Housing For All: Steps To Attain This

Housing For All: Steps To Attain This

Question: Housing for all is a welfare initiative tempered with social justice. Discuss how this worthy objective can be attained.

• Housing for all can be achieved with dramatic ease by legalising slum land and providing infrastructure

• Three sets of groups can initiate affordable housing: government, private developers and the community

• Housing remains inadequate in most Indian states. For instance, in Karnataka all arms of government constructed 3,60,000 dwelling units in the past 15 years; there is still a shortage of 1 million units

• Private developers have either unaided or through PPP provided affordable housing

• Studies by KPMG and Monitor Inclusive Markets hold that private developers cannot enter the market of under INR 5 lakh housing unaided and will need incentives to build units between INR 5 and 10 lakh

• Developers can construct housing below INR 5 lakh by redeveloping slums and building vertical rehousing

• Global housing policy has benefited from upgrading built houses in countries such as Brazil, Egypt and Thailand. Indian housing also needs to emulate this

• Upgrading has the following advantages:

- It costs less than construction of new housing units

- Change in role of government and policy to providing settlement level services including internal roads, electricity, sanitation and drainage

- Multiplier effect of upgrading for human development outcomes is enormous

- Working with existing settlements means no new land needs to be located

Facts and Stats

• There is a shortage of 18.78 million housing units in the year 2012

• More than 95% of the shortage is for low income households that earn less than INR 2 lakh as total household income per annum

• Nearly 17 million houses need to make under 10 lakh to afford a house 5 times its annual income

• Currently secure housing for all built by government and private sector is insufficient in number