Anita Rachman – With rent as low as Rp 159,000 ($17) a month, it would seem the 2,580-unit Marunda Apartment complex in North Jakarta should be filled to capacity.
But instead of children playing in the vast open fields or neighbors chatting in the hallways, there are only dark windows and empty streets.
Just five of the 26 buildings have people living in them. You can tell which apartments are occupied from the laundry lines hanging from the windows, the rest eerily quiet.
"There and there, those are also empty," said Rita, a resident, pointing at some of the buildings around her. "There are lots of empty blocks."
Homes for the poor
Construction on the apartment towers began in 2004 as part of a government program to provide low-cost housing for poor families, especially fishermen. It was a joint project that included the Jakarta provincial government and the ministries of public housing and of public works.
By 2009 the 75,800-square-meter complex was complete. Each unit had two bedrooms, a little living room, a kitchen, a toilet and storage space. There were also plans to construct a mosque, schools and a health clinic.
According to Yoseph Lucky, from the Marunda Apartment administration office, anyone with a Jakarta ID card can rent a unit. Homeless families or those whose houses had burned down qualify for the subsidized price of Rp 159,000 per month. For other low-income families the rent is Rp 370,000.
It's a figure on the lower end of what rooms in slum areas typically cost. They usually go for Rp 300,000 to Rp 500,000 a month and come with strict landlords to boot.
Yoseph said Marunda was comparatively lax with rent deadlines. "Some haven't paid their rent in six months. We only give them warnings and charge extra for the delay," he said.
Unattractive?
But what a waste, Rita said, that only five of the 26 blocks, whose construction cost Rp 18 billion each, were occupied. "Maybe the government should consider a few things before building a complex like this one," she said. "Turns out people are not attracted to it."
A lack of public transportation, she said, had to be one reason more people weren't moving in. The complex is located in Cilincing, about 45 minutes by Metro Mini or angkot from the nearest TransJakarta busway shelter, in Tanjung Priok. But after 5 p.m., Rita said, angkots stopped making the trip.
Transportation wasn't a big issue for Nurul Aini and her husband, who moved to Marunda just more than a year ago, drawn by the cheap rent. "My husband works at an office in Central Jakarta, but he has a motorbike," she said.
What really worries her is the lack of schools around the complex. With their baby, that will make things difficult in a few years, she said.
As for the fishermen the government thought would come in droves? It never happened. It probably doesn't help that there is no place around the apartments for them to dry their catch.
But even though the complex isn't perfect, Yoseph said, it is still a good option for low-income families. "I doubt this complex is seen as unattractive," he said. "It's cheap. People will come."
Bureaucratic bumps
If the apartments are so alluring, why are most still empty? Novizal, head of Jakarta's housing agency, offered a partial explanation. "People want the apartments, but we have some administration issues," he said. "We hope to resolve them soon."
His office, he explained, could only operate the 15 blocks it financed. Only five of them were occupied so far, but he said he was optimistic the other 10 would be filled this year.
"The rest of the blocks, we cannot really do anything because they belong to the central government," he said.
The Public Works Ministry financed six of the blocks and the Public Housing Ministry five, but the ministries have yet to hand them over to the Jakarta administration. Novizal said the process was not easy because it involved several departments, including the Finance Ministry.
Public Housing Minister Djan Faridz acknowledged his ministry had neglected the Marunda buildings, but argued that the handover process was not easy.
"The procedures have yet to be approved by the Finance Ministry. But we now have a team to handle this," he said, adding that he thought it could get done within a few months. "Soon everything will be resolved and people will come and rent the apartments," he said.
Fixing Marunda
Novizal did say his team could probably be working harder to fill the units. This year, he said, they plan to install electricity and water pipes at several of the empty blocks and clean them up so people can use them soon.
The promised mosque is expected to be built this year, but other services such as schools and a health clinic are likely take longer, he said.
"For fishermen, we are considering providing a special facility or space for them to dry their fish," he said. "They can do it somewhere near their units while they rest upstairs."
Doing all this would require additional funds, he said. But he said he thought that after the handover process was done his agency could get more people living in the complex.