From bamboo to bricks: Self-help housing and the building materials industry in urban Colombia

The construction of housing by self-help has been accepted in most Third World countries as the only real alternative by which the poor can obtain shelter. This thesis is concerned with the nature of the self-help construction process, focussing in particular on the building materials used. The research was based in the medium-sized city of Pereira. The construction and consolidation of self-help housing was examined in five low-income settlements of varying age and legality. The sources of land, building materials, labour and finance were all investigated. It was found that despite the widely documented commercialisation of these inputs, informal mechanisms remain important. Although self-help builders aim to construct houses out of brick rather than the traditional bamboo, they obtain the materials from small-scale merchants. No overall tendency for the informal building materials producers and merchants to be forced out of the market by their formal counterparts was found. Rather, a symbiotic relationship between the producers, merchants and consumers of building materials was discovered. This tightly-knit network has made it difficult for alternative, cheaper methods of producing and distributing building materials to succeed. Despite most self-help houses becoming increasingly consolidated over time, their owners build them primarily for their use-value rather than exchange-value. The housing market within the settlements remains small, although, in some of the more consolidated houses, home-based enterprises provide an important source of income. The thesis concludes that the informal sector within the building materials industry and low-income housing shows no signs of being dissolved in the near future. If attempts to reduce the cost of building materials for self-help settlers are to succeed, then it is imperative that the nature of the building materials industry and self-help construction are clearly understood