Affordable housing for low-income community in Thailand: the challenges of the improvement of the quality of life

Abstract

The major problems of the urban poor are lack of land, housing insecurity and access to basic infrastructure. The increase in inadequate housing and homelessness among the urban poor are clear manifestations of their relative poverty. For decades, affordable housing has been a strategy of the Thai government to promote access to the housing of an adequate standard. The main focus of this paper is on two low-income communities which constructed new settlements on new lands. Both were supported by funding and housing loans from the Thai Community Development Organizations Institute (CODI), and I was appointed to lead the projects as a community architect. This paper aims to explore the challenges of promoting affordable housing and how people deal with these challenges. They were involved in the participatory planning, design processes and worked collaboratively with each other. Additionally, financial assistance was a vital mechanism to facilitate community building processes. The outcomes of the processes generated by the activities and solutions respect the needs of the people. Also, collective saving groups were a significant development to learn together and overcome considerable constraints.