A comparative study of assisted self-help and informal self-built housing in Angola to further a discussion about improving Government low-income housing programs.

Abstract

This thesis explores the contrasts between the process, product and rationale of low-income owner-builder housing in two different developmental settings in Angola - thriving informal settlements and failing state-led assisted self-help programmes. It grew out of a desire to understand why it is so hard for the State to emulate what individuals accomplish in disenfranchised settlements - produce housing. Owner-builders produce most new housing in rapidly urbanising developing countries through incremental self-building initiatives. Such initiatives create and consolidate informal settlements without planning and oversight, which can have uncertain prospects for receiving infrastructures (be it for their paralegal status or unstructured layout). A way to avoid such informal development is to offer an alternative, for example, assisted self-help schemes, which proactively provide households with plots of land and a bare minimum of essential infrastructure. The schemes are meant to be context-specific rather than a one-size-fits-all solution, and despite being around for over fifty years, little attention has been paid to their performance compared to the informal settlements of the context they wish to replace. Through case studies in Luanda and Lubango, the study compared the built environment and building process of self-built housing between formal assisted self-help programs and informally developed settlements. Surveys carried out in four sites showed that housing and its production are remarkably similar between the two types of settlement and that infrastructure provision (as well as hopes for it) among owner-builders of formal sites was no better than that in the informal setting. Along with the finding that regulations played only a minor role in formal owner-builders construction process, the study discusses these similarities and argues that liberalising regulatory frameworks and lowering infrastructure standards could improve the assisted self-help programs. The study hopes to lay a foundation for a wider discussion about improving the Angolan assisted self-help programs, by questioning if in aiming for good and adequate services and standards within the programs while failing to achieve either one, the Government may be preventing the programs from simply improving on what is produced outside Government supervision – in informal settlements.