What is the solution to Nation’s housing problem?

There is confusion over how to address the problem of shortage of houses in the country. On one hand the shortage of houses is not able to fulfill the demand supply gap in view of growing population, on the other many houses built for weaker sections remained unallotted. The shortage of houses measured in 2012 to be 18.78 million units increased by 54 percent in 2018 to cross 29-million-mark. The number of houses unallotted in 2001 was only 6.3 percent in 2001, but it rose to 7.5 percent by 2011.

Urbanization is growing fast of late in the country. The urban population increased to 377.1 million in 2011 as against 62.4 millions in 1951. Therefore, the cities are not able to meet the demand for houses of the migrant population. This is attributed to the lopsided policies. The demand for affordable houses is very high, while that of the luxury houses is good. Growing urbanization and migration of people to urban areas pushed up the demand for houses.

At the same time, the housing policy mostly banked on providing houses to all giving the beneficiaries the title. The policy did not provide for any alternatives. On the other hand, purchasing house is not easy under the prevailing situation. Therefore, many are not able to fulfill their dream and hence, live in rented houses. Therefore, the demand for rented houses is on the rise. In this backdrop, a rented house policy appears to be inevitable.

Affordable rented home is not a major issue before the housing department. But, it is the priority of many. Therefore, governments should focus on rented houses. All government policies are centered on owning a house. Therefore, they are ignorant of rented houses. Moreover, there is no policy intervention on the part of the state government to increase the availability of rented houses.

Under this context, the national urban rented housing draft policy and model tenancy act have been conceived to set situation straight. But, for the success of these policies all states should be involved in the exercise. On the whole, efforts should be made to achieve the objective of ‘houses for fall’ and to fulfill the rented house needs of the urban poor.