While Malaysia is on the right track in leading towards affordable housing than low cost homes, there is, however, lack of uniformity in the projects undertaken by the state and federal government, reported Free Malaysia Today.
“Every government seems to be doing affordable homes its own way…There are so many different design models and concepts,” said architect Alan Teh.
“Everyone seems to be working in silos, whereas affordable housing should be streamlined under a single authority.”
According to him, Malaysia should emulate its neighbouring state, Singapore, where only one agency – the Housing and Development Board (HDB) – is tasked with overseeing, planning and implementing the development of public housing projects.
Under a single authority such as Singapore’s HDB, experts in various fields conduct studies and obtain feedback in a bid to improve designs, utilities, processes, social areas, green spaces and waste management.
He noted that the rush to provide affordable homes in Malaysia, along with the lack of land, saw some projects being too dense.
Ideally, affordable housing should not be in blocks exceeding 18 stories or in developments of over 500 units, he said.
This comes as high density projects are not only prone to overloading of facilities, traffic and parking issues but are also deprived of a sufficient amount of green areas.
“If an affordable housing project has 800 units, the project should be subdivided into two sub-communities and each sub-community should have its own set of communal facilities.”
Commenting on the problems with low cost housing within his constituency, Kelana Jaya MP Wong Chen said there is a need to reduce the density of projects as well as improve the buildings’ design.
He revealed that a typical rectangular block of low cost flat would have the corridors situated inside the rectangle, providing a single air well for sunlight for the entire block.
“So you have a situation where the lower floors get little sunlight, if any, along their corridors, especially if the building is too high,” said Wong. “This can make it quite unsafe for people to walk along the corridors, even in the daytime.”
“And if there is no proper garbage disposal, you’ll see those living on higher floors either dumping their trash from their corridors or leaving it at staircases. This is a common problem in many low cost flats here.”
In Singapore, public housing projects are well lit and exposed since the corridors are facing outwards, making it riskier for residents to simply toss out their trash.
“So if we keep building low cost flats or affordable housing projects which create a bleak or unsafe environment, even poor people may not want to live there and end up having to fork out more money for nicer places.”
Among affordable developments around are:
Image sourced from FMT
Radin Ghazali, Content Writer at PropertyGuru, edited this story. To contact her about this or other stories email radin@propertyguru.com.my
For more information on new top homes, check out PropertyGuru’s New Property Launches and Project Reviews.
