Analysing Moving Decisions of Former Slum Dwellers After Resettlement
Human Geography
Final Report Abstract
Recently, many countries of the Global South have witnessed a return of large-scale standardized housing and resettlement programs, with Ethiopia, Morocco, and South Africa representing typical examples. Here, state-driven housing programs do not only aim at enhancing the affordability of homeownership for low-income residents. They also form part of developmentalist policy agendas, seeking to resettle people away from informal settlements. Notwithstanding some positive impacts on tenure security and shelter quality, scholars have criticized these standardized programs for being non-demand oriented, criticizing a lack of socio-spatial integration (incl. distance to work), unresolved affordability barriers, and a loss of social networks. Policymakers and scholars assume that such shortcomings have led to non-occupation of housing units by original target groups. Living elsewhere, some have sold their units; others may rent them out and plan to return. However, because of methodological challenges, hardly any study has dealt explicitly with people’s lived experiences of departure, their motivations and constraints behind non-occupation of state-subsidized housing. This research project has developed innovative methodologies that allowed addressing this research gap in three growing capital regions – Addis Ababa (ETH), Gauteng (SA), and Rabat- Salé (MOR). The researchers collected a total of 101 biographical narratives of people who received state housing units, but do not stay in them (anymore). The comparative results show that one major reason behind people’s departure is incapacity to afford both accessing and inhabiting the house – even if allocated free of charge like in South Africa. Unfavorable project implementation and distant locations further complicate affordability and inhabitability. Whereas state actors tend to overstress the immediate benefits of better shelter and push residents to inhabit allocated units, interviewed residents are well aware of the houses’ wider, inter-generational asset functions. They reconfigure illdesigned policies according to their choices and demands, using the house for income generation in case of unemployment, as a protection against recurrent displacement, or as an asset for a better future for their children. Rejecting common allegations of profiteering and a misuse of state welfare, the results show that departure, on the one hand, often signals socio-economic pressure of marginalized residents to weigh up housing functions against each other. For example, people feel forced to accept worsened shelter conditions to remain close to jobs, schools, and places of belonging. On the other hand, departure from uniform state housing can also represent a strategy to improve one’s own living (and housing) conditions by making use of the wider benefits of homeownership. Finally, the results call for a stronger emphasis of people’s demands and the inclusion of choice within housing policy.
Publications
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Autoritäre Individualisierung. psychosozial, 46(4), 66-76.
Beier, Raffael
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Housing Pathways of the “Missing People” of Public Housing and Resettlement Programs: Methodological Reflections. Urban Planning, 8(4).
Beier, Raffael
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Why low-income people leave state housing in South Africa: progress, failure or temporary setback?. Environment and Urbanization, 35(1), 111-130.
Beier, Raffael
