Abstract

In recent decades, the community based approach or public participation has been widely accepted in development activities particularly in developing country including in Indonesia. In Indonesia, there is a Program called Community Based Housing Development, which deals with the issues related to the housing for the poor. This approach is strongly “campaigned” both by government and or non government institutions until today. This paper examines the implementation of the program and outlines issues, challenges and constraints faced in the implementation process. The qualitative research method (‘participatory action research’) has been employed, where the researcher was also partly involved in the implementation process as an observer. This research compared two cases in Semarang: the first is the CBHD Project in the Pudak Payung village representing the project conducted by the “poor people” and the second one is the CBHD Project in Bangetayu village conducted by the “low income people”. The researcher found that such program is less compatible or not economically feasible enough for “the poor”, so that the program is not sustainable. However, the program has potential to help “the low income people”, who are actually able to pay but politically discriminated. Researcher conclude that issue of the unsustainability of the housing program in Indonesia does not lie in the so called “market failure” only, but also in the unfair accessibility for the majority of low income people to the key resources in housing development or “state failure”.