Dilemma of defining low-income housing
IWORKED at one of the top architectural firms in Kingston in my 20s, and I had the pleasure of meeting the company’s office attendant/auxiliary staff. Her name was Phyllis. She was a middle-age woman with three kids, living in the inner city and earning minimum wage. She was a pleasant person and during my tenure at this firm we got to know each other, and I always wondered how she was able to survive, let alone raise children, on her wages.
So, one day I mustered up the courage and said: “Phyllis, I do not mean to be rude to you in any way and you are not obligated to answer my question, but how do manage to survive on what you earn?” She smiled and replied, ‘’It is not a problem, and I will tell you.”
My lunchtime was spent listening keenly to Phyllis breaking down how she spent her weekly salary. She said: “When you go to the supermarket, you buy five different types of soap, one for your face, another to bathe with, to wash dishes, your clothes and to clean your house. I buy powdered soap and it’s used to do all the things you do.
“I go to the neighbourhood shop and buy a few slices of bread at a time, and I buy a stick of margarine that is used to butter my bread and melted as oil to cook with; my mint tea is picked from the side of my house each day.” This lesson from Phyllis lasted my whole lunchtime, and I listened and looked at her with admiration. She was a mountain of a woman. This lesson has never left me. Many Jamaicans live a similar life as Phyllis, where their major fear is simply to find food to eat each day. They live a life of subsistence and have much fewer choices compared to the few Jamaicans that have ascended to, or were born in, the ‘cocoon of privilege’.
DEFINITION OF LOW INCOME
Phyllis is the definition of low income. Her wages would never qualify her for a mortgage, like many other Jamaicans who are relegated to living in tenement yards, in gully banks or depressed crime-ridden areas with no infrastructure for sewage or running water. Her only hope for home ownership is to capture a piece of land and build a ‘one room’, block by block, over several years. Home ownership for people like Phyllis is simply not possible with our current approach and definition of low-income housing. Phyllis, though, poor, also deserves to live a life of dignity.
We have simply created versions of Mona Heights repackaged as lowincome housing for the last 50 years, that were, ironically, built for middleclass civil servants. We have continually tried to solve the problem with building systems to minimise construction costs, without addressing the social components at all.
For her to survive, she is supported by the persons in her tenement yard. Her mother or another elderly woman assists in raising her children while she works, who, in turn, is supported through the provision of food and shelter – a true symbiotic relationship. This social structure, by itself, does not suggest high-rise buildings or single-family, detached homes. The solutions to lowincome housing must be led by architects who are sensitive to, and understand the needs of, people living in poverty.
Phyllis’ one room serves two main functions – to protect her valuables and her family while sleeping. There are no separations of space into living or bedrooms, but, instead, living and sleeping spaces with a bed or two that is divided with a curtain for privacy, with furniture used to create internal spatial separation. The wisdom of making it cheaper to build is to create a small footprint. There are no costly strip foundations, but, instead, four individual posts that the house rests on and is elevated off the ground. This solves flooding in times of heavy rain; and the space between the wooden floorboards and zinc roofing, without soffit boards, to help with passive cooling, along with a few windows for natural light. The source of major discomfort in these tenement communities are often shared sanitary conveniences, such as showers and toilets, due to differences in individual hygienic practices.
SOCIAL INITIATIVE
‘Low-income’ solutions, or social housing, is not the responsibility of private developers, but, instead, governments through social initiatives. We must change our view of a house to that of a vehicle for upward social mobility through training to increase skills and value in order to reduce poverty. The initiative to create a house for Phyllis has to become a ‘participatory design and construction process’. There are three main factors that influence construction costs: time, labour, and materials. In this scenario, we can remove time, because this house is not being built by a developer for profit. The government (NHT partnered with HEART) can help in the materials and training while Phyllis, along with her community, provides the labour. This ‘labour force’ is first trained by our HEART institute with the aim that at the end of building this house, they will be skilled and certified building practitioners (block and brickmakers, carpenters, masons, cabinetmakers) under our building laws.
In doing this, we empower Phyllis with little or no increased burden to taxpayers, rather than give a house for free, or none at all. The development of our human capital cannot be to simply educate five percent of our people to become university graduates (architects, engineers, lawyers, and doctors). A house is a perfect vehicle for social upliftment.
People like Phyllis are neglected and overlooked by our society. Let us provide her with a solution!