ACROSS Pakistan’s towns and cities, it is evident that the model of ‘development’ adopted by the state and city administrations is divorced from the needs of the people. Consider, for example, the vast tracts of land that are handed over for development to the private sector on a commercial basis. These are used largely for establishing high-profile housing societies and constructing glass-and-chrome towers that lie outside the imagination of most of the cities’ inhabitants. While we can argue there’s no harm in this, here’s the rub: hardly anywhere is it possible to discern a cohesive effort to also make housing options available to low-income groups. Swathes of the country’s urban poor have been left to set up homes as best as they can, wherever they can. This, as the recent protests in Islamabad over an attempt to demolish a low-income settlement reminds us, is what leads to encroachments, takeover of land and the creation of slums. So large is the number of such low-income families that one would have expected the state to have made efforts to make housing options available a long time ago. Yet the unpalatable fact is that Pakistan faces a housing shortage of nearly 7.6 million units; the gap increases every year by at least 500,000, and 85pc of this gap in demand comprises households earning less than Rs20,000 a month. And while the problem is particularly acute at the lowest economic stratum, it extends to even middle-income families.

There is much the state can and must do to make affordable housing available. For one, there is enough data to indicate that access to secure housing plays a considerable role in helping people lift themselves out of poverty. For another, making access to housing a priority is one of the most basic responsibilities of the state. There are estimates that families that earn in the range of Rs10,000 to Rs20,000 per month spend as much as 40pc, in some cases more, of their incomes on rent. This could be put towards owning a home if the state were to create a better system of mortgages, loans and home-financing than is currently the case. The country’s last housing policy is now 13 years old; some creative thinking is required.

Published in Dawn, May 27th, 2014