Experts at a programme on Saturday said that absence of state intervention and deficit of good governance in the housing market have contributed to making housing unaffordable in Dhaka although neoliberalism was adopted with a view to increasing home ownership.
During the mid-1990s, the share of owner-occupied houses was 31.9 per cent (ADB 2001) whereas it reduced to 18.5 per cent by the year 2011 despite the strategies taken to increase home ownership.
The extremely expensive land and housing property in Dhaka have made home ownership absolutely unaffordable for most of its population.
Neoliberalisation and globalisation have turned Dhaka into a mega city with a mismatch between ever increasing population and city services including housing provision.
These were revealed during a discussion at a two-day long 'International conference on urban and regional planning 2019'.
Bangladesh Institute of Planners (BIP) organised the programme at the Bangabandhu International Conference Centre (BICC) in the capital.
Local Government and Rural Development (LGRD) Minister Tajul Islam inaugurated the conference.
In the session 02, Architect Iqbal Habib presented a paper on 'affordable and sustainable urban housing prospect' while Associate Professor of Khulna University Fawzia Farzana presented a paper on 'Neoliberalism and housing affordability crisis in the capital Dhaka'.
In her presentation, Ms Fawzia said Bangladesh is one of the first nations in South Asia which accepted structural adjustment policy (SAP) reform packages as early as in the 1980s. New industrial policy was announced in 1982 and policy reforms for stabilisation and structural adjustment were initiated by the government along with the guidelines of International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.
The prime targets of millennium development goals (MDGs) and sustainable development goals (SDGs) are to reduce the inequalities which have been accentuated through accumulation by dispossession and to attain environmental sustainability which is under threat due to practices of neoliberal economic activities with increasing importance for the role of NGOs and civil society as development partner, she said.
Under neoliberalsim, homeownership-based approach to welfare was encouraged by selling out public rental housing, removal of rent controls to encourage homeownership, strategies of making home loans available through financial deregulations and encouraging private housing market to increase supply of housing, she also said.
There was contradiction in compatibility in adopting neoliberalism policy in Bangladesh, said Ms Fawzia, adding: neoliberalism has increased income inequality, corruption and reduced supply of houses in the market for the poor.
"Accumulation through dispossession has created affordability crisis in Dhaka. Only with good governance, the housing problem can be solved through the market and proper intervention of the state," she said. Iqbal Habib said that with a housing need of 1.90 million units in Dhaka in 2030, a target of housing supply of 2.5 million can solve affordable housing crisis in and around Dhaka and in other parts of the country.
He also said that the Tk 1.2 million per unit cost creates a target of investment of Tk 3,000 billion.
Planner SM Mehedi Hasan said in his comment on the papers that setting the target groups for housing delivery is an important issue for solving housing crisis. Different delivery system should be there for different target groups.
There should be innovation in land security and at institutional level for long-term solution, said Mr Mehedi. There is no mechanism but land acquisition and there is no institution which can deliver housing for low income people, he added.
Hasina Mushrofa, the session chair and head of Brac Urban Development Programme, said that the various mandate of the government like SDG 11, 13, 1 and 6 cannot be implemented due to absence of a national urban policy. Also lack of inter-ministerial coordination and absence of a focal ministry for any joint initiative taken in urban areas are also barriers.
Planner Adil Mohammed Khan, moderator of the session, said that the target of the housing projects are mainly the high and middle income people. The land of the low, lower-middle income or farmers are often acquired making them homeless and loosing land ownership.
This process cannot solve the housing crisis of the country and it creates land speculation for a quarter of people making them richer, he said.
The government must come out of the plot based housing concept to get rid of this process, Mr Adil concluded.
