Impact Assessment on Living Standards of Low Income Families Relocated under Urban Resettlement Schemes A Case Study in Dematagoda Resettlement Housing Scheme in Colombo
Abstract
Urbanization in and around the Colombo city leads to the informal settlementsof low income families (LIF) and created adverse consequences on the urban economyand thereby for the development of the city of Colombo.
Therefore, these LIFs had to be resettled for the development of Colombo basedon the government policies and planning guidelines. The institutions involved in theseprograms have expressed their views to provide shelters to LIF for a better future.However, no comprehensive study has been carried out to evaluate the impact ofresettlement schemes on the living standards (LS) of such LIF. The current study aimsto fill this gap felt as a long term need to study and research in Sri Lankan context.
The resettlement housing scheme of Dematagoda under Beira Lake restorationproject launched by Urban Development Authority in year 2008 and completed in year2010 to resettle 320 families in a railway reservations near Beira Lake, was selected forthe study.
Main objective of the study is to examine LS of LIF resettled under this project.The assets based approach on LS is selected as the method for measuring LS due to highapplicability to the sample selected. The LS Index is constructed by using MultipleCorrespondence Analysis to quantify the changes in LS. The LS table is extracted andexpressed whole LS changes with reference to LIF and the measuring all the changers inone figure.
Descriptive analysis revealed that LS of more than 90% of the families havebeen improved by relocation and some criteria of LS only have degraded among fewfamilies under the resettlement scheme. The LS index values of all families haveincreased more than 100% in year 2011, when compared with the value in 2008.Therefore, resettlement has more positive impact on the families resettled under theresettlement schemes.
Key words: Living Standards, Low Income Families, Resettlement, Assets BasedApproach
