7 Biggest Challenges Before Housing For All Mission

India is a diverse nation. When we talk about housing its vast population,  we have to keep in mind the great variance in the needs and preferences of our country's people. The greatest challenge Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government at the Centre would face in its “Housing for All by 2022” mission is this: people are different and, more importantly, their need to shelter themselves cannot be met in isolation with their other needs. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Let us look into the major challenges the government faces in implementing its Housing for All mission:

The Ministry of Housing And Urban Poverty Alleviation estimates the shortage in urban dwelling units at 18.8 million in 2012. However, of these only 0.53 million people are truly homeless. The rest live in extremely congested, obsolete, or non-serviceable kutcha houses. Which means about 97.2 per cent of the people who are classified as homeless live in dwelling units that are sub-standard. However, setting such standards for dwelling units have many unintended consequence. Many low-income households live in slums in large Indian cities in localities where real estate is very expensive. This is done to access the city's infrastructure at a low transportation cost. Unless dwellers there are rehabilitated into formal settlements that adhere to better standards, number of sub-standard dwelling will not actually come down. 

People who live in informal settlements lack security of tenure. As the land on which their settlement units stand is very valuable, security of tenure can name many of them millionaires overnight. This is especially true of people who live in slums such a Dharavi, which is near the Bandra- Complex, Mumbai's de facto central business district. For example, according to Scroll, residents of Koliwada, a fishing village in Mumbai do not want rehabilitation. They, however, want redevelopment. One of the reasons is that many of the residents own many informal settlements here. When redevelopment happens, they may lose their property. Moreover, when their tenure is not secure, people who live in informal settlements are not able to redevelop their own homes due to huge expenses involved. Economist Hernando de Soto estimates that in India, such assets in the informal economy is greater than the assets of the Indian government.

Standards of dwelling units have been improving everywhere in India since Independence. It will improve further if slum dwellers are freer. In cities like Mumbai, as the floor space index (FSI) is low, the only way additional floor space can be built is by densification of existing slums. (FSI is the ratio between the area of the floor and the size of the plot.)    

Subsidies in the residential segment often fail to solve the problem because homes are not “portable”. A low income household in a slum in Dharavi, for example, would not be willing to move into a formal unit in the suburbs. If evicted, they may live in informal settlements of even lower quality, in less centrally located areas. This phenomenon would make it tough for the Centre to make its Housing for All scheme a success. 

According to the census commissioners' report in 2012, urban slum dwellers enjoy amenities that are comparable to that of the amenities other urban Indians enjoy. In some aspects, the amenities slum dwellers enjoy are even better than that of other urban Indians. More importantly, they enjoy amenities that are far superior to that of rural Indians. Field studies often confirm that though they would be happier with greater floor space and more amenities, they would not want to live elsewhere. They need proper infrastructure more than formal units. 

Even as the Housing for All scheme is seen as a national mission, local and state governments have a major role in executing such programmes. Due to lack of clarity on powers of various agencies, executing such schemes becomes more complex. Urban policy experts agree that in India, decisions that should be taken on a local level are often orchestrated by state government or central government. Homeless in India has been declining every year. But, this trend will be more pronounced if local decisions are taken locally. 

In the implementation of missions like “Housing for All”, huge number of experts from various fields are involved. Communication among them is of key concern while implementing such large-scale programmes. World Bank economist Abha -Ghani, for example, points out that often the experts in the urban planning department do not speak to experts in the transportation department and the experts in transportation department do not communicate with experts in the housing department. It is not impossible to plan land use ignoring the commute patterns in a city; it is also not possible to plan urban infrastructure without knowing land use policy in a city. Similarly, it is impossible to plan transportation networks without paying attention to the commute patterns in a city. Moreover, architects may be capable of solving a certain aspect of the housing problem while economists and sociologists may be capable of handling other equally important aspects. Under such circumstances, coordination will be of crucial importance. 

We often see that the cost of building better infrastructure on existing urban land is less expensive than building more dwelling units in the periphery. For extending a city's periphery, more land would be required. As land costs more than infrastructure that stands on it, it is much cheaper to build infrastructure in existing areas, realign the streets, build better roads and provide access to tap water and better sanitation.