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139 Chapter 7 Housing the Margin In the previous chapter, I showed how Jakarta is embracing environmentalism as if to redeem the past decades of extensive destruction of the urban ecology. Yet, the call for the reclaiming of green spaces prompts the questions of whose green spaces are being reclaimed and what civic space means in Indonesia ’s capital. As many Jakartans are hoping that the creation of open and green spaces will help mitigate the city’s environmental problems, the government of Jakarta justifies many of its evictions by claiming that they are for the restoration of green space. This chapter deals with the recent attempts by the government to create housing for the low-income population. It looks at the policies and strategies adopted, and their assumptions and effects both for the urban poor and the future urban form of Jakarta. On 19 May 2009, the then minister of housing Mohammad Yusuf Asy’ari hosted the Second National Congress of Housing and Settlement (Kongres Nasional Perumahan Rakyat II) at the Hotel Bidakara, Jakarta.1 Attended by some 1,500 people from various parts of Indonesia, the congress is considered a milestone in the history of Indonesian housing. It proclaimed a “new era” for Indonesian housing and settlement.2 While looking ahead, the congress also made a connection with the very first congress on housing, which was held over half a century ago in 1950, when the newly independent country was trying to mark decolonization with a mission to provide housing for its population, the rakyat. The 2009 congress closed with a declaration that We, participants of the National Congress of Housing and Settlement II, 2009 are heirs of the 1950 Congress of People’s Housing which declared housing as the responsibility of the state. We feel responsible to implement the 1945 Constitution (Undang Undang Dasar [UUD 1945]) and the Human 140 after the new order Rights Law (Undang Undang tentang [HAM]) which declare that everyone has the right to live well, materially and spiritually, and to settle in a house with good and healthy environment.3 The official publication of the Ministry of Housing, Inforum, also started its report on the 2009 Congress with a quotation from Mohammad Hatta, the first vice president of Indonesia, who opened the 1950 Congress on Healthy Housing for People (Kongres Perumahan Rakjat Sehat) where the term, perumahan rakyat (people’s housing) was perhaps first coined by the newly independent state. “Indeed,” Hatta said, “our goal [to provide housing for everyone] won’t be realized in two years. It won’t be fully completed in ten or twenty years. However, in forty years or in half a century, we will be able to fulfill our wish, if we are committed and make the effort with confidence.”4 The optimism of 1950 to provide housing for everyone within fifty years inspired those attending the 2009 congress to keep the housing mission going. This symbolic reference to the early years of independence by participants in the 2009 congress seems to turn a blind eye on the long years of Suharto’s New Order (1966–1998) during which a series of national workshops (known as lokakarya nasional) on housing were periodically held. By evoking the notion of kongres (rather than lokakarya), the 2009 meeting set up an identity of its own that reconnected its mission to that of the 1950s while dissociating itself from the housing policy of the New Order.5 The break with the recent past seems ironic as most of the order today could be said to have been shaped during the Suharto era. The claim of a new era may be ironic but it is not entirely bogus. The post-Suharto era is indeed different from what preceded it. The notion of rakyat at least is easily mobilized today to fashion the new era, so with the 2009 congress one might imagine a new shift in the strategy of housing the poor. Several new initiatives indeed were proclaimed by the congress, some of which are clearly a departure from those of the New Order. For instance, housing is now considered a human right, rather than simply a human need for shelter, as assumed by the New Order.6 Oswar Mungkasa from the National Planning Board (Badan Perencanaan dan Pembangunan Nasional-Bappenas) explains in his contribution to Inforum that UUD 1945 already contained the principle of a right to housing for everyone, but it needed to...

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