The housing crisis

With the battering that the heat of the hottest year on record is giving the country, the power crisis and the frequent breakdowns in the electricity supply chain tend to overshadow all the other crises that are fomenting at the same time. Looming large but largely unpublicised is the acute — but becoming desperate — housing shortage. Low-cost and affordable housing, depending on which source is cited, currently has a deficit of 9-12 million units, and there is uniform agreement across a basket of sources that the shortage could reach 20 million by 2025 if remedial action is not urgently taken.

Once again we find ourselves referencing the PML-N manifesto published prior to the last election. The plan was to provide 500,000 housing units for low-income groups and this was announced in the federal budget for 2013-14. The programme was to be called Apna Ghar Housing Society, which was to set up 1,000 residential colonies of 500 units each providing homes eventually to 50 million people. It is now being reported that the housing and works ministry has shelved the scheme. Officials close to the project have expressed their doubts as to whether it would ever materialise. If this is indeed the case then a serious and damaging mistake has been made.



The planning and development ministry (something of a misnomer) are of the seemingly settled view that the government should not be in the business of purchasing land and then constructing low-cost housing for the populace. The housing ministry in the 2016-17 budget sought Rs350 million for the scheme. There is not a single rupee allocated for it in the 2017-18 budget. With the entire operation seemingly stillborn there seems little prospect of the private sector picking up the baton. With the results of the census due within the year and the likelihood of a picture emerging of a much-increased population, housing ought to be high on the government agenda. It is not, and penalties will be paid downstream.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 9^th, 2017.

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