Providing Affordable Land and Housing

Explores the impact of urbanization on housing, the failure of South Asian governments to provide affordable housing, strategies to enable creation of affordable housing, and key recommendations. At least 26 percent of South Asia’s urban population, an estimated 30 million households, lives in informal settlements, or slums. Between 2010 and 2050, the region will require an additional 203 million housing units, mostly targeted to low- and middle-income households, to accommodate projected urban population growth without further expanding the slum population. Critical to making housing affordable are reforms in local and central governments to loosen the constraints that bind land market supply; revising of land-use regulations to facilitate increased housing production; and increased investment in infrastructure to support land development for housing. Real estate construction firms need to be restructured and modernized to increase the quantity and affordability of their housing output, and housing finance institutions must channel more funding into housing.