Housing for a crisis

THE LOCKDOWN HAS MADE US REASSESS THE LIVABILITY OF STRUCTURES BUILT UNDER GOVERNMENT HOUSING SCHEMES

- MITASHI SINGH AND RAJNEESH SAREEN

IN PUSHING us indoors, the COVID-19 lockdown has made us take note of our habitat, the safety and comfort it provides, and the impact it has on our health. The exodus of workers during the lockdown was a good reminder of the clamour for homes in our cities. State governments, like in Delhi and Odisha, had to request landlords to waive off or defer rent.

The situation showed that there was a need of not just state-run housing schemes but also of more affordable rental housing schemes, which our policies and schemes were perhaps not capturing. The Pradhan Mantri Awas YojanaUrban ( PMAY-U), which was launched in 2015 to provide houses to all by 2022, does not focus on rental housing. It is only after witnessing the distress of labourers and their sheer numbers in the cities, that the Centre decided to include affordable rental houses under PMAY-U. So far, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority has started building around 0.25 million rental housing units under public-private partnership model, but such examples are few and far between.