11 October 2004	Monday	25 Shaban 1425

On 28 September, the Prime Minister took serious notice of the rising multitude of dubious sounding housing schemes that are attracting people's investment.

He gave on the spot instructions to nip in the bud these potential scams in making.

The steps taken by the PM were long due to save the innocent and less informed common people from losing their hard earned savings. However this state of affair refers to several realities that require timely review and action.

There is a dearth of investment opportunities for common people who have limited capital and market know how that could ensure reasonable and riskless returns. With savings schemes becoming almost redundant and hot real estate markets entirely inaccessible for investment, little opportunity remains for this category of society.

Stocks and capital are traded in an upper society that is socially and culturally incomprehensible for this class. Besides, there are many people who seek to obtain a piece of land to build a house for residence without any investment or business motive behind it. Thus the issue of housing needs to be addressed on a realistic basis.

There remains a massive housing need in the country. Researches have clearly shown that the low and lower middle income groups are the main categories that is affected by this shortage.

According to the statistics, the total shortage stood at over 27.3 million units in the country in 2003. In the urban sector, this shortage stands at over 1.2 million. Rise in population, persisting housing backlog, migrations, sociological and demographic changes are the main causes that contribute to this shortage.

In rural areas, the indigenous mechanism that provided for housing is falling apart. Peasants were provided housing against the labour and services that were contributed by them and their families to the land owner.

Materials for construction were obtained from collectively owned communal lands called as 'shaamlath'. Mud, thatch, wood, reef and other materials were cheap and abundant.

Landowner and his subjects co-existed in this semi-barter society for ages. Cash economy, rampant sales/transactions of lands and increasing ingress of commercialization of farming made these peasants homeless.

Communal lands were appropriated by the influentials for market benefits. Thus the landless peasants and their fellow artisans became victim of circumstances. The state has not been able to come up with any viable option for this critical mass of rural homeless whose number is rising alarmingly.

Expansion of road network in various rural districts of the country created a market for commercial sales of land. Land owners, fully aware of the emerging commercial potentials, teamed up with real estate speculators to convert agricultural land into housing estates.

It pushed the peasants and tenants towards the large cities thus increasing the burden to an unbearable proportion. Ribbon developments along highways, major roads and farm to market roads is on the rise in central and northern Punjab, Sindh and NWFP.

Situation in the large cities is even worse. A sizeable number of large cities are already infested with kutchi abadis and illegal sub division of agricultural land. Karachi and Lahore are two critical examples of the two phenomena. There are no institutionally initiated options available for housing the urban poor.

Scores of researches in this sector have identified the main reasons for this state of affairs. The foremost issue is the access to land. Traditionally land was regarded as an asset that was distributed according to the criteria of social need.

This mechanism ensured its smooth supply to all categories of the society. The status of land has now changed to a tradable commodity. Its distribution is now determined by market forces.

The state policies are too feeble to affect this massive enterprise. Besides the city and regional planning, which used to regulate land uses, has become a redundant exercise.

Therefore the resourceful entrepreneurs have made land and housing as a value added industry. No room obviously remains for poor who do no have the means to access the land market.

Housing credit is another issue which is extremely elusive for the urban poor. There are many pre-requisites that have to be fulfilled in order to benefit from any formal credit facility.

Properly titled land, definite asset base, verifiable source of formal and permanent income are a few of them. The poor have no chance to fulfil this criterion. Their foremost need is land for which no credit is formally available.

The poor are employed on daily wages or in the informal sector where no formal documentation exists. Thus they can not prove their income status. Even small scale entrepreneurs do not benefit from formal credit.

Rising conversion of far away peri-urban land into settlements has become one of the recent options for fulfilling this most basic need. Most of the large cites are now experiencing third generation squatter settlements. In such localities the provision of services has becomes a major issue.

Water supply, sanitation and transportation are seldom accessed. People build community level infrastructure however its linkup to any infrastructure network remains a sore issue. Baldia Town in Karachi is an example where land subdivision is still being done by informal land sub dividers.

Due to the gravity of the issue related to the housing sector, several important steps need to be taken. Comprehensive research is needed to address the current situation of rural housing.

Old models and welfare approaches of doling out inappropriate land are non-working options which must not be applied. Pilot projects related to incremental housing schemes in urban areas need to be adopted as a policy for housing the low income.

This will have a positive impact in situations where state land can be made available for the low income groups. Credit products need to be worked out to enable the low income groups to access land from the conventional projects. And above all, revival of city and regional planning exercise must be undertaken in urban areas to ensure stock taking of land assets and affirming emerging land uses.