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Algeria
Housing
Unchecked population growth and a steady flow of urban migration
have combined to produce a severe housing shortage. The Algerian
housing problem has been less pressing than in many other developing
countries, however, owing to the postindependence departure of
most Europeans. Nearly all of the Europeans had been city dwellers,
living in the new towns surrounding the medinas (traditional
cities) housing the Algerian population. In 1961 and 1962, many
Europeans simply abandoned their properties to squatters from
the countryside who promptly occupied them; sometimes as many
as six Algerian families lived in a residence that had formerly
housed a single European family. Property abandonment was so common
that biens vacants (empty properties) became a term in
common use.
Several years were required for the government to inventory the
vacant properties. In 1965, however, a government financial reform
endeavored to regularize ownership and collection of rents from
about 500,000 nationalized or sequestered apartments and houses
in the major cities.
Rural migrants settled into bidonvilles, named after
the flattened bidons (tin cans) used extensively in their
ramshackle construction. After independence the bidonville
population of Algiers alone soon exceeded 100,000. Bidonvilles
appeared in other cities, and during the early 1970s they emerged
on the fringes of the oil camps in the Algerian Sahara.
The proliferation of urban shantytowns has been a worldwide phenomenon
in developing countries. Proportionately fewer have sprung up
in Algeria than in neighboring Morocco, in part because of government
projects to limit urban sprawl by creating industrial villages
near new factories. In the early 1970s, industrial villages were
started near Algiers and in the vicinity of Annaba and Oran.
During the first twenty years after independence, public investment
was concentrated in the industrial sector, and little attention
was paid to the housing sector. Private construction was minimal
because of tight government regulation and difficult access to
landownership. In Algiers in particular, the government sought
to discourage the flood of migration by almost freezing the housing
sector and confining itself to improving sanitation and public
utility service.
The consequence of those policies was a severe housing shortage
starting at the end of the 1970s. By the early 1980s, the occupancy
rate per three-room housing unit stood at seven persons, and the
shortfall in public housing was placed at 1 million units. In
1992 the shortage had become critical and had risen to 2 million
housing units. The shortage had resulted in an average occupancy
rate of 8.8 persons per unit, comparatively one of the highest
in the world.
Between 1990 and August 1993, as part of a series of reforms,
the government has sought to eliminate the housing backlog and
has built about 360,000 public housing units and launched new
housing programs for low-income groups. Earlier plans to produce
100,000 public housing units between 1980 and 1984 achieved only
a 57 percent rate of success. In the Second Five-Year Plan (1985-
89), the success rate for completed housing was even lower, convincing
the government that major reforms were necessary.
Largely as a result of import restrictions that included building
materials, the public housing sector in 1992 could produce only
35,000 units per year, up from 24,000 units in 1991, but down
from the 1986 peak year of 88,000 units. At this rate, public
housing shortages will not only continue but become worse.
In November 1990, new land legislation (Loi d'orientation foncière)
was enacted to abolish the local government monopoly over land
transactions, thus freeing urban landowners to buy and sell their
land as they wished. The law was also intended to encourage private-sector
investment in housing and construction. Furthermore, new standards
were introduced in 1991 to simplify urban development procedures
by the private sector.
To encourage the private sector to invest in housing, the government
is proposing legislation that will permit private contractors
to compete with public enterprises and have access to building
materials that are exclusively for public housing. The private
sector is also encouraged to produce locally some of the building
materials needed, in order to compensate for market shortages
and for the cost of importing those materials. By the early 1990s,
some Algerians in the private sector had begun producing bricks,
ceramic tiles, and steel rods.
Registered private construction companies remain very small and
work primarily to build private family homes. Individuals also
hire workers and architects to build their own houses. In 1991
alone, 85,000 building permits were issued to private households
wishing to build dwellings. Between 1989 and 1992, an estimated
300,000 such housing units were built by private individuals.
The most conspicuous development in rural housing during the
postindependence years has been the One Thousand Socialist Villages
program undertaken in 1972 in conjunction with the agrarian revolution
program. Socialist villages represented a pilot plan for improving
rural housing. According to the plan, each village would have
a population of as many as 1,500 people housed in 200 individual
units, together with schools and clinics. Each unit was to have
three rooms and would be provided with electricity, heat, and
running water. By mid-1979 about 120 such villages had been completed.
Although the villages had much to commend them, the program has
done little to slow migration to urban areas.
In the mid-1980s, urban housing varied from the most modern apartment
buildings and private dwellings of concrete and glass to crowded
shantytowns. The cities had grown so rapidly that the small-windowed
walls and courtyards of the medinas occupied only a small
fraction of the urban area. The most common rural dwellings are
called gourbi, some of which are mere huts constructed
of mud and branches. Others are more solidly built, having walls
of stone or clay and containing several rooms. Tiled or tin roofs
are usually flat; but in parts of eastern Algeria subject to heavy
rainfall or winter snows, the roofs are steeply slanted.
As a consequence of the heavy urban migration of early postindependence
years, entire gourbi settlements appeared in Annaba and
other coastal cities. During this period, the Kabylie region was
the only part of Algeria to enjoy a housing boom. A large majority
of the emigrant laborers in France were Berbers from the Kabylie,
and the funds remitted by them to their families at home made
the surge of building possible in this generally impoverished
region.
Significant changes have occurred in Algeria in the last decade
in the sectors of health, education, and welfare. The increase
in health care facilities and the general upgrading of health
services have met the needs of the very young Algerian population.
The education system also has undergone major reforms and has
become more responsive to the economic and social needs of Algerian
society. However, the housing shortage, which worsened in the
1980s, has become critical in the 1990s. Private sector involvement
may alleviate this shortage as it plays a larger role in the economy.
Another major problem confronting the nation is that of unemployment,
particularly among younger workers. Thus, despite Algeria's achievements
in some areas, the country in 1993 was facing a number of difficult
societal pressures that, combined with militant religious forces
and economic difficulties, posed ongoing challenges to the government.
* * *
One of the best and most comprehensive recent studies on Algerian
history and society is John Ruedy's Modern Algeria: The Origins
and Development of a Nation. Of particular importance are
Ruedy's descriptions of the structure of the society and how it
changed as a result of the political and economic upheavals that
shook the country, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth
century. Two older studies, John P. Entelis's Algeria: The
Revolution Institutionalized and the study edited by I. William
Zartman, Man, State, and Society in the Contemporary Maghrib,
remain of critical importance to an understanding of present-day
Algerian society. A number of French writers such as Jean-Claude
Vatin, Rémy Leveau, and Jean Leca have written extensively on
Algerian society and are essential reading.
World Bank reports contain have the latest information and statistics
on major development indicators in Algeria; they have contributed
greatly to this chapter. Some excellent articles on Algeria also
have appeared in publications such as the Middle East Journal,
Third World Quarterly, Annals of the Academy of Political
and Social Sciences, and Annuaire de l'Afrique du Nord.
(For further information and complete citations, see
Bibliography.)
Data as of December 1993
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