Housing for the urban poor

Instead of allowing creation of large housing schemes, govts need to promote densification in upcoming projects

To have an adequate shelter to house one’s family is a basic human need. However, for countless hardworking households across our country, access to adequate housing remains an elusive goal. This problem is particularly severe in our fast-growing urban areas. Ignoring the needs of low-income people, housing in larger cities and towns is currently being controlled by powerful interest groups, which aim to create low-density housing colonies by encroaching upon surrounding agricultural areas, and in turn producing an uncontrolled, environmentally unsustainable and an automobile-dependent urban sprawl. The Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington brought together a range of experts to focus on Pakistan’s rapid urbanisation challenges, including the need for adequate housing. It released a policy brief, which not only sheds light on existing low-cost housing needs, but also provides interesting insights to better address this problem.

There is an approximate backlog of over 4.3 million housing units in the country, which is growing by an additional demand for 500,000 units per annum. There is an oversupply of homes available for those who can afford to pay more but a dearth of housing that is within the price reach of the urban poor. According to a 2012 survey in Lahore, 66 per cent of the urban population could afford to buy only one per cent of the available homes in the city. The situation in other major cities is no better.

Although approximately 40 per cent of Pakistan’s urban population lives in sub-standard katchi abadis, the Katchi Abadis Improvement and Regularisation Programme is also facing mammoth challenges. The government authorities concerned need to work much harder to better integrate katchi abadis, by linking them with available infrastructure, and making katchi abadi integration a priority in future urban development plans, which is not really happening.

Successive governments have launched numerous schemes in the name of the poor. Most recently, the Sindh government has approved a proposed draft for the construction of around 200,000 low-cost housing units worth Rs300 billion in the province. However, even if this scheme is effectively implemented, it will still be a drop in the ocean compared with the actual requirement. Moreover, the experience of similar schemes in the past is not encouraging. Previous low-cost housing schemes have failed to meet the demand of low-income groups because they remained unaffordable for a majority of poor households, and became encumbered by red tape and corruption. As a result, public land allocated for housing the poor is often purchased by speculators or the middle classes instead. There is need to draw lessons from prior failures to ensure that such schemes are effectively implemented.

Instead of allowing the creation of large housing schemes, by encroaching upon more agricultural land for instance, provincial governments need to promote densification in upcoming housing projects. One suggestion could be to review the existing restrictions on height of apartments, so as to encourage construction of buildings that can house at least 1,500 persons per acre. A review mechanism of experts representing urban planners, architects, engineers, and other stakeholders should be established at the provincial level to ensure that such high-rises are built safely. Our policymakers need to take decisive steps to offer the urban poor a chance to own their own homes, instead of being compelled to eke out an existence in ever-growing slums and squatter settlements.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 6^th, 2015.

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