TITLE:
Influencing Factors for the Growth of Informal Rental Housing in Yangon, Myanmar
AUTHORS:
Myint Naing
KEYWORDS:
Cell-Room Rental (CRR), Informal Rental Housing, Internal Migrants, Multi-Storeys Single-Roomed Rental (SRR), Urban Rent Control Act
JOURNAL NAME:
Current Urban Studies,
Vol.9 No.1,
February
8,
2021
ABSTRACT: Rental housing is an essential and the significant proportion of urban
housing; it has been neglected by many governments due to various reasons.
While 40% - 50% of urban population or 1.2 billion people reside in rented
accommodation, a few governments around the world merely took rental housing as
a policy matter during the last a few decades such as Colombia, South Africa
and Indonesia. Rental housing especially informal rental housing is often
labeled for bad reputation; a sizable proportion of the urban poor in Asia
living in informal rental. Nowadays, Myanmar is one of the low-urbanized
countries in South East Asia; the hint of rapid urbanization can be found in
major cities especially in Yangon. Under the pressure of rapid urban growth,
informal rental is the alternative residential solution for internal migrants
and urban poor in Yangon. The main objective of this paper is exploring the
influencing factors for the growth of informal rental housing in Yangon. A
mixed research method, both qualitative and quantitive approaches, is applied
to analyze data from both primary and secondary resources. Various forms of
informal rental can be found in Yangon context, Multi-storeys Single-Roomed
Rental (SRR) and Cell-Room Rental (CRR) are more prevalent. The influencing
factors are the proximity of workplace, urban amenities, and relatives and
friends; the affordability of cheap rental fee, low living cost and
unaffordability of buying a house. Fear of being evicted in squatter living and
rejection by squatter community also influences the growth of informal rental
in Yangon. If government does not tackle the operative actions seriously,
unprecedented urbanization rate of Yangon can surge in both the expansion of
squatter pockets and the growth of informal rental housing.