
News from Reuters appeared recently about low cost housing co-operatives in Thailand, which have been supported by the Thai government since 2003.
As a consequence of climate change, more and more serious floods are occurring during monsoon seasons. In the government-supported program, the residents are assisted to move to higher ground. The residents form housing co-operatives to receive the assistance, which provides the money to build a new home. The co-operative owns the land: each resident owns their home.
Thailand’s program shares features with land trust and co-operative initiatives in other countries.
- The residents who participate in Thailand’s program have very low incomes. Their homes, frequently along the canals, were not legal. The residents have fought off multiple slum removal initiatives.
- Residents of a land trust in Kenya share a similar history. Read more in Hypotheses: Community Land Trust – Voi, Kenya
- Government has taken a leadership role in Thailand. In the face of climate change, dykes and other flood mitigation measures need to be installed. The government also recognized that the residents would not be able to move to higher ground without help.
- Officials in Houston, Texas have created the Houston Community Land Trust. The Trust is part of the City’s recovery strategy after Hurricane Harvey (in 2017), which destroyed whole neighbourhoods. The City was looking for ways to help the households, which were poor and predominantly Black and Latinex, to overcome barriers to rebuilding. The interest in land trusts has risen further since the arrival COVID, which has hit Black Indigenous and Latinex communities hard. Read more at Shelterforce: Community Land Trusts: Combining Scale and Community Control
The Shelterforce article begins with a debate among people who are working to create co-operatives and land trusts: the so-called tension between local control and building in large quantity (often referred to as “building to scale”). When a land trust is organized at a grass roots level, the members typically all know each other. They resist efforts to build to scale, arguing that the element of local control will be lost.
Those working to build to scale are potentially vulnerable to the loss of control that is so cherished by grass roots groups. The Shelterforce article presents reasons why building to scale is needed to sustain the grass roots initiatives in the long term. It also discusses how larger organizations can be structured to support local control. Shelterforce ultimately argues that local control and building to scale are both essential to sustaining community land trusts.
At least one member of one of the co-operatives in Thailand agrees with the Shelterforce discussion. She says that “[the] network of communities is empowered to demand the right to the city, resist eviction, and support each other during crises without waiting for government support.”
For more on the program in Thailand, read in Reuters1: Thai Low-Cost Housing Plan Puts Slum Dwellers In Charge
Footnotes
- The following article, presumably made available to subscribers to the Reuters News Agency, contains notes to editors in its title and first few lines, so the article opens reading as gobbledygook. We are offering the Reuters story, with complete notes. They should be skipped. The article begins with the dateline: BANGKOK, July 16 (Thomson Reuters Foundation)