Mixed-income housing as an alternative to the ‘Projek Perumahan Rakyat’ in Malaysia

Abstract

In most countries today, governments are required to provide housing to those that live in poor living conditions. The Malaysian government has introduced various schemes to allocate adequate housing to those who cannot enter market-rate housing. Unfortunately, housing schemes such as the Projek Perumahan Rakyat (PPR) apartment has created an environment of concentrated poverty and stigmatization that has led to negative land value, limited job prospects and segregation to those who live is such housing. Many developed nations have realised that the traditional public housing does not work because it create ‘ghettos’ and have moved on to introduce various forms of housing with one of them being affordable housing or mixed-income housing (MIH). MIH refers to the placement of people from different income groups under the same development where by residents share, own and manage the development with the hope that this then dissipates the concentration of poverty. The purpose of this research is to identify the benefits that mixed-income housing can have over public housing. This research is carried out to review other studies on MIH and propose an architectural-based guideline with relevant arguments. The findings indicate that MIH is still a fairly new concept and objectively determining the success of MIH is difficult because of the variables involved in defining successful social interactions. Nevertheless, better facilities and quality of housing indicates a shift towards better public housing. This research hopefully provides an alternative to the PPR in Malaysia that can improve the overall standard of living for the nation.