Ceylon Today Editorial

HOUSING PROBLEM: SERIOUS THINKING NECESSARY
04 October 2016

 

In Resolution 40/202 of 17 December 1985, the UN General Assembly designated the first Monday of October of every year as World Habitat Day. And after 31 years, the 2016 World Habitat Day campaign aims to raise awareness about the need for affordable housing for all in urban areas, towns and cities.

Access to adequate housing is a global challenge growing fast with urbanization. Around one quarter of the world's urban population continues to live in slums and informal settlements. The statistics are similar in Sri Lanka, with the country's majority owning their own homes while the rest is struggling with temporary settlements.

This has become apparent if you would have bothered to read or listen to the news. People who have become victims of natural disasters such as the Aranayake or Meeriyabedda landslides are still struggling as informal communities.

Not just natural disasters are responsible for this, but also man-made tragedies such as the Salawa Army Camp explosion which destroyed over 1,000 homes. Some have been reconstructed, but others remain in their skeletal forms, awaiting their owners' attention. The owners are left helpless as they have no funds to rebuild their own homes which were destroyed due to the ignorance of others.

And then there's the North and the East which were affected by the thirty-three-year-old civil war this country fell victim to. People, who are returning to their homes, find that there's nothing left of their homes. Or sometimes, their land has been taken over by the military forces or the government for their own constructions. In extreme cases, their land has become so damaged by the war that nothing can be built there and no crop will grow there.

According to the United Nations, an increasing number of urban dwellers, especially the poor and vulnerable groups (women, migrants, persons with disabilities and HIV, elders, youth and LGBT) are living in precarious conditions, addressing their housing needs informally, lacking access to basic services and living space, isolated from livelihood opportunities and vulnerable to forced evictions or homelessness.

Every day, as people are born in or move to urban centres in search of opportunities, the demand for housing grows. Globally, a billion new houses are needed by 2025 to accommodate 50 million new urban dwellers per year.

The situation is the same in our island nation as well; our population steadily increasing and the government not having a proper plan to address it, other than fancy statements, of course.

President Maithripala Sirisena issuing a press release on the World Habitat Day said the government plans to cover both urban and rural areas by housing projects that have been planned for the next decade.

"Our government with a thorough understanding of the strong relationship between housing and human development, works ambitiously towards fulfilling of the housing needs of all Sri Lankans," he writes. And as a part of good faith with the United Nations, (we assume of course) President Sirisena will participate as the Chief Guest at day's commemoration ceremonies in Polonnaruwa where they will be opening the Sugala Devi model village in Dimbulagala to the public.

Model villages are all good and but, at the end of the day, what good is it supposed to achieve? More plausible methods could have been looked into as alternatives to building a mere model village such as introducing eco houses and green buildings.

Green buildings or sustainable constructions – a structure and the using of processes that are environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout a building's life-cycle: from sitting to design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation, and demolition – is one of the least sought out alternatives in Sri Lanka. And it is high time, we looked into it. Such alternatives will not only solve the habitat problems our country is facing, but also protect our country in the long run against natural disasters and other ecological harms.

But the government is simply not interested in those things. We cannot expect the government that takes years and years to build houses of the people who were victimised by disasters, to look into constructing homes with long term benefits; long benefits that do not end in ten years, but would sustain for even longer.

But then again, no one really pays any attention to our long term future. We only care about our immediate future. That is where we are all wrong. And maybe when the next disaster takes place, we might have run out of time to solve this matter.