“We are short of 10 million housing units” has been the clarion cry in politics, media, and donor-driven research for the last 10 years. Given an average household size of well over six persons, this means that nearly one-third of the population is without housing. Do we see such a huge number of people living on footpaths, side of roads, under bridges or in any open area? Thankfully, NO!
We cannot find any clarity on where this huge figure of 10 million housing shortage came from!
> Media (print, electronic, and social) uses it referring to it as a World Bank estimate, while various World Bank, publications quote a report submitted to the State Bank as the source, along with a study done by the International Growth Centre (IGC) (a DFID funded global research effort out of the LSE and Oxford).
> The IGC report cites an SBP report, but interestingly, the said report gives a lower per annum figure than the one quoted by the IGC.
> A more recent State Bank document cites no source and just uses the number as a given.
> Some WB documents refer to a House Building Finance Company Limited’s presentation as the source but nowhere does one find the exact method used to reach the oft-repeated number.

The worst part is that the government also uses this estimate without ever questioning its validity. And sadly, we have based policy on this assumption and initiated a large public housing effort at a considerable cost.

A few indicators to judge the housing conditions include congestion or crowding, security of tenure, provision of civic amenities, structural quality, and cultural adequacy.8 The Pakistan Social and Living Measurement (PSLM) survey, conducted by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), provides us with the opportunity to look into most of these factors, and we do so using its 2019-2020 round. Since urban and rural Pakistan exhibit quite different trends we look at them separately, along with some provincial patterns.

Using the definition given by the UN-Habitat9, “a house is considered to have a sufficient living area for the household members if not more than 3 people share the habitable room that is a minimum of 4m2 in area”. The 4m2 was rightly upgraded to 9m2, as the measurement was too small. We do not get room sizes in the PSLM, but the number of living rooms is covered in the survey. Since 9 sq2 is a typical size even in informal settlements so we would go by the number of persons per room to estimate congestion.

Unlike many countries, joint/extended families are still prevalent in Pakistan, with strong cultural values attached to it. The rates, however, are not as high as one would think as 74% of the households have nuclear setups, with not very divergent trends exhibited by rural and urban Pakistan.

Is the extended/joint family structure the reason behind this congestion? Table 4 shows that joint/extended households do have a larger size (i.e. average household members) and a slightly higher rate of congestion, but the living arrangement is not exactly a huge factor in determining congestion.

Security of tenure, gauged by the occupancy status in the PSLM, shows that this cannot be the case either as Pakistanis predominantly live in owned houses. Only a small proportion (11%) live in rented houses. The sensational deficit estimate makes no mention of the fact that the ownership of dwellings is as much as 82% in Pakistan and rented space is only 11%. In any case, living in rented houses does not represent a ‘deficit’.

This is where the concern should be. The quality of structure and access to civic amenities need to improve. Access to basic civic services, like waste disposal, clean drinking water, safe fuel for cooking, and a much-improved sewerage system are the issues that need attention to alleviate the quality of housing. Even the very high access to electricity (for light source) does not mean an uninterrupted supply.