Housing Construction Literacy for Low-Income Households: A Socio-Sustainability-Oriented Community Engagement Program in Surabaya Indonesia

Abstract

Indonesian households encounter a housing issue that is not just one of supply and affordability since a majority of houses are self-built and adapted through household-driven processes. In this article, it will be argued that provision for adequate construction knowledge should be seen as a complementary housing resource. This paper draws from an extensive review of literature on self-help housing, incremental housing, housing adequacy, building literacy, social sustainability, participatory housing, and community-based upgrading, in addition to Indonesian policy documents and housing statistics. The paper finds a gap between housing assistance and household-based construction decisions. Housing Construction Literacy is defined in the paper as the ability to acquire, comprehend, evaluate, and use basic construction knowledge and at the same time know when professional intervention is necessary. Domains of literacy and a model of community engagement in six stages are developed. What makes this paper innovative is its treatment of construction literacy as soft housing infrastructure that can augment household empowerment, knowledge equality, safety, adaptability, and socio-sustainability without substituting housing policy, professional knowledge, and government accountability.