India to face 18.78 mln housing shortage from this year

Urban areas in India will face an acute housing shortage from this year with 18.78 million people living in congested houses and requiring new houses besides those living in obsolete houses, an housing ministry official said Friday. According to a recent report, this number includes 0.99 million households living in non-serviceable "katcha" (non concrete) houses, 2.27 in obsolete houses, 14.99 in congested houses and requiring new accommodation and 0.53 million in homeless conditions. The report was submitted by a technical committee to the ministry of housing and urban poverty alleviation to estimate the urban housing shortage for the 12th five year plan (2012-17). It was chaired by Amitabh Kundu, a professor of Economics in Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. The housing shortage has been estimated by putting together the number of households residing in unacceptable dwelling units (computed by considering the obsolescence factor), those residing in unacceptable physical and social conditions (worked out using overcrowding/congestion factor) and homeless households. Besides, the report also talks of "housing poverty", wherein households mostly do not have the means to enter the housing market to claim ownership or acquire rental housing. "Housing shortage would not be a major problem if there is no mismatch between the people for whom the houses are being built and those who need them. Indeed, if the newly built houses were available to the houseless, squatters, slum dwellers and those living in extremely congested conditions, the shortage would be small," the report said. It would, however, be unrealistic to assume that the houseless households and those living in unacceptable conditions, in other words, those who could be described as in "housing poverty", would have the ability to afford and access to the burgeoning supply in the market.