Housing and land use policy studies and implementation programmes
Instead of just adding all figures a nuanced summary of housing deprivation is presented. First in the current situation: • the overcrowding and homeless citizens create a need to construct 5001 new houses on new land • the houses beyond repairs create a need to construct 892 houses on existing plots • the poor housing quality creates a renovation need of 33 395 houses on existing plots In the future these figures are supplemented with a need to build 99 191 new housing units on new land. When taking both current and future housing deprivation numbers in account, the new houses far outweigh the numbers of reconstruction and renovation on existing housing plots. But when only looking at the current situation, the demand to act within the existing housing stock and urban tissue is very dominant. In this action plan we argue that in order to halt sprawl in Paramaribo, there is a need to focus parallel on: • the current housing deprivation and focus on investing in the current housing stock within the existing urban tissue. • to develop strategies on the long term in order to figure out how it will be possible to produce 104 192 new houses on new land. The historic and current production of houses shows that the construction market is not equipped to produce such numbers of houses. Within these figures of poor housing quality Heirman found explanations of reasons why citizens do not to invest in their houses. One is the weak protection of the renters within the housing rental market and second of all insecure housing situation due to inheritance problems. Within the private rental market, the main issue is a mismatch between price and quality. According to Maks and De Bruyne (2008) do foreign students and professionals push the prices of the rental estates. Those short term renters seek for qualitative rental estates and are willing to pay European prices for them. In additions are these renters attractive for the landlords as they are often paid directly by the company of the professionals or by the parents of the students. This creates a secure high income of their rental estates. Hence, landlords prefer foreign renters over Surinamese renters. Only the estates that are not attractive for the foreign renters are available for the Surinamese renters. As these estates are not in scope of the foreign market, the prices but also the quality is low. Renting out estates with a poor
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