Green and Resilient Affordable Housing Sector Project

Given the high and still rising demand for affordable housing in urban Bhutan, the government prioritized it in its Twelfth Five-Year Plan 2018–2023 and National Housing Policy (NHP) in 2020. The NHP aims to provide secure, safe, affordable, and adequate rental housing for all, promote home ownership, encourage public-private partnerships, improve the governance system, and integrate green and energy-efficient features. It also includes policies that streamline land-use zoning to increase land supply and provide tax incentives to banks and the private sector that offer housing finance.

To reach these goals, the government initiated a housing program that intends to supply 2,500 affordable rental housing units to poor beneficiaries. Most of the beneficiaries are low-income civil servants, municipal waste workers, single parents, people with disabilities, and single female-headed households. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is supporting this program through the Green and Resilient Affordable Housing Sector Project, which will build 1,000 of the planned housing units.

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