Affordable Housing in IndiaFor the last many decades, public sector entities such as State Housing Boards and Development Authorities were the only suppliers of Affordable Housing stock through projects for EWS and LIG categories. An encouraging factor though is that in the last five years a set of new private sector developers and financial institutions have started developing new models for building and financing Affordable Housing. However fromthe scale of the problem it is clear from the scale of the housing shortage, that the public sector and a few private players alone cannot address the problem and if we are to realistically address this huge challenge we have to make the housing and housing finance marketswork for the poor.
It is within this context that the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, set up a Task Force vide Office Order M11022/1/2009-Housing dated the 26 of November 2010, for developing transparent qualified criteria and a separate set of guidance for affordable housing in PPP projects for circulation to states, aimed at developing recommendations to create an enabling framework for increased private sector participation in Affordable Housing.
This report of the Task Force, after elaborating on its Terms of Reference, presents the findings of a Rapid Review of planning approaches adopted in different states. It then discusses and compares the various criteria used to define Affordable Housing, reviews the institutional and procedural issues related to plan approvals and the key incentives recommended by state governments for this housing segment. The next section of the report presents the main recommendations of the Task Force which are categorised into four buckets namely, (a) Supply side financial interventions; (b) Supply side non-financial interventions; (c) Demand side financial interventions; and (d)Demandside non-financial interventions.