National Housing Policy in the works

Having a roof over ones head is one of man's most basic and fundamental needs, yet in Pakistan millions are still caught in the struggle to put their name to a piece of land- something that remains a dream for many throughout life.
And with the burgeoning size of the countrys population, the housing shortage in the country has progressively gone from bad to worse in the past few years. According to estimates by the International Housing Finance Programme, the housing shortage in the country goes up by nearly 300,000 units every year.
The apathy of those at the helm is further brought to light by the fact that the data available is still projected from indicators revealed by the 1998 Population Census, but even so there is consensus among experts that the countrys total national housing backlog currently rests around 7-8 million units.
Previously, much has been said about the issue, which has remained part of the public policy discourse for a very long time, with little headway in coming up with practical solutions.
Where solutions have been proposed -case in point being the handful of previous national housing policies- their adoption has been hampered by either a lack of political will, or lack of interest from private developers and financiers.
Consequently, housing has been relegated to the bottom of the pyramid of products, as large-scale developers build upon their upper middle class clientele and banks sit content upon their piles earned by investing in government paper. But with the newly elected government taking up office, the hopes of finally finding a solution have again - rather optimistically - been revived.
Much optimism was stirred by the budget speech which announced that development of three-marla housing schemes for the homeless and the construction of at least, 1,000 clusters of 500 houses each for low-income families through public-private partnership were planned for the year.
And now there is news that a five-year National Housing Policy is in the final stages of being drafted. When reached for comment, the Media Advisor to CM Punjab confirmed that the provincial chapter of the policy was indeed in the final leg of preparation and will be released to the public within the next 10 days.
But the government will have to do more than just put words to paper this time, say some of the leading experts of urban planning and housing development in the country. "With the problem of housing spanning the entire country, charity and subsidised model project such as the Ashyaana Housing Scheme can only have a minimal impact, says Ayub Munir, an Eisenhower scholar of housing and a leading architect and urban development expert from Lahore.
"The government - if they are indeed willing to tackle the problem head-on will need to accept that interventions of that scale are not repeatable or scalable," he contended, adding that this time around, the government should venture into public-private partnerships with reputable developers wherein the trunk infrastructure is provided by the government, and the rest is done by the private parties.
The sentiment was echoed by Rukham Khan, the COO of Eden Housing, one of the leading private developers in the country. In a recent conversation with BR Research, he said the new policy should reform regulations on land disposal and ensure that delivery mechanisms are transparent. He reiterated that the initiation of Housing Price Index (HPI) and Housing Access Index (HAI) through the collaboration of government and private sector is direly needed.
As of now speculation is rife, but sources within the industry report that some of the issues that will be actively tackled by the government in the upcoming NHP will include ventures into new avenues such as community mortgage programmes and the provision of housing credit assistance to public at subsidised rates (a mortgage facility of Rs 1.5 million to Rs 5.0 million at a mark-up rate of eight percent has already been announced in the Federal budget speech).
Additionally, sources also confirm that options of drawing funds from the public through permissible financial channels to fund housing projects and micro-lending programs for house financing/up gradation might also be part of the eagerly awaited draft.

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Pakistans Housing Indiactors

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*Indicators                    Punjab   Sindh   Balochistan    FATA         KPK

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Total housing units        10,537,127 5,022,392   971,116   341,114   2,211,236

Person per housing unit          6.90      6.00      6.70      9.30        8.00

Pucca housing units(%)          62.00     46.69     14.19     36.73       56.15

Owned housing units(%)          82.97      76.9     86.64     90.08       80.61

Single Room Housing Units (%)   31.97     56.93     42.77     13.04       27.71

Two-room Housing unit(%)        33.54     23.87     25.18     25.91        34.5

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