Delivering Low Income Housing-Role of Access to Land and Credit in Gujarat, India

Abstract

Housing, particularly for the poor and marginalised, is a complex urban problem that occupies centre-stage in present-day development issues. Access to housing is influenced by two major fac-tors—land, and finance. Absence of either (or both) of these results in mushrooming of high density, environmentally insanitary living areas commonly referred to as slums. The poor and vulnerable sections increasingly struggle to secure adequate quality of shelter, because of their inability to access land at affordable rates and finance to be built. As the inflow of the poor from rural to urban is, by now, accepted as inevitable, providing housing and economic opportunities for these would have to form part and parcel of any sustainable urban development strategy. In the state of Gujarat, formal housing supply is unable to meet even a fraction of the housing demands in urban areas. Thus a mix of private and informal sector housing has emerged in the past few decades. During the 1990s, the involvement of NGOs in facilitating access of the poor to housing finance also became increasingly significant. This paper presents a critical review of housing delivery systems in urban Gujarat with an emphasis on the poor. A schematic design for delivery of land and access to housing finance for poor households has also been presented.