Improving Access to Green Affordable Housing for Women through policy intervention
Affordable Housing is fundamental to the livability of a city and its economic growth. Currently, India has an estimated housing shortage of about 29 million units (Roy & ML, 2020) making affordable housing one of the largest construction segments of the country. The construction sector and consequently housing construction has an adverse impact on the environment and is a major contributor towards climate change. Further, during its operation period housing is a major energy consumer and greenhouse gas emitter “accounting for 27% and 17% of global energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, respectively” (Nejat et al., 2015; Zhang et al., 2020 pp. 2).
Thus, Indian Cities need to accelerate initiatives to improve access to green affordable housing especially to women for meeting the targets of Sustainable Development Goals 2030. Although the term ‘green’ ‘affordable’ housing appears to be an oxymoron, it can be achieved with existing provisionary policy instruments. However, these policy instruments are disaggregated. These policies and practices need to be mapped and studied. On ground implementation of these policies also needs to be understood in order to identify gaps in the existing policy landscape and to make recommendations.
