There is an ongoing housing crisis in several European countries attributed to locals renting out to tourists, prompting anti-tourism protests in Spain and Portugal, while in Pakistan all administrations, have colluded with the influential real estate sector by extending fiscal and monetary incentives including amnesty schemes with the stated objective of easing the housing shortage, promote growth (as this sector jumpstarts output of other sectors) while generating employment opportunities.

The status quo PML-N supplemented this elitist policy first by bestowing 5- to 10-marla government land (though it was never revealed how much land was given away and whether the recipients were low-grade government employees rather than the vulnerable or disenfranchised); and, more recently, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his niece Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz used the taxpayers’ money to build low-cost housing (again the target beneficiaries are not known).

A study on the 2017 census by Arif Hasan with Hamza Arif titled Pakistan: the causes and repercussions of the housing crisis highlighted the prevalence of three factors. First, urban housing demand is 350,000 units with 217,000 for lower-income groups, 87,500 for lower-middle income groups, and the remaining 10 per cent for higher and upper middle-income groups.

Formal supply per year is 150,000 units. Second, unmet demand is met through two types of informal settlements – occupation and subdivision of government land (katchi abadis) and informal subdivision of agricultural land on the periphery of urban settlements with provincial governments promoting regularisation and possible improvement of informal settlements.

During the........

© Business Recorder