The capital city of Indonesia, Jakarta is presently covering an area of about 741 square kilometers and is seven meters above the sea level (Ooi 2005). Presently, the city has a population estimated to be about ten million. Accommodating and housing this large number of people has become a burning national problem as it also affects the environment and social life in and outside the city. This city was originally meant to accommodate about eight hundred thousand people. But it has undergone proper swelling and at the moment, what is seen of it is quite an eye sore, slums sprawling all over and squatter becoming a common phenomenon while the streets have become a home to hundreds if not thousands.
According to the World Bank, more than two hundred and fifty thousand people move into the greater Jakarta on a yearly basis. But the city is not big enough to accommodate them; rather, its housing is not increasing so as to accommodate these people. It is a common phenomenon around the world that people move from rural areas to major towns in an effort to seek greener pastures in form of employment, education and better life. But one thing for sure is, many of them end up getting not even a half of what they had anticipated.
The greater Jakarta accommodates about twenty five million people. This includes the cities of Bogor, Depok, Tangerang and Bekas. This mass migration and living of people there has caused a myriad of many other problems. Some of them include poor sanitation that is caused by the fact that the very many people cannot get enough to accommodate them and meet their needs (Smith 2012). It is quite ironical that the city has given the people therein an opportunity to eke a living but has not been able to provide these people with a decent place to retire to after a long day at work. These little accommodation options are not good enough even though the people opt to sacrifice and go on with life because they do not much of an option. According to data from the Central Statistics Agency, the available home options are not enough and those that are there, are not good enough for people who live under less than a dollar a day which means that many of the people don’t have a decent home to go home to.
Nevertheless, the government has tried to solve this problem. In the year 2007, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said that low cost apartments were to be built so as to accommodate the poor. The program kick started and so far, some units have been put up. A budget has also been created to see to it that the city puts aside money that it uses to subsidize the low cost housing. Despite all that is being done to improve the situation, it is a sad affair that the city has no proper building regulations and this means that even if there are efforts to work out this problem, there are many other issues that are dogging the project. Urban planning is equally very bad because the city administration does not do projects to completion. The issue of squatters being a major problem clearly shows that the government and city administration have lost their grip in solving the issues surrounding the housing problem. As long as the slums keep sprawling and squatters increasing, it is clear that something needs to be done and it is a clear indicator that indeed, housing is a major problem in Jakarta.
References
Ooi, G. L. (2005). Housing in Southeast Asian Capital Cities. Pasir Panjang: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
Smith, D. D. (2012). Urbanization, Housing and the Development Process. Routledge: New York.
