Affordable housing

Affordable housing is a term used to describe dwelling units whose total housing costs are deemed "affordable" to those that have a median income. Although the term is often applied to rental housing that is within the financial means of those in the lower income ranges of a geographical area, the concept is applicable to both renters and purchasers in all income ranges.

The new age real estate developer has envisioned a dream — a dream of housing every family in the country. ‘Affordable housing’ is a term that posses the potential to transform this dream, also harboured by millions of households, into reality. Affordable housing includes value housing, which is the need of every middle class family, as well as low income housing, where the most significant need of India lies.

Over a billion people around the world live in appalling conditions. In India alone, about 100 million people live in slums and slum-like conditions without adequate basic facilities. These numbers are expected to touch 200 million by 2020. If the current trend continues, the number of urban dwellers will reach almost 5 billion by 2030. In India, the urban population is expected to reach 576 million in 2030 from the current 328 million. With this rapid urbanisation, one of the biggest challenges will be providing affordable housing to city dwellers, especially the poor.

Government bodies should also seek support from NGOs and other civil society organisations in planning houses for the poor in terms of design and facilities. They can ensure the involvement of the urban poor in housing and resettlement efforts so that the plan is developed by those who have to be settled and relocated.

For example, the National Slum Dwellers Federation works actively with the Mumbai authorities to develop and implement the resettlement plan and ensure that the most vulnerable are not missed out. They map each household and issue identity cards to each member of the household. This ensures transparency in the rehabilitation efforts.

NGOs can also play an important role in loan recovery by encouraging and facilitating slum communities to save part of their earnings in recurring deposits and by making microfinance available to them. Facilitating such regular savings helps the more vulnerable families to benefit from such housing schemes.

Finally, it is also important to look for new methods of land use planning and management factoring in the population growth projections. We can nurture more middle-level cities to offload mega-cities to some extent. These middle-level and smaller cities need development focus, infrastructure investment and political attention in order to "prepare" them for any such role.

By Nilesh Shah