The development of the Sabah's State Housing Commission (SSHC) and its evaluation of success in providing low cost housing in Sabah

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Authors
Dominus, David A.
Advisor
Mitchell, J. Paul
Issue Date
1994
Keyword
Degree
Thesis (M.U.R.P.)
Department
Department of Urban Planning
Other Identifiers
Abstract

One of the new Malaysia's thirteen states, Sabah, gained its independence through Malaysia on 16th September 1963. The new state with a relatively new government was first faced with the enormous task of planning the state development. One of the Government's immediate concern and priority was to ensure the provision of proper and sufficient housing for the local people. Under this priority, the Sabah State Assembly passed the Housing Commission Enactment in 1967 which later became known as the Sabah State Housing Commission (SSHC), and then, the Housing and Town Development Authority (HATDA).The SSHC was created by the Local Government to execute primarily the task of constructing low cost housing. This is due to the fact that houses constructed during Sabah's recovery from the aftermath of Second World War were mainly of medium cost types. There was no effort by the Colonial Government to provide low cost houses for the low income population.Kota Kinabalu, a relatively new town is the capital city of Sabah. Most of the SSHC activities were executed here. The city rapid development as evidenced by many high rise buildings offers job opportunity and social facility as well as amenity, and thus has become a major attraction to both the local people from smaller towns, and illegal immigrants from the nearby South East Asian countries.The creation and completion of this project has made clear HATDA's evaluation of success in providing the low cost housing for the low and middle incomes people in Sabah. In addition to its evaluation of success, many other issues relevant to low cost housing development has been explored. Those issues were HATDA's future strategies to deal with the fast growing local population and demand for the low cost housing units, recommendations to control illegal immigrants from the nearby Asian countries, ways to improve local political issues that affects future HATDA's goal and plan, and create a better relationship with the Federal Government that could ease the funding problem of the low cost housing in the future.

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