Page 63 - SHELTER

POLICY REVIEW
significance of the small scale
activities.
DEVELOPMENT
PRESSURE
The Under-secretary General
and Executive Director of
UN-Habitat, criticised that
general lack of attention to the
urbanisation of poverty on the
part of policymakers, shelter
issues continued to fall between
the cracks and were hardly
reflected in discussions, even at
international forums. Whereas
UN-Habitat estimated in 2005
that the current population of
slum dwellers was expected to
double by 2030. Many countries
had chosen ‘slum upgradation
’ as a central approach to deal
with urban poor in which
UN-Habitat emphasised on
identification of ‘finance gap’
(Branwen Gruffydd Jones,
2012). But slum proliferation
in the metropolitan cities dwellers who could furnish
increases complexities for an
approach like slum upgradation
as land is scarcely available.
And Mumbai’s transforming
landscape, favoring the vision of
world class infrastructure either
resulted into slum evictions or
rehabilitation which are giving
birth to innovative policies. The
decade of 1985-1995 is known as
a period of significant change in
redevelopment and resettlement
policies and practice in the city.
In the early 1900s, Mumbai’s
1 Alan Gilbert: A researcher and his area of research is urbanisation and poverty in developing countries like Latine America and South Afrca
2 Slum upgradation: Includes improvement of physical infrastructure, access to the municipal basic services, household upgradation and strengthening
tenure security.
3 Market oriented model: Market oriented model refers to debts and equity investments which enables capital flow in the market.
booming real estate and
economy created new demand
for urban land among the local,
middle and upper classes and
elites (Banerjee- Guha 2002;
Nijman 2000). Increasing foreign
capital flows, opportunities and
earning aspirations attracted
elite desires for a city with world- Columbian government had
class transport infrastructure,
leisure, and upscale residences
(Fernandes, 2004). This scenario
created an affordable housing
crunch for urban poor. This
wave of neo-liberalised vision
facilitated slum-clearance by
leveraging the market to resettle
the urban poor. So, the market
would create a ‘win-win’
solution, addressing housing
for the poor and redevelopment
desires for the upper classes.
However, redeveloping slums
could not serve equitable
benefits to all slum dwellers, it
was beneficial for evicted slum- 2001; UN-Habitat, 2011a). Every
documentary proof of residency
in Mumbai prior to the ‘cut-
off date’ of January 1, 1995.
Later, a newly created slum
rehabilitation policy SRA, based
on ‘market oriented model ’ had
offered incentives to private
developers to build tenements
for slum dwellers free of cost
(Sapana Doshi, 2013).
FREE HOUSING- AN
EFFECTIVE WAY?
A Case Study
October 2020 Volume 21 No. 2-SHELTER 61
In Mumbai, Free housing is a type
of a housing stock, generated
by the state government to deal
with the urban sprawl caused by
slums in the form of mainstream
housing units crossed subsidised
through a profit making tool
as a sale component. In 2012,
also announced a ‘free housing’
policy for the urban poor, that
would provide free homes to
1,00,000 families every year.
Over the years, Columbian
government had taken efforts
to address adequate housing
for poor families includes:
rent control, building public
housing, subsidised interest
rates, offering subsidies for
buying homes, rental vouchers,
slum upgrading. These
approaches never managed
to solve problems of adequate
housing solutions. (Gilbert,
government in Latin America,
and many beyond, is convinced
that the only house worth having
is a home of one’s own (Alan
Gilbert, 2014).
During 1948, Latin American
President Mariano Ospina was
arguing that ‘home ownership
made people feel secure and
more at one with society.’ Home
ownership being an official
policy in Columbia benefits
the govt. in two ways: first,
it stimulates the construction
industry which is directly helpful