A FRAMEWORK FOR AFFORDABLE HOUSING IN RURAL PAKISTAN.

Abstract

Pakistan is fundamentally an agricultural state so, rural localities are important at national level development. Most of the population is living in the rural area of the country and have the agricultural source of income. Agriculture is 25 % of national Gross Domestic Product and so long as 70 percent of total worth of disseminates. This importance shows that rural development is much necessary in the sustainable way. Rural development should be comprises all segments of development specially housing issue which has been compromised in the previous development projects. There is a major challenge for the governments in the developing countries to provide affordable housing. Population growth is a key factor behind the growing demand of affordable housing. Pakistan having 191.7 million population is facing acute housing shortage of about 10 million units with annual demand of 0.7 million units with growing housing supply-demand gap. The housing deficit for low income households is about 4.5 million units, with annual addition of 150000 units. Most of the housing projects developed by private developers meant for higher profits and targets higher & higher middle income groups. Rural localities of our country have a stress due to a constant ignorance by the both policy makers and researchers. Farm sector has not enough technological advancement to produce a high level product. Off-farm sector, also have not enough scope of enhancing their income level. Basic and social infrastructure are not upto the mark through which people get benefits in the longer run. The need assessment depicts that every rural segment has different nature of problems and their solution. There would be most suitable policy to support the homeless people in the different 6 ways such as those who have land but do not have enough income to build house so, their requirement is financial. On the other hand, those who have not ownership of land but their income sources are permanent they have need of cheap land where they can be able to build own house. In the third type, there are those people who have not both of above facilities so, there is need to develop such a mechanism through which their income could be insure and subsidized home should be access to them. This issue of affordable rural housing has been totally ignored by government at both federal and provincial level. It has got importance in 2018 when government took initiative of 5 lac houses through Naya Pakistan Housing and Development Authority. Moreover, lack of data availability, lack of past research studies, and unwillingness of political leaders to participate and cooperate in the planning and execution of affordable housing provision are the main hurdles to achieve and measuring the affordable rural housing. The literature based identified grey areas and survey based barriers were integrated with the local conditions based parameters to form a new effective policy guideline framework. These parameters were used to measure the affordable housing in the other rural areas of Pakistan.