Support to Urban Housing Policy

Background

As part of its poverty reduction efforts, the Government of Cambodia, through its Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction, has the intention to develop an Urban Housing Policy, and has requested the assistance of the UN system in the preparatory process for such a policy. Housing is a serious problem in Cambodia, particularly for the urban poor, and requires urgent intervention. A sound housing policy is a precondition for targeted and appropriate interventions in the housing sector. Housing directly affects people’s health, income and living conditions. It is a basic human need and human right to have access to adequate housing. The Government has responsibility to ensure that people have access to adequate housing, and a housing policy is a tool to achieve this. The complex situation in fast developing urban areas of Cambodia specifically requires an appropriate urban housing policy, which is one of the key elements of good urban governance and will contribute to urban poverty reduction.

As part of its work programme 2004-2005, ESCAP in cooperation with UN-Habitat has secured funds from the Development Account (Fourth Tranche) for a project on “Housing the Poor through Local Government Capacity Building”. The objective of this project is to enhance the capacity of local governments to achieve a significant improvement of the lives of slum dwellers in cities where economic expansion and liberalization is increasing the competition for urban space. One of the activities of the project will be to implement pilot projects in five cities of the region to test and replicate selected good and innovative practices in urban low-income housing. It is envisaged that the one of the pilot projects be implemented in Cambodia to test the forthcoming urban housing policy. One of the outputs of the project under the SPPD will be to provide a framework within which such a pilot project can be implemented.

The Urban Housing Policy is expected to address the following issues:

• To promote the development of adequate housing for all income groups, but in particular the low-income population.
• To promote the greatest variety in housing supply to meet the great variety of housing needs.
• To facilitate the most efficient and thereby the most inexpensive production of housing and its inputs.
• To encourage each sector in the housing delivery system to do what it can do best in order to increase efficiency and effectiveness.
• To establish an efficient system of land administration that provides adequate security of land tenure for investment in housing development and ensures equity.
• To ensure that homebuilders and homebuyers have access to long-term housing finance, and to allow incremental construction and improvement of housing for those without access to long-term housing finance.

The Urban Housing Policy for Cambodia will further address housing delivery systems. Housing production requires the involvement of a number of parties: central and local government, private sector developers, the banking sector, non-governmental organizations, communities and individual households. A housing policy describes who does what based on who can do what best. The policy will deal with individual house construction (single unit housing), private-sector land-and-house development (single housing units, town houses, apartments), sites-and-services schemes (with or without wet core and core house), and squatter settlement upgrading (with or without land regularization).

The Urban Housing Policy will not be developed in isolation from related national policies and strategies such as the National Poverty Reduction Strategy and the National Land Policy, which both are in preparation at present. It is important that these policies and strategies will not be contradictory and will be mutually supportive. Linkages with the agencies responsible for the development of relevant policies and strategies will be maintained by the project. Furthermore, the development of a sound housing policy will contribute to the effective implementation of land management as well as serve as a useful tool for the poverty reduction strategy.

Target groups:

Central and Local governments, private sector developers, banking sector, NGO/CBOs

Links to related documents:

Country Report on the Implementation of the Habitat Agenda (Cambodia)

Municipal Capacity Strategy

Municipal Poverty Strategy