Perpetuation of informality in the face of rising demand for standard housing in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea

Abstract

This study is an investigation of the characteristics and patterns of informal housing market in squatter settlements relative to those of the formal housing market in Port Moresby. The main purpose of the study is to understand how the informal rental housing market in the city competes with the formal housing market with a view to predicting the seeming perpetuation of informality in the face of rising housing demand and the limited supply of urban land within the city. Purposive random sampling technique was used to interview 100 respondents comprising 40 landlords, 40 tenants and 20 professionals and elites living in the city, based on several questionnaire surveys that yielded a combined representative sample. Using SPSS for descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation, GIS and Remote Sensing technologies, three research questions were answered. Findings reveal that 44%of landlords have owned rental housing in the informal settlements for not more than two years, while 51% had acquired less than 200m² of land for building their houses. The informal settlements were recently infiltrated by highly educated people with high income (33%), while entrepreneurial motives have helped in pushing the destitute further into the outskirts of the city through a process akin to gentrification. Lack of effective control of urban development by the municipality ranked first on the Likert Perception Index measuring factors of informality, while shortage of land in the formal areas of the city ranked as the least important factor. Furthermore, the size of land and the fortnightly income of landlords were positively significant factors influencing the total number of rental houses owned by landlords in the informal areas of Port Moresby (p<0.01 and p<0.05). GIS and Remote Sensing techniques reveal that the rate of change of informal settlements (67%) was twice as high as that of the formal housing areas (33%), which is an indication that the rising trends in housing informality may continue in the foreseeable future. This study also confirms the significance of competition between the formal and informal built-up areas for limited state land in Port Moresby. Recommendations are made forcost-effective and transparent government intervention programmes based on its role as a housing market regulator and facilitator.