ABSTRACT
Urban areas of Bangladesh, accommodating 22 per cent of 111 million people, face an acute housing problem due to the widening gap between the cost of housing and low household affordability. One way of narrowing the gap would be to stem the high rate of escalation in the cost of scarce raw materials, to bring the overall housing cost down. However, there would still be a threshold cost below which housing of acceptable standard could not be provided. The difference between the threshold cost and the affordable cost can be met by subsidies. However, the government cannot extend the provision of subsidy to a large number of households for an indefinite period. The extension of affordability can be seen as another way of reducing the gap between cost and affordability. However, ability and willingness, the two equally important components of affordability, have either been wrongly assessed or ignored, individually or altogether. Therefore, the poorer households still do not have proper housing even after their affordability has been extended. Moreover, what measures the government has taken were inadequate and did not actually reach the needy households. As a result, the housing crisis remains unabated; and this demands an immediate solution, by using all available resources.
