditions are nonexistent: after the transaction, it is left to the buyer to build at their convenient time.
6. This involves landlords living in the same house with tenants or in separate houses but on the same plot.
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Howard S. Chitengi
Howard S. Chitengi is an urban planner who has worked for the Department of Physical Planning and Housing of the Ministry of Local Government and Housing in Zambia. His fields of interest include understanding of the “push” and “pull” factors that reinforce informal settlement resilience and how the resilience characteristics can be assimilated in urban planning and development policies. His research works among others seek to promote local approaches to urban planning and development by focusing on and drawing lessons from the dynamics of sub-Saharan Africa urbanization, informality and spatial planning.