As the sun dipped on October 5 and the last of the races ended, the 41 towering light masts dimmed forever and the main LED screen flashed “Thank You”. It was the end of the iconic Singapore Turf Club closing the chapter of 180 years of horse racing.[1] The nearly 300-acre site would be handed back to the government for housing, mostly public housing. Earlier this year, the public 18-hole golf course overlooking the Marina Bay skyline, opened in 2006, was shut down with the land earmmarked for public housing and Singapore’s Olympic-size ice rink made way last year for condos.[2]
These may seem extreme steps when seen through the prevailing prism of free market and development, but Singapore’s government has not been bound by labels. Instead, it has unhesitatingly, perhaps unpopularly, taken back public land for housing as the demand is set to soar. A bold step which would not go down well with urban development policies in India’s cities. Yet, as the housing crisis looms large in our cities, bold ideas and audacious policies are the need of the day.
Back in 2012, India’s urban housing shortage was a staggering 18.78 million, according to the technical group of the 12th Five Year Plan.[3] Importantly, housing for low-income groups, or affordable housing, accounted for more than 95 percent of the deficit, showed this study.[4] By 2018, India’s urban housing shortage had risen 54 percent to nearly 29 million, stated the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) study.[5]India’s cities are caught in a paradox – high housing shortage of affordable homes even as the stock of expensive vacant homes rises.[6]
Of all cities, Mumbai and Delhi are the worst hit by this paradox and the unavailability of affordable public housing. Mumbai has between 7 and 9 million[7] living in inhospitable slums or dingy homes of the Slum Rehabilitation Authority. Delhi, the national capital, has about 6.75 million people living in poor and uninhabitable dwellings, showed its Economic Survey 2020-21.[8] Without bold steps, especially in public housing, the crisis is set to worsen.
The changes that can – and should – be set in motion irrespective of the government of the day include, but are not limited to, i)housing as a fundamental right read into the Constitution, ii) equity in land use and appropriate pricing, and iii) the decisive role of the state. Let’s unpack each of these.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Housing as a fundamental right
The Indian Constitution does not explicitly enshrine housing as a right. However, the interpretative jurisprudence of the Right to Life, in Article 21, leads to it by including the right to livelihood, the right to live with dignity, and the right to a healthy environment. These are inextricably linked to dwelling – both availability and access to it.
Adequate stocks of affordable homes, especially in cities characterised by the housing paradox, are necessary for health, dignity and freedom. Making housing an explicit right would make the government and its agencies directly accountable to provide affordable homes. The Constitution of South Africa, among others, provides for housing as a legal right.[9]
In their book, In Defence of Housing, urbanists and authors David Madden and Peter Marcuse explain that the right to housing is more than a simple legal claim in that it “needs to take the form of an ongoing effort to democratise and de-commodify housing”. They argue that the demand for inclusion of all within the horizon of housing politics as usual is not enough; the effort should be “to move that horizon”.
Land use equity
Policies of land use affect urban housing as no other factor does – and explains the Singapore government’s decisions to take back land from high-end leisure like racing and golf. The prevailing land market in India’s cities is expensive, skewed towards privatisation of land and real estate developer-oriented development, and profits. Importantly, it views all use of land from one broad-brush lens, particularly its pricing which is dictated by free-market logic regardless of what it is used for and whom that development is intended for.
This lies at the crux of the urban housing crisis and needs the boldest change. Land has to be reserved for social housing and land prices have to be set at the basic minimum for these plots, irrespective of what the market prices private developers in an area dictate. All land in an area cannot carry the same price tag, treated like just another commodity determined by the market-regulated demand-supply equation, but ought to be linked to its social purpose. Differential pricing would make available reasonably-priced land for the construction of affordable or public housing and amenities such as schools, hospitals, and gardens. Plots intended for high-end housing and luxury amenities should be traded at higher, market-determined, rates.
The value of land, as is well known, lies in its location – land near seafronts, posh areas, and central business districts are priced higher than land in suburbs – but is not influenced by its intended use. The differential pricing specifically addresses the second factor. Land meant for public or affordable housing must be priced lower than other plots in any area; quality homes would then be available at affordable prices.
The differential pricing of land, on the face of it, seems an impractical idea for Mumbai or Delhi but it holds immense power to influence change, particularly of public land in government custody. A judicious redistribution of land in response to people’s needs and demands is fundamental to the idea of democratisation of planning and land use. Besides, it is an idea that has worked in congested and expensive cities in Latin American countries like Colombia, Brazil and Peru.[10]
Another route to land equity is to give titles to people who have occupied it with informal housing. Brazil’s land titling reforms recognised the ownership of favela land to people living on it, which helped to formalise housing and, as this paper showed,[11] allowed property get collateral status instead of being ‘dead capital’. The community-led improvement in Brazil’s favelas – capital Rio de Janeiro has 1,000 favelas[12] — was made possible by regulating land prices.
