The Fallacy of Affordable Rental Housing Package

As a part of the second tranche of ₹20 lakh crore economic stimulus package taking care of severe criticism of the central government’s sensitivity to the migrant labour fleeing the cities, a rental housing policy for the migrant workers was announced on May 14, 2020. The rental policy, much in line with the subsequent two economic stimulus packages (on agriculture and infrastructure) is medium to long term.

The rental housing package, it has been made to appear, is a government response to the heart-wrenching stories and visuals of the migrants fleeing large cities, traveling by foot, cycle or any means carrying all their belongings and their families. The stories pointed that the workers living in their factory premises or on construction sites, in many instances, were forced out of their living quarters, by their employers on closure of work. In situation of individuals renting houses were asked by their landlords to either pay rent or vacate, inspite of sermons from the Prime Minister in his first address to the nation of landlords to give moratorium on taking rent. Left with no choice the migrants living in such rental housing decided to go back to their native places.  While both situations have occurred, those not in housing distress too seem to have left for the panic created by the Covid 19 and a natural desire to be with the family in such a pandemic. Being locked down in a small house or one room house, which is what workers live, migrant or not, with limited availability of food, and no work, too left the migrant workers with no choice but wanting to go back home.

The package

There are two components of this package. One is converting the government funded housing in cities into ‘affordable rental housing complexes’ under PPP model and would be included under the existing Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) scheme. Second is central government incentivizing manufacturing units, industries and institutions to develop affordable housing complexes on their private lands for their employees, to be given on rental basis. The government funded vacant housing would be given out as ‘concessionaire’ to the private firms, so that these could be rented out to migrants on concessional rates. This means that such private firms may not have liability of returning any profit to the government, while recovering the costs of managing the units through rents collected.

The package, in simple language states that the housing built with government funds, namely that under the PMAY and presumably the former Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission’s (JNNURM’s) Basic Services for the Urban Poor (BSUP), lying vacant will be allowed to be converted into rental units in PPP mode. This new use of the PMAY and BSUP units means that the reference is to the lower end and not the lowest end of the rental housing market. While the details are awaited, for those elated by the new announcement may have certain questions, which are being flagged below.

Whose Affordability is Being Considered?

Two phrases require to be addressed ‘government housing complexes lying vacant’ and ‘affordable housing’. The phrase government housing complex has already been explained. Phrase ‘affordable housing’ is illusionary. The entire PMAY, with exception of the In-Situ Slum Redevelopment (ISSR) component is illusionary as it is based on the concept of ‘affordable housing’. The question that has been rightly asked for the PMAY and hence for even this new ‘Affordable Rental Housing’ is; affordable for whom? Those who can spend Rs. 1,000 per month on rent (i.e. households whose income is about Rs. 5000 to Rs. 6000 per month) or Rs. 10,000 per month on rent (i.e. households whose income is about Rs. 50,000 per month), assuming that households spend 20% of their monthly income on rent. 

It is true that those at the lowest end of the urban labour market, the unskilled labour, indeed face great challenge with regards to affordable housing. There are three types of such migrants, one who cannot even rent due to extremely precarious employment conditions and irregular and low incomes and hence tend to squat. Second are those who cannot afford ownership housing and hence tend to rent, often living in shared rental accommodation. Shared accommodation is largely by single male migrants, but, we have found even families sharing a single room unit. In Mumbai, in her heydays of textile mills, the same bed-space in a room was shared by two workers, the one working in the night shift using that space in the day and vice versa. In Surat, we have seen a 100 sq ft room shared by two families, who put partition in-between for their privacy. With the increase in real estate prices, the rents keep going up, pushing the workers at the low end to share rental accommodation. 

Single male migrants sharing a rental accommodation also means that they then have to postpone or abandon the plan of bringing their respective families to the city and permanently living as temporary migrant in the city. They then do not get their permanent address changed to the city address, holding on to the address identity of their native place. In times of disasters and pandemics, then they are unable to prove their urban residency and hence be deprived of any relief measures if any. Most of such shared renting is in private formal or informal housing, wherein the owners are petty landlords, or sometimes small entrepreneurs whose income is through constructing informal housing and then renting it out. The petty landlords often have no or little income other than rent and hence they too cannot afford to forgo rent as advised by the Prime Minister during such pandemics. The entire incremental housing process in Indian cities, and in many developing country cities is such that individuals build their housing and rent out one room or so to recover the costs through rents earned, while the owner-household itself continue to stay in cramped dwelling. Is this so called new affordable rental housing being created is for those who are living in such rental accommodation? This affordable rental housing is expecting that some of such households would move to the newly designated rental housing.

Bonded Living in Employee Housing?

