Isolating the urban poor by housing them in the periphery of a residential estate only serves to compound the poverty cycle, a town planner said.

Malaysian Institute of Planners president Khairiah Talha found that most developers built low-cost flats in the least desirable location for fear of devaluing property if placed within the core of the project.

"This causes more hardship (for the poor) due to little or no access to public transportation and they have to fork out more money to get to public facilities and commercial centres," she said in her paper, 'Housing and safety for the urban poor', at an urban poverty conference last week.

Referring to a basic housing estate plan, Khairiah said these low-cost units are usually tucked away in a corner far from public facilities and commercial outlets, and physically separated by roads, highways or tall spikes as fencing, as in one housing estate she spotted in Subang Jaya.

"Developers, and ourselves as consumers, are putting a value judgment on the poor who already have a bad quality of life," she said.

62 percent urban dwellers

About 150 participants were at the conference jointly organised by MIC's social arm, Yayasan Strategik Sosial (YSS), the Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute, Rural Development Ministry and the Implementation Coordination Unit of the Prime Minister's Department.

Official figures show that in the last decade, 4.8 million more Malaysians had joined urban dwellers, making up 13.7 million or almost 62 percent of the country's population.

Khairiah said that marginalising the urban poor in this manner does no good to their already low self-esteem as they feel even more isolated and helpless to change a situation which is often beyond their control.

Questioning society's social and moral obligation, she said the general notion of poor people or squatters in low-cost flats as 'dirty', 'unkept' and 'less cultured' also contributed to bad character-building.

Khairiah believes that a shared community space and activities between high-, middle- and low-income residents would help to uplift the standard of the urban poor.

She said although town planners drew residential plans with the poor in mind, they are later forced to amend them as requested by the developers, with no other choice.

"What I usually do is try to meet the planners in the local council and suggest that they place a condition for low-cost housing to be within the development, but even that is very difficult as the planners themselves are often 'visited' by the developers."

Care for the poor

She said one dimension of poverty often caused or contributed to another, such as the sense of insecurity, isolation and disempowerment which leads to lack of access to financial aid, inability to afford housing, poor health and education, and lack of social security.

It also leads to unemployment, inability to maintain a regular job, unhygienic living conditions, low-quality public services and loss of savings invested in housing, she added.

"We are ignoring the fact that we have poor Malaysians and that we need to care for them because we tend to think that we are a rich country and very urbanised.

"In fact, we are denying the poor their right to basic needs. We should be getting more of them to personally talk about their situation so that others can understand their plight and helplessness."

Khairiah urged all professionals to take this subject seriously in order to effect a mindset change among the Malaysian middle- and upper-classes.

Consult the poor

In support of this, Benjamin R Quinones Jr, the programme coordinator for poverty alleviation and employment programme of the Asia and Pacific Development Centre, said decision-makers should draw from the wealth of knowledge and skills of both technical experts and the poor.

"Self-help groups of the poor should be linked with businesses because more businesses have moved away from an almost total lack of concern due to the realisation that massive poverty is not good for business."

However, immediate past president of Real Estate and Housing Developers Association Eddy Chen complained about members having to bear the financial burden of building low-cost housing when the cost should come from the taxpayers.

His paper on 'A developer's perspective: challenges and proposals' attempted to defend the affordability of low-cost units and the delivery mechanism which was being abused because "it was going to the wrong people for the wrong reasons".

During the question-and-answer session, Chen's observation was supported by a suggestion for careful screening of candidates for public housing.

Puteri MIC national coordinator Anusha Santhirasthipam said in reality, many units sold to those listed on the census for public housing allocation are now occupied by tenants, instead of the owners.

"Local councils need to be more vigilant on who owns and occupies the units because I've come across cases where some even have four to five units throughout the country, thus depriving the genuine ones of owning a home," he added.