“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
— Dante’s Inferno

[When I began to face displacements I realised
What home is and what is meant to be homeless]
— Salim Ahmad

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Life in Karachi is often compared to big metropolitan cities around the world. Many people migrate here to pursue their dreams. In a city which people move to in droves, it is easy to be forgotten and be invisible. Maybe that is why their stories and the struggles of people searching for a decent abode often go unheard or ignored.

Karim* is a migrant from Bajaur. He left his hometown in search of better job opportunities and with the hope that he would, someday, pay off the loans his father had taken to build a house — a house that is still incomplete due to non-repayment of the owed amount.

He makes a living in Karachi by working as a watchman of an apartment building in a middle class neighbourhood in the Garden area. After several years of working in this big city, he has finally managed to rent a small 60 sq yard house in Golimar. Now, he can ask his wife and children to come live with him. But, the process of obtaining a house, even for rent, has not been easy. Buying a piece of land to build a house in the future is far out of his reach.

The small dwelling he has acquired comes with its own set of issues, most of them related to its present condition and maintenance. The landlord rented him this place on the condition that Karim will maintain it while living there. The most common problem in such houses is roof leakage, due to the subpar material used in their construction. Each time it rains, Karim has to find ways of dealing with the water that pours down into the house through the damaged roof.

For most people in Pakistan's urban areas, the hope of being able to afford decent housing is increasingly a dwindling one. Land speculation, increasing costs of construction and maintenance, poor planning and lack of policy focus are forcing the majority of the population into untenable living conditions and giving up their dreams of security. But affordable housing, especially for the low-income strata, is not just a matter of a basic right, but an issue of physical and mental well-being.

When the condition deteriorated beyond DIY repair this year, Karim turned to his employers to ask for help to repair the rooftop, as it was getting more and more hazardous with each passing day. A resident from the apartment complex successfully collected Zakat funds from various families in the building and handed them over to Karim. He is forever indebted to the woman for her act of kindness.

Nigar Bibi* is a native of Karachi and works as a domestic worker. Her husband passed away a few years ago. When she prepares to leave for her job, her biggest concern is leaving her two young daughters behind. She lives close to relatives and families from her own Baloch ethnicity because she feels more secure. She says the area is filled with young drug addicts who are unable to find employment, so she does not want to risk leaving her daughters alone.

She lives in an 80 sq yard house which is owned by her sister-in-law. She was able to save money and acquire land thanks to the money her son sent her from Muscat, where he works. Nigar Bibi labours endlessly in eight apartments to make ends meet and hopes to own her own house one day. Until then, however, she is grateful to have a roof over her head in a city which can be ruthless otherwise.

Najma* works as a maid in Model Colony. Her husband, a drug addict, went missing seven years ago and she remains the prime breadwinner for her family, which comprises a son, a daughter-in-law and a grandson. Her son does not have a permanent job, so is forced to work as a handyman in various jobs. To make ends meet, Najma provides her services of sweeping, mopping, cleaning, washing clothes and dishes in four houses and works six days a week.

Through informal mechanisms, Najma procured a piece of land in Pehlwan Goth in Gadap Town, Malir district. The four members of the family live in a single room there with no electricity. For the last three years she has struggled to build an additional room for her family. The ever-rising cost of construction and labour, however, only results in the dwindling of her hopes that she will ever be able to afford to build another room.

[We tried hard but time too had its plans
It was impossible to attach oneself to one’s roots]
— Manmohan Talkh

Pakistan’s population explosion and rapid urbanisation has left a growing number of people without access to decent, stable, affordable housing. The last census, in 2017, documents a housing stock of 32.2 million, of which 39 percent is urban. According to the 2019 Report of the International Growth Center, the urban population is expected to grow by 2.3 million per year over the next 20 years. This translates into a demand for 360,000 households, at 6.3 individuals per households.

Poor access to affordable housing is also reflected in unequal home ownership: ownership remains concentrated in the top income bracket, leaving a limited supply of housing for low-income households. Housing insecurity among the bottom income strata of Pakistan has therefore become a compelling public policy issue.

According to research conducted by the real estate portal Zameen, the current countrywide housing shortage is around 10 million and is expected to shoot up to 13 million housing units by 2025, out of which nearly half is in the urban areas.

However, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) estimates the urban housing demand is 350,000 units every year, of which the demand is met for only 150,000 units. Of this, 62 percent is for lower-income groups, 25 percent for lower middle income groups, and 10 percent for higher and upper middle-income groups. Therefore, there is an even greater mismatch in the provision of low-income housing.

The gravity of the situation can be gauged by the increase of housing prices by 134 percent between 2013 to 2018. Urban plot prices during the same period have also gone up by 151 percent. Pakistan’s GDP per capita, however, has barely grown by double digits at 20 percent, between 2012-2018.

