Untitled - Rebel Studies Library

I
66 PLANET OF SLUMS
instead local people on the mainland were displaced with loss of land
and livelihood, while the bulk of the new housing went to civil servants
and the middle classes.46 In Delhi, likewise, the Development Agency
distributed one half million plots, but "most were grabbed by the well­
to-do." Research indicates that only 110,000 houses have actually been
built for the poor in a city that is currently evicting 450,000 "illegal"
slum-dwellers.47
Kolkata, where the Left Front came to power in the late 1970s,
should have been a different story, since the Communist Party of India
(Marxist) had long campaigned for "liberation" for slum-dwellers.
Over time, however, the early promises of rehousing the poor have
yielded to the electoral cultivation of the more privileged strata. "Lip
service," says writer Frederic Thomas, "is still paid to the needs of the
poor, but the lion's share of the budget is used to meet the needs of
middle- and upper-income Calcuttans. Only 10 percent of the Calcutta
Metropolitan Development Agency's investment is targeted for bustee
improvement."48 In Vietnam, as well, revolutionary housing policies
have been manipulated to benefit state elites with little spillover to the
actual poor. "Access to state or municipal housing," write researchers
Nguyen Duc Nhuan and Kosta Mathey, "is largely reserved for civil
servants and members of the army, who have a statutory right to a two
bedroom flat, and who, in order to top up their salaries, tend to sublet
these units to others if they do not use them themselves. ,, 49
Nigeria once boasted that it would use its soaring oil revenues to
rehouse its urban poor, but the country's Third and Fourth National
Development Plans became travesties of this ambitious promise - less
than a fifth of the planned homes were actually constructed, and most
went to people other than the poor.50 Likewise in Kano, low-cost
housing for civil servants (the continuation of a colonial tradition) has
46 Alain Jacquemin, Urban Development and New Towns in the Third World,
pp. 196-97.
47 Neelima Risbud, "Policies for Tenure Security in Delhi;' in Durand-Lasserve
and Royston, Holding their Ground, p. 61.
48 Thomas, Calcutta Poor, p. 147.
49 Nguyen Duc Nhuan and Kosta Mathey, "Vietnam," in Mathey, Housing Policies
in the S otialist Third World, p. 282.
50 T. Okoye, "Historical Development of Nigerian Housing Policies,' in Amis
and Lloyd, Housing Afdca's Urban Poor, p. 81.
THE TREASON OF THE STATE 67
been appropriated by unentitled but politically powerful individuals with
incomes high above the threshold set for eligibility. 51 Jamaica is another
country where populist rhetoric has never been matched by deeds. To
be sure, the National Housing Trust (NHT) has a relatively large asset
base, but - as Thomas Klak and Marlene Smith emphasize - it does virtually
everything except build for the poor. "Presently most of the
NHT's funds go to meet its own payroll, help fulfill central government
reserve requirements, provide interim financing of higher income and
even non-NHT housing construction, and finance the mortgages of a
relatively few and mostly higher-income contributors."52
In Mexico, where during the 1980s the formal home market
provided for little more than one-third of demand, housing is heavily
subsidized for military families, civil servants, and members of a few
powerful unions such as the oil workers, but the very poor receive only
a trickle of state aid. Thus FOVI, the government trust fund serving
the middle segment of the housing market (up to ten times minimum
wage), mobilizes 50 percent of federal housing resources, while
FONHAPO, serving the poorest segment, receives a mere 4 percent. 53
John Betancur finds a similiar situation in Bogota, where middleincome
groups receive generous subsidies while the state provides only
grudging assistance to the housing needs of the poor. 54 In Lima,
likewise, most public or subsidized housing is captured by middleincome
groups and state employees. 55
Urban elites and the middle classes in the Third World have also
been extraordinarily successful in evading municipal taxation. "In most
developing countries," the International Labour Organization's A.
Oberai writes, "the revenue potential of real-estate taxation is not fully
utilized. The existing systems tend to suffer from poor assessment
51 H. Main, "Housing Problems and Squatting Solutions in Metropolitan Kano,"
in Robert Potter and Ademola Salau (eds), Cities and Development in the Third World,
London 1990, p 22.
52 Thomas Klak and Marlene Smith, "The Political Economy of Formal Sector
Housing Finance in Jamaica," in Datta and Jones, Housing and Finance in Developing
Countries, p. 72.
53 Pezzoli, "Mexico's Urban Housing Environments," p. 142.
54 John Betancur, "Spontaneous Settlements in Colombia," in Aldrich and
Sandhu, Housing the Urban Poor, p. 224.
55 John Leonard, "Lima: City Profile," Cities 17:6 (2000), p. 437.