Housing for all?

Ar. Sushain Gupta
There are few social issues that occupy as comparably central position in the ideology of India’s – “Democratic” ethics. Housing is a basic need that, for many all over the world, remains unmet or inadequate. In order to ensure the availability of quality living space for everyone, architecture and urban development can contribute significantly to finding new solutions. The challenge of affordable housing lies in achieving an optimum relationship between costs and the home quality value, which is dependent on many local parameters and cultural preferences.
The story of affordable housing/low cost housing in India is no success story. Even though the country has a housing shortfall of 24 million housing , the affordable housing being made available to low income groups is still insufficient. The current rapid pace of urbanization has significantly exacerbated this problem.
The Housing for All mission envisions a multitude of strategies such as tax rebates, monetary support, relaxed development regulations, discounted interest rates, etc. to provide Housing for All by 2022.
The programs such as Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna  (2015-2022) are supposed to provide in-situ rehabilitation of existing slum dwellers using land as a resource.
However, the scarcity of affordable housing has created precarious situation in India’s densely populated urban areas. One cause of this is that the figures have not been adjusted to reflect the number of dilapidated houses nor the number of people belonging to a household. The clash between the official figures and the complex urban reality sets in as soon as one asks how to define the term affordibility .
The psychological factors contribute to this problem as well. People who fall into the categories of homeless, Economic Weaker Section (EWS) and Low Income Group (LIG) along with those who belong to the informal sector are often denied access to low cost housing.
As a result of new liberalized market and Smart city policies , the cities are currently undergoing transformation. As a result, planning initiatives are increasingly tailored to suit the dynamics of the market. The biggest barrier for affordable housing is the issue of land access. A large and increasing number of projects that are announced under the guise of affordability are located on the periphery of city. These sites may be affordable but they are poorly served by public transportation and services such as schools and hospitals. Thus, the edges of the city are expanding outward exponentially. While at the same time , the inner city centers are experiencing gentrification.
Learn from the History
Lauri Baker , a pioneer of low cost housings develop certain models which are inspiration to this generation undergoing the housing issue. He is a british born Indian architect. While living in Kerala, he sought to enrich the culture in which he participated by promoting simplicity and home grown quality in his buildings. Following the traditional Indian design for buildings, he managed to create affordable housing with different patterns and style of construction. Energy and eco friendly is the construction style of his buildings ; thus create inspiration to follow.
The role of architecture
The affordable housing issue is seen as an economic and as a political problem, leading to widespread discussion of economic policy measures to relieve it, such as funding for social housing , fixed rents and financing and amortization models. It requires the study of not only buildings and their construction but also urban planning factors such as density, land use and infrastructure.
Prefabrication- Architecture produced as an industrial product would naturally become the new vernacular. This solution for low cost housing is prevailing and quiet successful at the end of durability and cost effectiveness.
(The author is M. Arch (Urban Design)
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