Public Rental Housing under Social Security: A New Slant
By Nimish Sany* Problems with the Indian rental housing market are manifold. While private rental markets have never been free from government intervention, public rental housing projects have never been coherent with market realities. Consequently, the demand–supply mismatch in the rental housing market in India is enormous with policy inconsistency widening the gap. As per the findings of the Technical Group on Urban Housing Shortage set up by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (MoHUPA), there exists an unmet demand of 7 million rental housing units across Indian cities, but recent reports put it at 19 million [1] . If these figures are indeed true, such a huge demand can never be met with public resources alone. The Public Rental Housing Estates (PRHE) of Kolkata stands a stark reminder of this. Around 20,000 rental housing units were built across the city during the 1970s to provide affordable housing to the large influx of migrant labour, using central...