Jakarta – The Center for Urban Development Studies, or Cudes, has criticized a low-cost housing program proposed by Jakarta gubernatorial candidate Anies Baswedan, saying it has "misled the public."

Cudes property analyst Ferdinand Lamak said Anies's statement that there are still many houses available for under Rp 500 million ($38,000) in Jakarta is simply false information.

Ferdinand said Anies was simply referring to house listing on property websites. Even if there were houses available at that price, the number would never be enough to fill the housing backlog in Jakarta, which stands at 1.5 million units, based on the number of low-income families in the capital, he added.

In the bigger picture, the housing backlog in Indonesia has already reached around 13.5 million houses but the government is only capable of building 400,000 new units per year, a Ministry of Finance report said in 2015.

"There are also around 500,000 potential first home buyers – most of them the so-called millennials. So in Jakarta, the housing backlog has reached at least 2 million," Ferdinand said.

Cudes predicted an Anies governorship will soon get into hot water if he cannot fulfill his promise to find housing for poor Jakartans. "The problem in Jakarta is simple, there are not enough houses. You can't rely on just goodwill to solve it," Ferdinand said.

Ferdinand called on both gubernatorial candidates, Anies and incumbent Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama, to provide a more comprehensive map of the housing problem in Jakarta.

Jakarta residents have also slammed Anies's housing program for being unrealistic and for making use of unreliable data, with many of them taking to social media to voice their complaints.

Source: http://jakartaglobe.id/news/anies-cheap-housing-program-unrealistic-misleading-analyst/