The housing debate
Or rather, the pronounced lack of it
OUR discussions on the urban issues are mostly centred on those of mass transit versus healthcare, or infrastructure versus education etc. From drawing rooms, cafes and TV studios to the road shows of the political parties, that is where the focus is. Obviously, we cannot deny the importance of these problems and the trade-offs involved, but have we noticed the absence of housing concerns in these debates? Do we have adequate housing facilities in our cities? Aren’t we worried about that? Should the government also be as relaxed as the community on the subject?
Why does the community look so fine with the housing? One immediate answer that we catch effortlessly is our choice of living with parents after marriage (the philosophy that ‘new rooms in the house bring new wonders’). By choosing this, among other things, we increase density of our neighbourhoods and get more congested spaces, noise, stress and more divorce petitions. The broken families that we are, we create a broken community which is unable to make neighbourhoods healthy and liveable in order to at least reduce external stress coming from the built environment. On the other hand, a vast number of us who opt not to live with our parents let ourselves become exploited by the informal actors of rental market. Again, being members of a shattered community, we don’t form housing cooperatives. We don’t speak about it either.
The mysterious silence that growls in the empty value system is then seen in either migrations to ‘segregated’ communities or in the real estate investments that we make for profit. But little effort is made on creating community alliances or using family persuasion as a policy tool for social housing solutions focusing on affordability. Have we seen NGOs, traders’ associations or other professional organisations etc. working on this issue the way they are active on other matters of their interests? The maximum demand on the housing question from them is allocation of land for (say any names) ‘lawyers’ colony, doctors’ colony, employees colony etc, etc.’ where the balloting of plots always favour the office bearers of that association and those that already have two or more plots in the city. This kind of award further pushes the affordability of land and housing away as these allottees are happy entrants to the speculative market of urban land. In turn, it is thus an example of a community working against itself by safeguarding and promoting greed.
While the strength of community action is evident, the initiatives by the successive governments appear to be lacking seriousness to the issue. As the general elections are approaching, every provincial government would announce pro-poor housing plans like 5 Marla, Kachi Abadi, Jinnah Abadi or Sasti Basti etcetera as they move further into the election year whereas (in Punjab especially) the poor people are still going from pillar to post with their ‘Asnad-e-Haqooq-e-Milkiat’ (certificates of proprietary rights) of land allotted to them since the last general elections. The directorates of slums improvement, the offices that steer these pro-poor housing initiatives, instead of being strong institutional foundation, are godforsaken places generally considered to be parking lots for the civil servants.
The case of housing for middle class is also no different. Informal Subdivisions of Agriculture Land (ISAL) has become a prevalent phenomenon in our cities. These are informal housing colonies of the middle class, established on private land in collusion with land owners, realtors and government land/municipal officials providing secure land title but smaller size of plots, narrow roads and no amenities like sewerage, water, park, playground etc. So one pays a heavy amount to live in a slum. While the government appears to be failing on putting a check on such a development keeping in view its rising scale, the public sector housing agencies are fast changing their organisational behaviour. They are either partnering with powerful private builders involved in corrupt practices or following their business models which are only meant for profit.
On the contrary, the government has to put housing in the overall equitable community development. It has to get hold of its most precious resource i.e., the urban land to distribute it among those in need instead of doling this out to some development authority officials thinking and acting like realtors. Similarly, while land titles or home ownership remains at the top as the ultimate policy goal, it is also important to consider alternatives like transitional shelter for the workers, subsidised accommodation for the people with special needs, rental housing for students and working women etc. The government has to decide as to whether it will stand with community or the property tycoons and the community has to do some soul-searching on its values.