Stakeholders’ perspective on collaboration barriers in low-income housing provision:
The prevailing housing situation in Pakistan is alarming, as more than 47% of urban households are estimated to be living in squatters. Housing stakeholders require an enabling environment to collaborate to reduce the drastic inequity with too many housing options for the high-income and too few for the low-income groups. Existing literature reveals that Pakistan lacks stakeholder studies with a collaborative focus on providing low-income housing in urban areas.
This study explores the barriers and impediments to stakeholder collaborations in the low-income housing sector through in-depth interviews within the urban setting of Lahore, the capital and the most populous city of the biggest province, Punjab, Pakistan. The findings identify the emergence of five cross-cutting collaboration challenges (GLIPP), placing government capacity, institutional complexity, and political willpower & intervention as dominant ones. This study stresses revising the organizational hierarchy of government institutions to develop a collaborative culture in the Pakistani housing sector. As part of practical implications, this paper would agitate policymakers to develop housing policies and programs for low-income groups.
More than 20% of the world’s population faces a shortage of adequate housing, estimated at around 100 million homeless people (Adetooto and Windapo, 2022). There is an increased demand for affordable housing by low-income groups, which draws essential considerations on the resources and competencies of all stakeholders. For the projects to be well-connected with community needs, the various strengths of each involved stakeholder must be integrated with the development process, further ensuring feasibility and long-term affordability (Bratt, 2008).
A recent study indicated a research knowledge gap and recommended developing a conceptual framework for barriers to sustainable affordable housing (Adabre et al., 2020). For housing development, such partnerships range from multistakeholder engagements, local and global level arrangements, short to long-duration strategies, and fully mandated voluntary basis (Selsky and Parker, 2005; Madden, 2011; Cleophas et al., 2019).
Many practical barriers impede collaboration for low-income housing provision. Little literature is available about barriers to stakeholder collaboration in the context of low-income housing in developing countries. A recent study identified several factors impeding the sustainable provision of affordable housing for low-income groups, including fiscal constraints, cultural change, market limitations, knowledge limitations, institutional and legislative barriers, and technological difficulties (Ezennia, 2022). Williams and Dair (2007) found that the stakeholders involved in development and construction face knowledge-related barriers.
Developers, builders, consultants, and academia are potential market stakeholders working within professional consultancy, labor, and building material supplies. Their decision-making practice is influenced by the configuration of their engagement patterns and values about land, property, buildings, and environments. Regarding funding issues, Average (2019) highlighted that the private sector avoids investing in low-income housing schemes as they regard it as a high-risk and low-return investment area; hence, the low-income groups are ruled out from participating in private sector projects because of their stringent framework insensitive to the urban poor conditions. The literature on collaboration barriers was explored under different housing contexts like sustainable housing development, affordable housing, and low-income housing.
The above table highlights key factors acting as barriers to stakeholder collaborations. Such barriers fall mainly within government, policy, funding, legislation, political will, and environmental factors. Regulatory measures act as drivers for change within the government sector since these deal with important procurement matters for project tenders of housing development. Meehan and Bryde (2015) highlighted the role of officials within regulatory authorities in the procurement domain of sustainable housing. Their study exposed that “regulators’ network position affords no direct access to suppliers, contractors or tenants constraining knowledge creation, an essential factor for sustainable procurement in the sector.