Housing

There is a lot of good housing in Bogotá. Vast areas in the north and west of the city provide good accommodation for the extensive middle class, and much of the working class lives in well-consolidated self-help housing. Judged by the standards of most third world cities, and even those of other Colombian cities, most families have decent shelter. Equally encouraging is that the general standard of Bogotá's housing improved between 1951 and 1985 (table 11.7). At the same time, the city has a serious housing problem and far too many families live in bad accommodation. In 1985, 13 per cent of Bogotá's homes were overcrowded and 4 per cent of families lived in miserable housing conditions. Table 11.7 shows that conditions for many households deteriorated between 1985 and 1993. Critically, the service agencies seem to have lost their earlier ability to supply the expanding city.

Figure 11.2 Bogotá: Homes with miserable living conditions, 1985

Table 11.7 Bogotá: Housing indicators, 1951-1993 (percentages)

Service	1951	1964	1973	1985	1993
Water	85.8	89.5	91.8	95.9	88.3
Electricity	81.9	88.1	95.3	98.4	90.0
Drainage	80.0	87.6	91.7	95.6	86.3
All three services	n.a.	n.a.	87.1	93.5	n.a.
Without any service	n.a.	2.7	2.4	0.7	1.0
Ownership	42.7	46.2	41.9	57.1	n.a.
Population living 4 persons to a room	7.6	18.5	23.0	14.9	n.a.
Homes built of flimsy materials	9.5	7.6	7.0	3.2	3.2

Sources: Jaramillo, 1990, El Tiempo, 3 August 1994.

A high proportion of Bogotá's population lives in self-help housing. This does not constitute a problem in itself because such housing often produces perfectly satisfactory accommodation. However, in Bogotá too much self-help housing is built on land which lacks services and where it is difficult to provide infrastructure cheaply. A lot of this housing lies below the level of the River Bogotá or on hillsides where it is expensive to provide water. Many of the difficulties are caused by the way that land is urbanized: most low-income settlements are developed through illegal processes.⁹ Between 1935 and 1985, 31 per cent of all housing was built on land that was developed illegally. Admittedly, the proportion of homes built in such areas appears to be declining through time: 55 per cent of all homes were built in illegal subdivisions in the 1940s compared to "only" 29 per cent between 1973 and 1985 (Molina et al., 1993: 53). Nevertheless, despite regular government efforts to tackle the problem of "pirate" urbanization, it refuses to disappear.¹⁰ Between 1987 and 1991, 127 hectares a year were developed in this manner, 42 per cent of the city's total new housing land (ibid.).

A further problem for housing in Bogotá is that the cost of land appears to be rising over time. FEDELONJAS (1988) claim that real land prices increased roughly six-fold between 1959 and 1988, and Villamizar (1982) calculates that they increased annually by 4 per cent per annum between 1955 and 1978. Prices in pirate settlements have risen as quickly as those in legal developments; according to Molina et al. (1993: 124), prices of plots have risen by annual rates of between 9 and 20 per cent in five peripheral districts of the city (Suba, Kennedy, Usme, San Cristóbal, and Usaquén). Although there are considerable doubts about the reliability of such data (see chapter 4), the real cost of land does seem to be rising over time. The rising price of land is cutting the size of the average plot. Between 1968 and 1973, the typical self-help plot was almost 200 square metres in area; between 1983 and 1985 the average had fallen to only 78 square metres (Molina, 1990: 305)¹¹ Too much self-help housing is now being built on tiny parcels of land. Many new developments in the south of the city are selling lots as small as 36 square metres. Unlike the better-off, who can compensate for higher land prices by building up, the poor "substitute land by crowding" (Mohan, 1994: 70).

Irrespective of the level of income, the size of the average new home in Bogotá is falling. In 1974, the average new home contained 191 square metres of floor space; by 1985 the mean had declined to 70 square metres. Homes for the rich declined from 245 square metres in 1974 to 112 square metres in 1985 (Molina et al., 1993: table 2.7). Of course, the tendency for more families to live in high-rise apartments explains part of this change, but the principal cause is higher prices.

Rising house prices are making it difficult for young middle-class families to buy their first home. The cost of one square metre of housing space rose 41 per cent faster than incomes between November 1981 and September 1990 (Sorer, 1991). The construction boom of 1992-95 was also associated with a major rise in prices. At the very least, many young families are having to buy worse accommodation than in the past.