This problem is especially pronounced in Pakistan as its house price-to-income ratio remains much higher than both developed and similarly placed economies. Table 1 shows the increase in house prices of selected localities in Karachi from 2015 to 2021. The bandwidth of increase ranges from 21 percent to a staggering 150 percent.

THE ROLE OF TRANSPORT

The absence of a low-cost, affordable, and efficient transport system only adds salt to the wounds. The option of living in katchi abadis [squatter settlements] in the absence of available land near the ever-expanding urban centres is becoming limited.

Architect and town planner Arif Hasan points to how a settlement’s location has a direct relationship with other social, economic and cultural costs, such as security (due to close proximity with the clan), the commute time to work, travel expenses and, consequently, on savings as well.

In response, low-rise, low-income settlements near places of work or town centres are informally becoming high rises, with all the physical and social problems of unplanned densification. The units are also becoming smaller, so they can be more affordable. Meanwhile, for the first time in Pakistan’s urban areas (especially in Karachi and the larger cities) people are sleeping under bridges, at roundabouts and pavements, and in open air ‘hotels.’

A HISTORY OF THE HOUSING CRISIS

[There is an infinite desert all around me
Where will I dwell after leaving the desert?]
— Munir Niazi

Pakistan’s housing crisis is a convergence of many factors. The unbridled population growth, the rapid urbanisation, land becoming a commodity and speculative entity, and the huge disparity between the earnings of low-income groups and the price of land, contributes to the phenomenon of “unaffordable housing.”

In 1981, Pakistan’s population was 80.68 million. In a span of 36 years, it jumped to 207.9 million in 2017 — an addition of 127.2 million and a per annum addition of approximately 3.53 million people on average.

Karachi’s situation is especially grave, as the city’s annual population growth rate is not less than five percent, as estimated by seasoned demographers. This has a definite impact on the housing demand and the capacity of its provision by the private and government sectors. In the past, both sectors took various initiatives for land provision and housing supply.

The rapid urbanisation is another factor to reckon with. In 1981, the share of the urban population was 28.3 percent of a total population of 80.68 million, which means 19.2 million people were living in the urban centres of Pakistan. In 1998, we had 35.52 percent of a population of 134.8 million living in urban centres, ie approximately 47.4 million. By the year 2017, 36.67 percent of a population of 207.9 million were living in urban centres, ie a dazzling 76.2 million.

Over 36 years, this works out to an addition of 57 million people in the urban centres of Pakistan, which is roughly equivalent to Pakistan’s total population in the late 1960s. The humongous scale of rapid urbanisation is extravagantly demanding of housing and associated services provision. Hasan and his associate Hamza Arif attribute the unprecedented scale of rural to urban migration to the demise of village self-sufficiency.

The case of Karachi is more complicated, as the city embraced migrants in 1947 from India during Partition, from former East Pakistan and current day Bangladesh in 1971, Afghan migrants in the 1970s and 1980s, migrants fleeing military operations in Swat and, then, migrants from flooded areas in 2010. These waves of migrations are besides the regular influx of incoming populations from upcountry in search of livelihoods in the port city. At present, the state has no plans of how to deal with the migrant influx. And it cannot provide them with homes.

Besides the aforementioned factors, as the country’s economic growth rate plummets, more and more people lose their conventional livelihoods and are pushed further down the ladder of poverty. The World Bank has estimated that poverty in Pakistan has increased from 4.4 percent in 2018-2019 to 5.4 percent in 2020, as at least two million people have fallen below the poverty line.

Consequently, people are losing hope that they will ever own their own dwelling. They aspire for one but they don’t get one. Urban centres such as Karachi are also in trauma mode, as they are forced to host the increasing number of people, but without shelter. Cities are in a perpetual need for provision of housing.

ATTEMPTS TO ADDRESS THE HOUSING CRISIS

[Until when will your promises keep deceiveing my heart?
Make such an excuse that would make me hopeless]– Fana Nizami Kanpuri

Historically, the government’s response to the housing situation is going from a provider to a facilitator and, lately, it has become one of a mere spectator, to say the least. Policy-makers have made sporadic efforts to cater to the housing provision issue, but without much success.

After Pakistan’s independence, a transfer of evacuee properties took place. It is said that much of the properties were distributed on the bases of social capital and unfair practices were prevalent. As a result, much of the land and property was passed on to affluent families. The transfer continued until the 1960s.

Thereon, one saw the emergence of housing schemes and serviced plot schemes primarily targeting government employees and the middle/upper-income groups. This lucid marginalisation of the poor from access to a basic human right gave birth to katchi abadis.

The more affluent and aesthetic sensitive decision-makers felt these grey and scrappy arrangements of brick and mortar were giving the city landscape a hideous face, so a decision to resettle them was taken. This meant rehousing the inhabitants of these squatter settlements to public housing schemes, while katchi abadis were bulldozed. These new schemes were on the outskirts of the city, which meant added transport costs and an overall increase in the cost of living. This eventually led to the failure of such schemes, since many important issues pertinent to the poor were not factored in.

