The Puzzle of Affordable Housing in India - What Do We Need to Understand About it to Solve It
Affordable housing is a subject that can generate a lot of passion from every walk of society. Yes, affordable housing is a need. But what is it needed for? Who is it needed for? Where should it be? No one seems to be able to answer it properly. What constitutes affordable housing? What is the paradigm through which it should be seen? These are questions that fundamentally need to be addressed. Housing is a function of demand and supply, or so is the thinking usually. However, it is not so simple. Housing is a response as well to the economic functioning of any city. Economic geography’s Bid Rent Theory, despite its limitations, points out that housing prices decrease with distance from a city center due to competition for prime land. This theory came up to explain the lack of affordable housing in the city centre, and was primarily linked to the idea of a “Central Business District (CBD)” driving a city’s economic growth. On the surface, it seems a fair theory, and one may assume that...