Sreelatha Menon: A house of my own

Rented housing and fixed rents could be one way to ensure that everyone in cities has a home

Rented housing and fixed rents, like it's in developed countries, could be one way to ensure that everyone in cities has a roof over his head.

Rajkumar, a security guard employed in New Delhi, has been running from pillar to post to get a loan. He needs Rs 6,00,000 to buy a small house in Chilla, once a village but now a neglected slum in Mayur Vihar in East Delhi.

He has three LIC policies, one of which will mature in another two years. He has been assured of a loan of Rs Rs 3,00,000 from LIC. He has to raise the rest.

He has some land in Madhepura in Bihar but he won’t sell it. He says he will need it once the city becomes impossibly hostile to people like him. Yet, he is desperate to buy the house as he cannot afford to pay the rent, which is already touching Rs 2,000.

Nitin Verma recently moved into the apartments where Rajkumar works and he pays three quarters of his salary, about Rs 25,000, as EMI for the loan he took for the house. He is not sure if he will be able to keep his job in these hard times. But he was desperate to own a house as he could not afford to pay Rs 15,000 per month as rent. Incidentally, he also has an ancestral house, tucked away somewhere in Kerala, besides a flat there that he bought for Rs Rs 5,00,000.

How can these people be termed homeless and yet how can their need for a roof over their head be discounted?

The Housing and Poverty Alleviation Department under the Ministry of Urban Development is trying to draw a plan for these people, who it says number 24.7 million.

It is currently studying a report on affordable housing authored by a task force headed by HDFC Chairman Deepak Parekh. The report has no component on rented housing despite the fact that the cities are fast running out of land. It wants every one living in the cities to own a house. Is it possible?

The housing department acknowledges that housing has attracted a lot of real estate investors. And that most people are forced to become such investors. And this has led to prices and rents shooting up, sending people on a mad quest for a house of their own, forcing them to struggle through their lives to earn several times more than they actually need.

And yet, rented housing and fixed rents, like it’s in developed countries, doesn’t occur to policy-makers as a solution. That is not on our agenda yet, says Housing Secretary Kiran Dhingra. She says unlike Singapore and some American cities which have community or government-owned rented housing, we have plenty of land.

The department was allocated Rs 500 crore in the 9th Plan for affordable housing. The amount could build just 1.8 million houses, a drop in the vast ocean of demand for housing.

The Parekh Committee does not split hair over the sustainability of urban housing. It looks at it as a banker should. It asks for simplified land acquisition norms and conversion of agricultural land rules for developing the affordable housing segment.

Once a deputy chairman of the Delhi Development Authority, a wing of the ministry, laughed away criticism about use of agricultural land for commercial projects saying that every piece of urban land was once farm land.

So long there is food on one’s plate, this argument makes sense. But for Rajkumar, the food is fast disappearing. Maybe it is time to invest some thought on food while ensuring a roof over everyone’s head.