96% of India’s housing shortage is in the economically weaker section (56%) and low-income group (40%) categories. The Technical Group on Urban Housing Shortage, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), determined this national urban housing shortage to be 18.78 million units. In response to these findings, the Government of India as well as several state governments introduced or expanded affordable urban housing schemes. Given the context that 70% of the buildings required in India by the year 2030 are yet to be built, we have the opportunity to construct sustainable, low carbon and resilient buildings that consume less resources and work towards enhancing the health and well-being of its residents.
Methodology
Houses for the urban poor must be designed to be thermally comfortable, resource efficient, structurally stable and disaster resilient along with offering easy access to basic services. We seek to shift the discourse through:
Convenings and stakeholder interactions: Conducting stakeholder surveys, convening experts and decision makers and facilitating co-creation workshops and design charrettes to ensure a finger on the pulse of affordable housing.
Advancing research and informing policy: Topics such as accessing land for affordable housing, ownership and transfer of land in informal settlements and other research and regular participation in policy discussions.
Training and capacity building: Creating training modules in subjects critical in reducing the affordable housing gap are undertaken with government partners.
Through the Global Housing Technology Challenge platform, 8 shortlisted applicants in the ‘Potential Technology Category’ of GHTC-India pitched their products to the Prime Minister of India in 2019. Deployed a collaborative ‘World Café Format’ to discuss the ‘request for proposal’ (RFP) formulation for Lighthouse Projects, ensured proximity to jobs, presence of all basic services and public transport connectivity for shortlisted sites and introduced ‘Sustainability and Community Building’ parameters into RFPs.
Convened experts, stakeholders and decision makers from the Delhi State Government to provide inputs towards a white paper on affordable housing in December 2019.
Provided technical inputs to the Housing chapter of the Draft National Urban Policy Framework in 2019.
WRI India Ross Center conducted an accelerator, Affordable Sustainable Housing Accelerators- India (ASHA-India) as the primary knowledge partner for GHTC – India. The accelerator saw the cohort of 10 selected teams getting one-on-one sessions with industry experts who mentored them on Standardisation & Certification, R&D, Public Procurement, Investors, Developers & Organisational Development and Communication Strategy.