COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION IN URBAN HOUSING IMPROVEMENT FOR LOW-INCOME PEOPLE IN VIETNAM'S INNER CITIES CASE STUDIES FROM HANOI AND HAI DUONG CITY.

• Author: Hoa, Ta Quynh

INTRODUCTION

Vietnam has been experiencing large-scale and vigorous urbanization due to the rapid economic development since the adoption of the Doi Moi (Reform) Policy in 1986. According to the 2019 census, Vietnam's population was 96.2 million (as of 2019) with the number of city dwellers exceeding 35.7 million, making up about 34.3 percent of the total population. (1) It is projected that by 2030, city dwellers will account for about 50 percent of the total population. (2) Vietnam is under pressure to ensure adequate housing for all people. The data from the General Statistics Office shows that the housing area per capita in 2019 was 23.5 m (2) , which is lower than the target set in the National Housing Development Strategies for 2020 and with a vision of striving for 25 [m.sup.2]/person by 2030. (3) Around 25 percent of the country's housing stock is classified by the government as substandard or temporary, and 6.9 percent of households in Vietnam live in temporary and precarious houses. This is equal to about 1.4 million households with around 5 million people living in inadequate housing conditions that should be prioritized in future housing development projects and strategies. (4) Low-income people comprise the majority of urban residents in Vietnam's cities. In major cities like Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, low-income households account for more than 70 percent of the total urban households. Currently, the definition of low-income in Vietnam is given only in Circular No. 17/2014/BXD issued by the Ministry of Construction: "Low-income people are those with income not subject to personal income tax, under the law of personal income tax." This regulation stipulates that the total income of low-income earners must be lower than the required level of paying personal income tax (currently 9 million VND per month, equivalent to 386 USD). (5) Most low-income people are not able to buy houses or build new houses for themselves from their salary savings without external financial support. (6)

There are five popular types of housing that most of the low-income people are living in: (1) social housing from new housing development projects; (2) collective apartments provided by the state or state-owned companies; (3) rental housing provided by private companies or individuals; (4) resettlement housing for households living in areas of extreme economic difficulty or affected by natural disasters; and (5) built housing of low-income families. (7)

Current national social housing policies mainly focus on using state budgets to develop new social housing projects. Upgrading the existing rental housing stock has not yet been properly taken into consideration. From 2010 to 2020, 256 new social housing projects were developed, while only 25 old collective apartments (less than 10 percent) were upgraded by the state. (8) Furthermore, policies often focus on housing quantity rather than on quality. Although it encourages more housing to be built, the current policy pays more attention to new housing development than to improving existing urban areas. (9) A large proportion of low-income people live either in degraded older inner-city houses or in peripheral areas that lack basic infrastructure. In addition, they can hardly gain access to financial support from the city government. Some socioeconomic experts have stated that current housing policies are unsuitable for the present situation and that they provide only a temporary solution to meet urgent housing needs. As such, the low-income communities find it difficult to access the state's policies for housing improvement. (10)

A top-down approach has been applied in administration and decision making for a long time in Vietnam, and it is still influential in the perception of local authorities and citizens. In the centralized planned economy, housing development was managed by the state to meet specific targets, with the state as the dominating actor. (11) The community played just a minor role and took little responsibility for contributing to the urban development process. (12) Most of the urban regeneration projects that derived from real communities' demands were not mentioned in any urban planning schemes. Consequently, local communities faced many difficulties accessing the state's financial resource allocation for those kinds of projects. (13) Most of the community-based projects implemented in Vietnam have not been initiated by the communities themselves. Many of these projects have been so far developed and carried out with the assistance of external support from different sources, such as government ministries or international donors. (14) Moreover, a large number of these projects have been developed based on the concepts of the project donors or local authorities rather than on the ideas and/or input of the local communities. As a result, the projects often fail to address the community's needs and expectations. (15)

The role of community and community participation in projects for upgrading housing for low-income people is still vague in many cities of Vietnam. Thus it is essential to undertake more investigations into the community participation process in some specific and typical cases in big cities of Vietnam by focusing on the low-income urban squatters living in informal housing.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Collective Action Theory and Community Participation

Collective action theory was promoted mainly by Mancur Olson, whose Logic of Collective Action was published in 1965, and Elinor Ostrom, who is well known for the book Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (1990). Reviewing this theory will help identify the relevant factors for collective action in the context of the use of common goods and which factors are influential in the involvement between individuals. In The Logic of Collective Action, Olson mentions the possibility of organizing groups into collective actions. (16) In his view, collective action necessarily involves the existence of mechanisms of external influences and incentives. He defined common-pool resources as those from which an individual cannot be excluded. (17)

Ostrom, through several examples, has shown individuals' ability to self-organize to achieve collective benefits if the attitude of commonly used resources is maintained. (18) In Ostrom's opinion, self-organized groups can do what governments and other actors cannot, since their members have crucial information about their group's behaviors, capacities, and needs. (19) In addition, factors other than self-interest influence the behavior of individuals to perform collective actions. (20)

In the context of urban low-income areas, individuals in a community often share resources, including natural and man-made resources, and engage in collective action. Community participation in this context broadly covers the inclusion of local communities in planning decisions to enhance the community's well-being in terms of income, personal growth, self-reliance, and other shared values. (21) The central element of community participation is participation in decisions that directly affect their living conditions. This implies the sharing of power between the authorities and the community. (22) According to UN-Habitat, successful participation is dependent upon certain preconditions regarding the political context (a political system that encourages active citizenship and is committed to equity and redress), the legal basis for participation (processes and outcomes are legally specified), and available resources (skilled and committed professionals, well-resourced and empowered local governments, and informed, financially empowered, organized communities). (23)

Although there are many different perspectives on community activities and community participation, there are similarities in the latter concept related to common interests and the sharing of common resources in the community. Community involvement is a process, not a temporary outcome. Currently, promoting community participation is an effective approach for solving housing problems for low-income people in many developing countries.

Levels of Participation in the Planning Process

In 1969, Sherry Arnstein published an article titled "A Ladder of Citizen Participation." In this article, she developed a typology of citizen participation arranged as rungs on a ladder, with each rung corresponding to the amount of citizen control within the process of determining a program or policy. According to Arnstein, there are basically eight levels of citizen participation in the planning process. From the lowest to the highest, these are (1) manipulation, (2) therapy, (3) informing, (4) consultation, (5) placation, (6) partnership, (7) delegated power, and (8) citizen control. While Arnstein listed eight levels on her proposed ladder of citizen participation, she recognized that subtle distinctions within each level might represent the wide variety of real-world situations and experiences that could shape the process of citizen participation. (24) Nearly thirty years later, Richard Kingston proposed a six-step ladder. Here, the low level of participation includes (1) public right to know, (2) informing the public, and (3) public right to object, and the top level of participation includes (4) public participation in defining interests and determining an agenda; (5) public participation in assessing consequences and recommending solutions; and (6) public participation in the final decision. (25) Arnstein's and Kingston's studies provide researchers with important information to understand the community and to examine the level and quality of participation. Figure 1 shows the levels of citizen participation in Arnstein's and Kingston's models.

Community Participation Practices in Urban Upgrading in Vietnam

The Vietnamese Language Dictionary defines community as "all the people living in a certain...