The third set of migrants/ workers at the low end of the labour market are the ones who live on employee provided accommodation, in the factories, on construction sites and brickkilns, etc, often in conditions similar to bonded labour. As the media reports go, some of them who have been thrown out by the employers when the factories had to be closed due to lockdown were at the mercy of their employers. In this category, there are further two kinds, one who live on their work sites, (factory, construction site, etc) and not paying any rent for the accommodation; there are others whose employees have rented accommodation and put the workers in them (in here workers may pay partial rent). When the employers provide accommodation in any of these forms, because they want stability of labour supply, it is beneficial to the workers. But, then, the workers are also tied to this employer and are forced to work at whatever wage rate the employer pays. Long time back, organiser of the workers in ceramic factory in Ahmedabad was looking for liberating the workers from the low-wage conditions of working. These workers were living in employer-provided housing and felt that they were bonded to the employer through housing. 

The employer provided housing can become an option for those who have bargaining power with their employers or have protection of law from the exploitation by the employers. The workers at the lower end of the labour market, and the migrant labour do not have such bargaining powers, as evident from them fleeing the cities in the Covid 19 pandemic.

In response to a French politician and philosopher proposed converting tenants’ rents into purchase payments on their dwellings, arguing that it would end the exploitative relations between landlords and tenants and transform the property-less poor property owners, Friedrich Engels, in ‘The Housing Question’ that there was no such thing as a housing crisis. Engels who was deeply aware of the housing misery of the working class, as described at great length in his work ‘Conditions of working class in England’ (Engels 1845). Engels argued that the miserable living conditions of the workers was a crisis of capitalism in which housing conditions formed just ‘one of the innumerable smaller, secondary evils’ caused by the exploitation of workers by capital (Engels, 1872). He argued that the misery of tenants was because they were workers and not because they were tenants. Then Engels argued for abolition of capitalism! 

But, even if we do not reach this conclusion, the employer provided housing would lead to ameliorative living and working conditions of the workers, migrant or not, only if the workers have a better bargaining power, which is not so today in the conditions of surplus labour.

Vacant Public Housing?

The third question is: “are there vacant public housing units and if yes then why?” One can think of only two possibilities, if the BSUP housing constructed under the JNNURM or the units constructed under the ongoing PMAY are vacant. As per the last available data, vacant BSUP units were only in Delhi and not in other cities.  Under the PMAY’s four verticals (for details see http://mohua.gov.in/cms/pradhan-mantri-awas-yojana.php) only two the Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme (CLSS) and Affordable Housing in Partnership (AHP) entails houses constructed for those who are eligible for either 3% interest subsidy on housing loan interest rate or a direct subsidy to the builders respectively. In these projects, subsidy is given to only those clients who are eligible based on an income or dwelling-unit size criteria. In such housing schemes, there may be client households who may not have benefitted form the subsidy under PMAY if their incomes are higher than the qualifying ceiling. It is thus not clear as to which vacant public housing is being referred to.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) website states that total of 97.48 lakh housing units are either under construction (64.02 lakh) or have been completed (33.46 lakh) since 2014 under the PMAY (file:///D:/Darshini%20Documents/Urban/PMAY/4(27).pdf) as on April 20, 2020. The MoHUA website does not give the breakup, but, in 2017-18, the CLSS and AHP components together formed 40% of the total housing units. This would mean that about 39 lakhs of the total 97.48 lakh housing units under the PMAY could be considered as forming part of the vacant public housing stock. There were 134 lakh households living in slums in urban India as per 2011 population census. Thus, the PMAY has not reached all the slum households and even if half of them would like to move to new housing under the CLSS and AHP components, the supply will fall short of need. In such a situation, why is there vacant public housing? The only answer to that is because the prices of the CLSS and AHP housing components is higher than the affordability of those living in slums. Claiming that there are vacant public housing units, is an admission of the failure of the PMAY!

In Conclusion

The question is that if the ‘Affordable Rental Housing’ is being seen as an economic revival package after the Covid 19 pandemic then there are two questions: (i) whose revival is being talked about and (ii) would it benefit the distressed migrants walking / cycling back to their native places and whose housing rights have been discussed by the NGOs working with the migrant labour, construction labour and seasonal migrants (these are not mutually exclusive categories)? The revival package is for those whose businesses in the real estate construction and management have suffered. Whether the workers will benefit or not will depend on the rents charged under ‘affordable rental scheme’ and what protection the workers get from the government under employee-housing. However, one thing is clear, there is no additional money for rental housing or what government would like to call ‘affordable rental housing’. It is Rs. 1,400 crores allocated in the Union Budget of Financial Year 2020-21.