Page 56 - SHELTER

POLICY REVIEW

Interestingly and alarmingly, the landlords who usually cater decline as one moves up the
the share of rental housing is to low income households MPCE deciles.
the lowest among the lowest into three types. ‘Subsistence Table 2: Share of urban renter households
monthly per capita consumer landlords’ are landlords who rent with no written contract across MPCE
expenditure (MPCE) deciles, rooms in order to supplement deciles
although the need for rental their income and meet basic MPCE Decile Share of renter
housing is the highest among consumption needs. These households without
them (Table 1). landlords are dependent on written contract (%)
Table 1: Share of households living in rental income for meeting their 1 90.4
rented housing by MPCE deciles basic needs. Next are ‘petty 2 89.7
bourgeois’ landlords who are not
MPCE Decile Rental households dependent on rental income to 3 87.4
(%) survive but depend on the same 4 88.1
1 12.3 for any capital expenditure and 5 83.2
2 17.8 for expenditure on consumer 6 81.1
3 23.9 durables. The last category is 7 81.1
4 25.1 ‘petty capitalist’ landlords. These 8 78.4
5 29.9 landlords usually possess a 9 69.5
6 30.7 number of rented properties and 10 64.9
7 36.0 seek to expand their rental and Total 79.2
8 36.6 real estate portfolio including Source: Authors calculations based on
9 38.8 land. Many a times they use 76th round NSS on ‘Drinking Water,
10 43.1 this land to build more rental Sanitation, Hygiene and Housing
Conditions in India
housing. If the number of rented
Total 29.4 properties they hold and their This prevailing sad state of
Source: Authors calculations based on income from them become rental housing situation came
76th round NSS on ‘Drinking Water, sizeable, such landlords depend
Sanitation, Hygiene and Housing into spotlight following the
Conditions in India on rental income as their main nationwide lockdown imposed
source of income. However, in March this year. COVID19
Rental housing in urban India rental housing provided to the
is largely supplied by private low-income households by these brought about unprecedented
landlords. In India a bulk of different categories of landlords health and economic crisis and
the rental housing stock is in urban India is largely informal re-focussed attention on the gaps
created as an extension to the in nature. Rental arrangements in access to secure and adequate
landlord’s home. ADB (2013) between renters and landlords housing faced by India’s urban
puts the proportion of small in informal housing usually do poor and migrants. Following
landlords at 80 percent for urban not involve any written contract the lockdown announced in late
India. In case of low-income and is based on word of mouth. March 2020, India witnessed
households, many a times the About 79 percent of rental the largest mass migration
landlord is himself or herself arrangements were without since Partition in 1947. This
of a similar economic profile as any written contracts in urban reverse migration is estimated
the tenant (Kumar 2003). Based areas (Table 2). As expected, to have involved 2 to 5 million
on his study of Bengaluru and proportion of rental households people. Concurrently, a World
Surat, Kumar (2003) categorises Bank study estimates 40 million
without written rental contract internal migrants to be affected .

54 HUDCO-HSMI Publication