A Place to Call Home

M. Taufiqurrahman , WEEKENDER | Mon, 12/21/2009 3:21 PM | Life

A decent home of one’s own gives more than shelter — it also provides the power of independence. One organization helps those in need to secure the dream abode. M. Taufiqurrahman reports.

Sulaiman, a man in his late 50s, has lived on the scrap of land he inherited from his father all his life. He sells cheap food and drinks from a kiosk at the small squalid hut he calls home.

Some of his family members are buried in the front yard of the house. It might have been familial bonds that prompted Sulaiman to share his 300-square-meter with the dead — and five other households in his extended family — but given the choice, he surely would wish to live elsewhere or in a more comfortable house.

Sulaiman has had to defer that dream for now. When asked by an NGO to show a land title certificate as one of the conditions to get a loan, he was unable to do so. The land was passed down to him without legal documents.

“I wish I had the title deeds for this piece of land so I could apply for a loan to renovate my house. I believe that my business would do better if it were operated from a healthy house,” he says.

Sulaiman is now the only person in Kampung Kuda-Kuda, an impoverished hamlet just 80 kilometers from Jakarta, whose house remains abjectly ramshackle.

It stands in striking contrast to his neighbors’ residences, which have been converted into spacious two- and three-bedroom houses thanks to assistance from not-for-profit organization Habitat for Humanity Indonesia (HHI).

As his neighbors were rebuilding their houses, Sulaiman could only watch with envy.

Habitat for Humanity Indonesia, an NGO devoted to the goal of eliminating substandard housing and homelessness, provides assistance to poor families of Kampung Kuda-Kuda who already have land of their own.

Habitat provides an interest-free loan repayable over a set period of time. For the local impoverished farmers, the installments can be made every harvest season, roughly three times a year.

The loan is not given directly to families in the form of cash but in materials and other necessities for rebuilding a house.

“We look for building materials and hire workers for the house reconstruction, and Habitat pays for it,” says Suparni, one of the recipients.

The money repaid goes into the revolving fund for Habitat, and is circulated back for the construction of more houses for the needy. The loan and repayment system also works as a motivational tool against the development of a welfare mentality among the poor, the organization says.

“This type of assistance will help poor households do their bookkeeping properly,” says Habitat’s national director Tri Budiarjo. “They will work hard to repay the loan and will not engage in a wasteful spending like buying cigarettes.”

Budiarjo says that building homes for the poor — which constitutes a transfer of assets to the disadvantaged — is a more effective way of eradicating poverty than doling out charity.

“We give them an asset whose value is always increasing. If they need fresh capital to start a new business, they can also use the house as collateral,” he says.

But more than the financial gain, better homes play a more important role in that they positively affect the well-being of their inhabitants.

“Numerous studies have found that better living standards result from better quality houses,” Budiarjo says. “Children living in healthy homes are also found to have a better nutritional condition and they are more intelligent than their peers who live in poor housing.”

Despite the findings, Habitat is one of only a handful of not-for-profit organizations that specialize in building homes for the poor.

Since 1997 the organization has built 13,000 houses in Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Surabaya, Manado and tsunami-struck Aceh. HHI is part of a global network of Habitat for Humanity International, founded in the United States in 1976 by Millard and Linda Fuller.

Although the number is impressive for a not-for-profit organization that has been in Indonesia for just a little over a decade, it pales in comparison with the country’s official figures of the housing backlog.

With more than 14 million people presently living in slums, there was a housing backlog of eight million in early 2007. Each year, 800,000 additional families need housing; the government can only help 300,000 families.

Even with the ambitious target of constructing 100,000 houses in the next five years, Habitat will contribute little to the government-led effort in providing decent housing for the poor.

To deal with the challenge, Habitat has devised a new strategy to collect more funds from donors.

In recent years it has intensified its campaign to get donations from individual donors, branching out from its traditional method of tapping corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds from multinational corporations.

Earlier last year, Habitat for Humanity Indonesia started a joint campaign with American donut company Krispy Kreme to raise funds from the company’s customers. Through the “Share Doughnuts, Build Houses” program, each customer that contributes Rp 50,000 to Habitat’s home reconstruction effort gets donuts at a discounted price.

After only a year, the program was considered such a success that Habitat’s Asia-Pacific office decided to extend the campaign to its affiliates in the region.

Still, the organization is not content to pat itself on the back.

“Both individuals and corporations are generous when it comes to donations … and we have little problem collecting donations, but our objective does not concern only getting money for building homes,” Budiarjo says. “We also want to raise awareness about the social gap in housing.”