Finding housing for poor a prime responsibility, the government has been working dedicatedly and has worked out things like development of large number of houses and allotted them to the poor. Funds have been collected and allocated for development of such units.
With increase in urbanization demand for residential property among urban poor has increased. Government needs to have an effective urban policy which could bring into effect to optimum use of land and overcome the issue of shortage of land to some extent.
Delineated below are a few suggestions for drafting housing policies for poor:
Housing policies should also have a hidden goal of broader economic growth which in turn will ensure regulated urban development.
Urban poor are the ones who actually run the urban growth engine thus the policy should have urban poor as the first and foremost priority and should not end up being just another futile policy that promotes indiscriminate migration and does nothing to solve the issues being created by it.
Instead of transferring the ownership to inhabitants government should look towards developing enough stock of rented housing for the poor.
The rents will hardly pose to be an additional burden on the poor, as they pay Rs 500 – 1,000 per month for dingy huts in slum, without access to basic facilities whereas here they will get the basic facilities and wont even face the uncertainty in tenure
Since housing arrangements for the urban poor means building lower income units and long term finances, these ventures can be of great benefits to the builders which in turn will help government to have full support of builders. A contract can be signed with private builders to develop these housing units for poor. A build-operate-transfer contract for tenure of 15-20 years can be an attractive proposal.
