Fixing Our Housing Crisis

The Government says Housing for All is the answer and far more homes need to be built, but it doesn’t say what kind, where and by whom? Developers are hard pressed for money to complete their projects and deliver. At the same time, unsold inventory scenario reflects a state of emergency – a crisis enveloping more and more of the city's people and changing its neighbourhoods for the worse. It is a crisis with several causes but linked effects: the price of buying a home is soaring, there are hardly any affordable homes in sight and an expensive, often perilous, rented sector is expanding into the gap. The impacts are extending across Delhi NCR's broad social spectrum as an inflated property market excludes more of the middle class and government policies fail in their own terms and make bad situations worse. The consequences include anxiety, overcrowding, financial stress, economic harm and damaging forms of population churn – a bad recipe for any city. But what are the remedies? Fixing our housing problems will require realism, boldness, big policy shifts, serious political will and, guiding everything, clear ideas and principles about what makes a city work well as a place to live. None of this stuff is easy: there are balances to be struck, compromises to be worked out and competing needs to be reconciled. But the large task of making a bigger Delhi NCR better means accommodating its majority, those on low and middle incomes alike, more securely and affordably. Your wise thoughts on ways forward are welcome.