A few germane experiments regarding public housing provision were also attempted, such as nuclear or core housing, as well as site and serviced plots. In the case of nuclear/core housing, the government was to provide a serviced plot with a core unit built, which would gradually be completed by the inhabitants, as and when they could afford it. This idea appealed to the policy-makers as well, since this meant a huge reduction in costs and also a solution to a huge problem.

In 1965, the government introduced a new policy, the ‘Site and Serviced Plots Scheme’ in Karachi called ‘Plot Township’. The idea was to offer low-income groups a helping hand through provision of land, with essential infrastructure needed for habitation, where allottees gradually built their homes through self-help mechanisms. However, this formula too did not prove successful, since there were a number of problems associated with it, such as a lack of public funding, political will and, once again, a lack of proper planning to provide residents with access to transport, healthcare and other essential facilities. Consequently, a programme aimed at the poor was transferred to middle and upper income groups.

During the 1970s, various governments tried to solve the issue of housing by regularising and upgrading katchi abadis. This meant provision of services in the settlement, along with a 99-year lease grant to the residents.

In the same era, a Zakat fund was also established, aimed at helping the neediest in society. The provision of housing was a miniscule part of the entire fund. Only a few housing units could be made and handed over to the needy, entirely free of charge. Thus, it could not have a large impact on housing provision. Such measures proved to be insufficient to make housing affordable for low-income groups.

The people’s response to the situation is the occupation and subdivision of government land, aka katchi abadis, and the Informal Subdivision of Agricultural Land (ISALs) on the outskirts of urban settlements. A report published by Hasan states that nearly 60 percent of people in Karachi reside in such settlements.

The process of obtaining a dwelling in such settlements is less daunting than the formal sector but, nonetheless, remains a challenge for most poor people because of a number of factors, such as securing financing. Though informal mechanisms are in place, such as loans offered by the contractor and additional help as well, the major responsibility of arranging the loan and its repayment has to be worked out by the family that wants their own home. As formal mechanisms for the provision of loans and housing do not serve low-income groups, the unaffordability of housing is addressed through informality by the have-nots.

WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

[The house can only be constructed in the imagination
This size of the land is not accordingly to our map]
– Shahryar

Affordable housing is more than providing a house to a certain segment of the population. It’s about understanding the preferences of low-income groups, their social realities and how they navigate those realities. The term ‘affordable housing’ merits a multi-dimensional understanding of the aspirations of low-income groups’ vis-à-vis housing, the constraints in the fulfilment of those aspirations and the constraints in removing those constraints. Urban planners need to have a holistic picture of the housing sector and connect it to existing methods of obtaining a house and services by low-income groups.

In the absence of decent living arrangements, the woes of the working class just accrue to their disadvantage. Even if they are able to find a small dwelling for themselves, the maintenance costs, because of substandard construction, are financially challenging and a constant drain on already limited sources.

“The issue for these settlements is no longer one of a provision of services but of the effective operation, management and maintenance of utilities and the provision of improved social sector facilities,” says Hasan. “So, the emphasis has to shift and support has to be provided for the consolidation of the social revolution that has taken place.”

A lot has been written and said about the impact of the speculation of land prices and real estate and the resulting exclusion of low-income groups from the housing circuit. The lack of ownership of a home results in the changed worldview of the population and exacerbates the existing divide between the haves and have-nots.

Home ownership provides security, confidence and the capacity to take risk. The moment a person realises that support for home ownership does not come from the state or private sector or formal financial institutions, the struggle for upward mobility changes to a struggle for mere existence. The existential crisis then splits into an innate desire to own a house, but the obscene costs of land and construction kills the dream. ‘Affordable housing’ and its provision, thus, becomes directly linked to mental well-being and physical existence.

All political parties’ mandates say they will provide affordable housing. All they have to do to realise the mandate is to join hands with a functional local government, the development sector and the banking sector. Karachi is not devoid of land and the city government can easily provide land free of cost for development. Banks and leasing companies should provide long-term mortgage loans to low and lower-middle income families for purchasing land and housing at affordable price. Similarly, banks can consider providing loans on easy terms, so residents can maintain their properties. The terms of loans should ensure that the target groups are the beneficiaries and to make speculation/resale of property difficult and unprofitable, for a minimum of 15 years.

The physical and mental wellbeing of low-income groups is inextricably linked to the hope and dream of a decent dwelling.

**Name changed to protect privacy.*

Anum Mufti is Karachi based academic.

She can be reached at: anum.mufti@gmail.com

Mansoor Raza is a PhD scholar, peripatetic Karachi-based academic and board member of the Urban Resource Centre, Karachi.

He can be reached at mansooraza@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, November 6th, 2022