In Mumbai, the agency tasked with public and affordable housing, Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA), which has some of the largest land parcels, has not even considered differential pricing; instead, it has been trading in land at market prices.[13] MHADA offers tenements at less-than-market prices especially for low- and middle-income groups but there are two issues.
First, the number of tenements is too small to make a difference to the market and is a fraction of the demand every year; this year’s announcement of 2,030 tenements saw 1,34,350 applications.[14] Second, its tenement prices are, simply put, unaffordable. Last year, flats for the low-income group (earning Rs 9 lakh a year) cost between Rs 45 lakh and 1.6 crore.[15]
As Dr Abhay Pethe, former Head of Department (Economics), University of Mumbai and others wrote,[16] “…in 2018, a 363 square feet tenement sold by MHADA at the centrally-located Lower Parel was priced at INR 14.2 million – well beyond the affordability threshold even at the current median income level”. Madden and Marcuse too write that “when so-called affordable housing programs are producing apartments priced at levels virtually identical to what developers would demand without the affordability requirement, it is clear that the term ‘affordable’ is not descriptive so much as ideal.”
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Role of the state
Any and all changes in the existing paradigm of urban housing must be brought in by the state – elected governments with popular mandate. Governments have an obligation and duty to provide it. Brazil’s Constitution empowers the government to acquire private land for social purposes. Rio de Janeiro lists tools required such as progressive taxation, land use fees, discretion over use of public land, limitations on development of private land, and so on. It recognises social housing as a right, identifies the federal government as the director of urban development, and must include housing in budgets.
To the extent that the state, in a limited way, allows public housing through say MHADA or Delhi Development Authority, the quality leaves much to desire. Rehabilitation colonies are located on urban peripheries compromising people’s access to workplaces and recreation possibilities; the colonies are also of poor quality as SRA buildings in Mumbai show.[17] [18] The role of the state becomes critical in ensuring that the portion of a plot used to rehabilitate slum dwellers is proportional to their numbers rather than the prevailing model of squeezing them into one-third or less of the plot and using the larger portion to build for-sale large houses with top-class amenities.[19]
That this model has been replicated all over Mumbai, and is now being promoted as the default for other cities, is a disgrace to the very definition and purpose of public housing. The role of the state must be larger, not lesser, as the real estate lobby determines the property market by speculative pricing and squeezing most people out. To have the private sector determine public housing is a contradiction in itself.
If Singapore, whose example is often quoted especially in the context of Mumbai’s development, can crack the code to make public housing a reality, but Mumbai or Delhi governments throw their hands up, the inescapable inference is that they are shirking their responsibility. Some may call Singapore’s housing model a socialist one but labels hardly matter. In the 60 years since its independence, Singapore’s Housing and Development Board has ensured that 80 percent live in public housing and 90 percent of them are homeowners.[20] Its policies also ensure maintenance by the Board and diversity by insisting on a demographic ratio in every public housing block so that the Chinese majority and the Malay, Indians and other minorities do not ghettoise. Slice it any which way – one of the most successful corporate-friendly cities rides on socialist-model public housing.
The New York public housing project started off strong with its New York City Housing Authority providing the stock. However, this has come under severe strain from the early 2000s when it was no longer hip for the government to be landlord; besides, extreme climate events like Hurricane Sandy have left the buildings in a state of disrepair.[21]
Way forward
Vienna, in Europe, offers India’s cities a model. The state owns the highest number of homes and most people are tenants. These homes are available to people who have lived in the city for more than two years; not just the poor.[22]
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
“Housing is more than just housing,” write Madden and Marcuse, “Housing needs to be re-politicised.” Their recommendation, as that of other housing sector researchers, is to de-commodify and de-financialise the housing system through rent control, public ownership of land, public financing, limits on speculation, and the adoption or re-introduction of regulations on home finance mechanisms. The state has an important role to play here. It cannot withdraw from the land-property market allowing profit-oriented private interests to dictate its character, as has been happening in India’s cities.
Community-led housing, facilitated by the state, is another model that can change the housing landscape in cities. Residents from the periphery of Mumbai’s Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP), chose for their rehabilitation township, clusters of low-rise blocks around an open common area with amenities like a hospital, school, and different places of worship.[23] The Chandivali model by Nivara Hakk could have been a model for the rest of Mumbai had the state adopted it. In Cochabamba, Bolivia, community led housing was led by women and land was held collectively.[24]
Housing is not merely tenements; it is about building and living in a community, it is about labour and feminist movements, it is about environmental sustainability. Influencing change in the existing broken model of urban housing, which breaks down communities to increase individualisation, cannot be done by people alone. The state should have a large and decisive role to play through various participatory principles. Believing otherwise would be closing our eyes to reality.
Cover photo: Ishan Khosla/Wikimedia Commons
