Challenges in urban housing and the way ahead

Affordable Housing is a very important challenge globally and in light of this, United Nations Organisation (UNO) decided the theme of this year’s World Habitat Day as “Housing for All- A Better Urban Future.” With time, the number of slums has considerably increased. India is a one of the many countries worldwide that are having to face this problem. To discuss about this, Urban Update invited Dr Kulwant Singh, Former Asia Advisor, UN-Habitat; Prof K K Pandey, Coordinator, Centre for Urban Studies, Indian Institute of Public Administration; S K Singh, Member (Administration/Technical), Real Estate Regulatory Authority and Appellate Tribunal, Bihar; Amitabh Kundu, Fellow, Research and Information System for Developing Countries; and Dr Sanjay Kumar, Co-Founder and Co-Director, AashrayAdhikarAbhiyan. Abhishek Pandey, Editor, Urban Update moderated the webinar.
Dr Kulwant Singh began the discussion by introducing the theme set by the UN-Habitat for this year’s World Habitat Day. He presented an overall picture of the need of housing for all and hence realising the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). After stating data from the UNO, he said that funds worth close to $900 billion are required to develop a decent living space for all. He addressed the issue regarding the implementation of schemes related to affordable housing. International financial agencies such as the World Bank have also avoided the issue of housing for long. He offered many solutions to the problem of high deficit in housing such as improving affordability of home ownership, subsidising low income housing to rent or own adequate housing, expanding and improving global housing stock, among others. He said, “We need to implement Housing Action Plan by the combined efforts of local communities, government at all levels, civil societies and international agencies.”
K K Pandey began by talking about the role of poor in construction of houses in urban areas. Informal sector is the backbone of the urban economy and hence, their requirements regarding housing must be addressed. People live close to the cities in slums where they don’t have access to basic needs which results in the decrease of productivity. Government has taken various steps to provide housing for workers from the informal sector. He said, “Around Rs40,000 crores has been collected as cess from people for the welfare of construction workers. However, almost Rs30,000 crores of this fund remains unspent.”
Sunil Kumar Singh threw light at the political history of taking housing as an idea in India in the form of Land Ceiling Act. He advocated the National Urban Housing and Habitat Policy and said that it allowed combined efforts by the private sector and governments at all levels to work for providing housing for poor. He also talked about amendment in the rental laws to make it more inclusive for the housing of informal sector in cities. Builder based construction is not meant for people fromeconomically weaker section (EWS) of the society, hence government should engage to encourage housing for the poor. He said, “Government should involve Urban Local Bodies (ULB) in this process because only they can help to solve the problem at grass roots level.”
Dr Kundu aggressively addressed the fact that data for the number of homeless people in urban area is not reliable. However, it still showsthat close to 18 million people remain homeless in India. He said, “Around 80 per cent of this shortage is due to congestion, which means that people are sharing their space. The actual number of the data is much less than what is calculated.” He showed data on how the government allocated resources and pointed out major loopholes in the budgetary allocations. He also praised the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affair’s work. He went on to talk about slum rehabilitation and government’s support in these areas. He said, “According to my data, equal monthly instalments for slum rehabilitation will add up to approximately Rs 2,000 per month, which is an affordable number as per the opinion of civil societies.” The data shows that the living space for slum dwellers has decreased significantly with time. This has largely been the case in South Asian cities. He concluded by saying that maximum amount of subsidy should be allocated to the slum development programmes.
Dr Sanjay Kumar addressed the limitations in government schemes aimed at targeting the poor and homeless people. Inclusiveness of the government policies is the most important factor for their success. He said, “In my experience and study of the topic of affordable housing, the appearance and reality are different. The authorities have avoided the idea of affordable housing for a long time.” Even if they are provided shelter through government policies such as rain baseras (night shelters), poor people are devoid of their identity due to lack of citizenship documents. He ended his discussion by saying that ‘Housing for All’ is a long way ahead for India.