Jhenaidah Citywide Housing Process

There are 63 low-income communities in Jhenaidah Municipality (a secondary town in northwestern Bangladesh). Women groups of 5 communities were interested to start the housing process in 2015, by forming the Citywide Community Network. They started to save money, did the community mapping together and shared how they want to build their houses through making models of their ‘dream houses’. Community architects helped the community to visualize their dreams by considering their needs, aspirations, available land, money, building materials, climatic aspects and flexibility to change. The Community Network received a seed fund from Asian Coalition for Housing Rights as a revolving fund to start the housing process. They built 38 houses (one or two storied) by taking loan (1200 USD each) from their network.

People take BDT 1,00,000 (USD 1200) loan from their community network. With this amount they build a two-room core house without toilet. However, to take the loan they have to save BDT 20,000 (USD 242). With BDT 1,20,000 (USD 1442) people build a two-room core house including toilet, door and window panels. The houses can be one or two-storied depending on land availability and people’s aspiration. Through the participatory process the plans of the core houses are developed in such a way so that people can have the opportunity for future expansion. All houses are built and managed by the communities according to their needs within the budget. Till now, 38 houses have been built in two communities. There is no particular model house. As no two communities are same in many respects, the designs of houses are also different in different communities and even for different households. Innovative design solutions using locally available building materials are developed together with the assistance from local masons and carpenters. Communal spaces like community workplace, bathing steps or Ghat by the river are designed together with professionals. These designs provide the communities with a negotiating tool to talk and get support from local authorities and other organizations.
As mentioned, the community network provides loan of BDT 1,00,000 (USD 1200) to each household. They repay BDT 1,20,000 (USD 1442) to the network in 5 years installments of BDT 500 (USD 6) weekly. They have decided to create their own community development fund with the extra money they are paying. The seed fund is repaid without any interest to the community network and rolls to other communities in need. Typically, in Bangladesh, poor people take credit from NGOs where they repay with a high interest and NGO gets the profit. Here, the system is reversed where community takes loan from their own cooperative fund and decides how much extra money they want to contribute in their cooperative network. The profit remains in their hands.

Gradually community starts to do horizontal sharing, teach other communities of the city and other cities too. When one community learns to map, they teach mapping to other communities to prepare them for housing. The women are prioritized over men in the leadership of any work in the process. Municipality plays a good supporting role. Before, the women groups, who were very shy to talk with outsiders, are now able to teach university students about how to do community mapping. They are often invited by other cities to share their self-development stories. This is how they have been empowering themselves and others too. Now the process is being scaled-up in 20 other cities of Bangladesh. This community-led housing process also inspired the city to start a people-led city planning process in Jhenaidah.