UTM has organised a Forum event regarding our National Housing Crisis, PERUMAHAN DI MALAYSIA : “MAMPU MILIK ATAU MAMPU TENGOK” on 24 Ogos 2016 at Dewan Sultan Iskandar, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Skudai, Johor. The event itself was mainly organised by Malaysian Counsil of Professor (Majlis Professor Negara).
Housing is a major development program of the nation. Housing development, home ownership and property have always been a major issue in the discussion of our geopolitics. Studies has been made by the Institute Sultan Iskandar (ISI) of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) and Survey Research Group (SRG UTM). The level of perception and satisfaction of the people towards the achievement of the housing must be increased not only in number but also in life long belongings.
The Malaysian National Housing Policy has become the future of design and construction outlines for the housing. Housing development should be appropriate to the capabilities, services and the required quality. Recently, Johor State Government introduced the Public Housing Association in effort to help the achievement of affordable housing. It is used to ensure that the developers in providing such priority to the development of the affordable homes in Johor.
The affordable housing should be defined as literally affordable or be able to purchase by common citizens who fall within the target group of middle-income households abilities accordance with the standards specified. The household total income was the most common method used as the standards in evaluating their eligibility. The most critical problem of low-income housing in Malaysia is its affordability for poorer people. As described at the beginning, although the ceiling price has been set by the government, many low income families could not secure the amount of money to buy it. For the government and local authority, it is also difficult to fund the low income housing more than they do now.
As for our Research group initiative, We aim to solve this social problem by adding the time dimension to open building construction with the name ‘Incremental SI (structure-infill) housing. It is the housing supply system where structure is built first with reduced amount of budget, and infill is attached later in an increment manner. Unlike normal open building construction, this allows the bare structure of the first phase construction to be utilised as a basic shelter, and in the following phases, those who moved in can participate in the incremental construction of their homes. By splitting the total construction into smaller manageable volumes, it is expected that the local authority can initiate the development with less risk and financial burden within a limited timeframe. As the nature of house is ‘incremental’, those who moved in can also have flexibility of handling and managing their construction plan, based on their own financial status.
