ABSTRACT
Housing is a major place-based infrastructural element and an integral part of the fabric of a community. It has a profound impact on the social, economic, and physical character of a community. The “basic needs” approach introduced by the International Labor Organization in 1976 included shelter as a basic need, along with food and clothing. 1 Provision of appropriate housing is important to the economic and social wellbeing of a society:
It typically constitutes 15 percent to 20 percent of household expenditures. For all but the wealthy, it is usually the major goal of family saving efforts. Investment in housing represents up to 30 percent of fixed capital formation with vigorous housing programs. For some of the self-employed, housing is the place of work. Apart from physical and economic benefits, housing has also substantial social benefits including welfare impact of shelter from its elements, sanitation facilities and access to health and educational facilities. 2
Around 900 million urban dwellers worldwide live in settlements that can be characterized as “slums.” Their numbers have grown rapidly over the last 20 years, and will continue to do so unless the housing policies of governments and international agencies become far more effective. The urgency of addressing this issue is recognized in the Millennium Development Goals, one of the main targets of which is to significantly improve the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020: 3
Achieving this will require new ways of addressing such critical issues as access to land for housing, secure tenure, provision of basic services and improvements to housing for the urban poor. It will also mean supporting the incremental processes by which low-income households build, since this is how most dwellings are built or improved. Creative measures and new ways of financing these must be found. 4
“The very complicated problem of satisfactorily housing people on a national scale has not been solved in most countries of the world.” 5 The situation has not gotten better; as reported in 2005, the housing shortage is still most evident demographically where developing countries have been urbanized considerably since the 1950s. 6 According to the UN Centre for Housing Development, in Third World countries, 25 to 75 percent of urban residents live in absolute poverty, and an active housing policy
can be considered a deliberate social and economic investment. This investment would generate multiplier effects in forward and backward linkages and productivity. 7
In recent years, there has been a growing recognition that providing affordable housing is essential for the physical, social, economic, and environmental futures of nations. 8 In the past, most East and South Asian countries were largely rural; today, they continue to experience rapid urban growth, with many of their urban concentrations reaching a population level of over 1 million. 9 The same is now happening in Pakistan, where the concentration of economic activities in big cities such as Karachi and Lahore is attracting people from rural environments. 10 The process of urbanization, however, is creating a multitude of problems; the shortfall in services, including housing and infrastructure, are just a few among many. During the 1980s, the urban areas of Pakistan experienced rapid growth at a rate of around 77 percent from 1981 to 1993, indicating a high level of “rural-urban transformation.” 11
The United Nations projects that developing countries will add approximately 2 billion new urban residents during the next 25 years. 12 This number, along with the existing 1 billion people living in slums, “frames the demand side for the need for housing and infrastructure services in developing countries.” 13 By 2030, about 3 billion people, or 40 percent of the world’s population, will need housing. The statistical analysis in the 2005 Global Report on Housing estimates that 96,150 housing units per day, or 4,000 per hour, will be required. 14 This analysis includes new units and does not include replacements of deteriorated housing stock. As elaborated by Ghaus and Pasha, on the supply side, the slow rate of development of residential plots in the cities and lack of municipal infrastructure had limited the construction of new housing units. On the demand side, inflation in the prices of building materials has reduced levels of affordability for housing, implying on the one hand that residential densities have increased and on the other hand that slums are taking up a progressively higher share of the urban population. 15
According to United Nations statistics, by the year 2000, half of the population of Asian cities was living in slums and squatter settlements. 16 As Angel said, “the level of informal housing occupancy (houses built without approval, title or adequate urban infrastructure) is normally 20 percent of the total housing stock” in developing countries. 17
The presence of illegal housing in the form of slum and squatter settlements is a clear indication of the failure of governments to provide adequate housing for the poor. 18 During the last decade, most governments have faced serious fi scal defi cits, and local budgets have constrained housing development projects. 19 Hardoy and Satterthwaite 20 examined the housing policies of 17 developing countries and concluded that only two of them had incorporated programs for low-income families in their national housing policy; one of these was Pakistan, where 24 percent of the total population (170 million people) lives below the poverty line. As in other developing countries, poor people in Pakistan are exposed to housing shortages and low incomes. According to the 1980 housing census in Pakistan, the number of housing units increased by only 2.1 percent during a corresponding 3 percent increase in population. According to the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the rate of residential plot development and provision of infrastructural facilities also failed to keep up with demand. On the demand side, due to the high infl ation of building material prices, the ability of poor people to afford to construct a house has decreased signifi - cantly. 21 In early 2010, it was estimated that there was a total shortage of 8.8 million
houses, and this number has continued to grow due to an increased demand for 700,000 houses per year compared to the supply of 330,000 houses per year. 23 The characteristics of the housing stock in Pakistan are shown in Table 19.1 .
