Room for manoeuvre

Livelihoods and rental housing

Rental housing often conjures up images of rich landlords exploiting poor tenants. However, research has shown that landlords in poor neighbourhoods of many cities in developing countries are often as poor or even poorer than their tenants. What is the link between rental housing and the livelihoods of tenants and landlords?

Research from the Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics has found that, in most cases, rental housing is integral to the livelihoods of the poor and a vital component of urban housing markets. Rental accommodation can offer tenants:

• proximity to employment
• savings in time and money spent on travel
• access to social networks
• flexibility in responding to livelihood opportunities.

While the proportion of urban tenant households in developing countries varies by country from 20 to 80%, no corresponding figures for landlords are available. The research indicates that a significant proportion of landlords were once tenants who, within 5-10 years, moved on to become landlords. Letting out accommodation can provide landlords with money for meeting essential needs, to improve their housing and in a few cases to purchase additional plots.

An often forgotten benefit for both parties is the psycho-social security that vulnerable tenants and landlords gain from each other’s presence. Yet, few governments have considered supporting private or informal rental housing and in some cases actively discourage it. UN-Habitat has suggested that this may be due to the poor success of state-provided and managed social rental housing. Another more critical reason is that many transactions between landlords and tenants are informal, specific to the local context and involve networks that draw upon economic, labour market, social, ethnic, religious and political linkages.

The extra-legal nature of much rental housing provision means that landlord and tenant rights are secured by informal arbitration by economic and political power brokers. It is difficult to imagine that this would change, even if secure tenure and property rights existed, as long as formal legal processes remain cumbersome and lengthy.

Renting of rooms is an integral part of housing processes accompanying urbanisation in developing countries. Beyond a few isolated projects in Asia and Latin America, however, there has been little change in urban housing policies or practices to reflect this. Governments urgently need to re-examine the politics of home ownership and recognise the multi-faceted contribution rental housing makes to the lives of the poor and the room for manoeuvre that it provides. Civil society should be also be encouraged to play a part in, not only providing rental housing, but also becoming more involved in arbitrating between tenant and landlord. This could be done by building on the growing networks between the urban poor and non-governmental organisations.

Sunil Kumar
Department of Social Policy
London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE
UK

T +44 (0)20 7955 6195
F +44 (0)20 7955 7415

s.kumar@lse.ac.uk

See also

'Landlordism in Third World urban low-income settlements: a case for further research' Urban Studies 33 (4/5), pp753-782, by S.Kumar, 1996

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