In the later 1980s developers had built cheap housing on the urban fringe,
but after 1991, soaring land prices reduced options for cheap housing.
Developers moved to these areas for high income housing projects so as
to offset price spirals in the inner city (Sakchai 1993: 15-16). One specialist
estimated that whereas in 1991 some 50 per cent of households could
afford to purchase a new housing unit, by 1993 the proportion would be
reduced to 40 per cent (Sopon 1992: 48-9). The increase in employer-
provided accommodation, near or on work sites, was a symptom of
economic and work force changes, particularly in the BMA's outer districts
and adjacent five provinces. By 1990 households living in private sector
employer-provided accommodation outnumbered government accommo-
dation by over 10,000 (NSO Population and Housing Census 1980, 1990a).
The outer districts were housing the greater number of factory workers in
dormitories on, or near, work sites