Article Title - Urban India’s Much Needed Rental Housing Push
Publication - Shelter
Publisher - HUDCO
Study Partner - Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER)
Authors - Dr. Debarpita Roy, Fellow, ICRIER and Manikandan KP, Institution Builder, Indian Housing Federation
Publication Date - October 5, 2020
ABSTRACT
The article titled ‘Urban India’s Much Needed Rental Housing Push’ was featured in the October issue of ‘Shelter’, a biannual publication by the Housing and Urban Development Corporation Limited (HUDCO). The theme of the issue was 'Housing for All: A Better Urban Future', premised on the theme of World Habitat Day, 2020.
The article acknowledges that the share of rental housing is low among the urban low-income households even though the need for rental housing is high among them. The paper cites a study which categorises the landlords who usually cater to low income households into three types: ‘subsistence’ landlords, ‘petty bourgeois’ landlords and ‘petty capitalist’ landlords. However, much of this rental housing is informal in nature and, though it caters to a significant population, it also has some limitations.
This prevailing grievous state of the rental housing situation in Indian cities came into the spotlight following the mass reverse migration by migrant labour from cities back to their villages as a result of the nationwide lockdown, imposed in March 2020 as a measure to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. It re-focussed attention on the gaps that exist in the accessibility of secure and adequate housing for India’s urban poor and migrant workers. To address this gap, the Government of India launched the Affordable Rental Housing Complexes (ARHCs) scheme in May 2020. ARHC is a recent and much needed rental market policy intervention. Prior to this, the Model Tenancy Act (MTA) was put forth in July 2019 with the aim of improving regulations and efficiency in the urban rental markets.
This article discusses both the initiatives of the Government of India, highlighting certain aspects of each that require further fine-tuning to achieve greater effectiveness. In case of ARHCs, special attention needs to be paid to
the below poverty line households;
provisioning of schools and skilling centres as a part of the complexes; and
the location of these complexes.
In case of MTA, the article recommends a few immediate actionable solutions and a few long-term ones.