Housing Outrage

West Malaysia today has 252,000 families who do not have a place called home—most of them live in slums or share crowded flats with other families while a good many rough it out on the pavements or in the fields.

Added to this huge number, another 140,000 houses need to be built this year to replace dilapidated houses to meet the requirements of population increase. But private housing develops, have said recently that together with government agencies they can only build about 60,000 units each year. With this state of affairs, current prices have doubled since 1970 and the cheapest three-roomed terrace house now costs $25,000. This price is beyond the reach of anyone earning less than $800 a month.

This is indeed a critical situation as decent shelter like food and clothing is one of man's basic needs and the average wage of a worker in Malaysia is less than $200 a month and only 4.5 percent of the households have an income exceeding $800 a month.

There is now an immediate need for the setting up of a national Housing Board to look into the question of public housing. This housing board must have the power, potential and means to generate massive housing projects to ease the existing shortage. This proposed Housing Board must build low cost housing of reasonable quality and the prices must be within the reach of the lower income group.

Housing and Village Development Minister, Michael Chen's recent disclosure that the government will build 12,000 units annually—if believed—is welcomed. But 12,000 units to be built is very insignificant when compared to the current annual demand of 140,000 and the backlog of 232,000 units.

Private housing developers have decided to join the bandwagon by offering their help. They suggest that the authorities relax the ruling on housing density per acre. The present ruling is 6.3 houses per acre while new development schemes have 10-12 houses per acre. Housing developers want to build 30 houses per acre. Architects say that they cannot plan cheap houses because of strict building laws. They want authorities to relax the requirements of room size, materials used and roads and drains constructed to minimum standards.

We thank these groups of public-spirited citizens no matter what their motives. But we have to say no, for their proposals contain the ingredients for making slums. The Government has already built low cost housing which has turned to slums and we cannot expect private bodies which are profit motivated to conduct themselves like charity organisations.