Enhancing availability of rental housing case study of greater Mumbai

Abstract

Rental housing is tremendously gaining boost in the developed and developing countries but governments policies and programs focus more on house ownership due to problematic issues like affordability, increasing housing stock, concentrated poverty, distressed neighborhoods and increasing demand and supply gap amongst homeless, elderly and disabled. To have better understanding of rental housing challenges of the nation, the focus is to thoughtfully address not only present issues affecting rental housing, but also viable solutions. Rental housing is of particular importance to the migrants, as the first entry point for a migrant in a city. Until a migrant can manage to find a stable job and save to invest in ownership housing, rental housing provides him/ her with numerous options shelter. Yet, the housing policies pay attention to the ownership of housing needs. A major disadvantage of ownership housing is the high cost of it, which makes it an option for already existing as well as affluent households. Rental housing, on the other hand, is considered to be more inclusive and it can accommodate new coming workforce migrating to the cities in the wake of urbanization. Renting has the advantage of treating housing as a consumption good rather than investment good. It also gives flexibility to move to the house suiting to the life stage and income level of an individual. The first section reviews primary problems and the contributing factors generated by the operation of the rental markets. The second section is to justify if any program have or have not dealt with primary challenges, any changes or improvements can be done along with the lessons learned in the process. The third section focuses on the primary and secondary data of the study area and its finding through primary survey. The final section focuses on the potential in rental housing policy through best practices from developing-developed countries into the existing programs and new innovations for long term market along with the solution for policies to reach the root cause of challenges created in rental housing.The prime focus is to understand the issues related to rental housing demand and supply gap along with exploring modes for efficient provisions for rental housing through policy comparison so as to suggest policies and delivery models for enhancing rental housing through bringing new and existing vacant stock into overall ambit.