Affordable for whom? A tale of three perspectives in public housing

Pakistan’s housing challenge is often discussed in terms of shortages, rising land prices, construction costs, and limited access to finance. Yet beneath these familiar explanations lies a less explored question: what if affordable housing remains elusive not because affordability is absent, but because affordability itself means different things to different stakeholders?

For this discussion, the three principal stakeholders in public housing are the keeper, the seeker, and the maker. The keeper is the government agency entrusted with the public mandate of delivering housing. The seeker is the government servant seeking a home. The maker is the contractor responsible for building it.

The dilemma of affordable public housing is not that affordability is missing; it is a question of perspective. To the keeper, affordability is sustainability. To the seeker, it is purchasing capacity. To the maker, it is commercial viability.

Though all three are constituents of the same housing equation, each defines affordability by a different formula. The result is a reaction that struggles to reach equilibrium, where expectations remain unbalanced, frustrations compound, and the price of affordability is paid by all—though seldom in equal measure.

Caught at the intersection of these competing expectations, the keeper bears the burden of reconciling what often appears irreconcilable. It must preserve financial sustainability without compromising affordability and facilitate commercial viability without diluting its public mandate. In attempting to bridge the divide between cost, capacity, and viability, it becomes the custodian of a fragile equilibrium—one that is rarely acknowledged, frequently contested, and increasingly difficult to maintain.

For the keeper, affordability is inseparable from sustainability. Entrusted with a public mandate, it must acquire land, provide infrastructure, recover development costs, ensure timely completion, and remain accountable for every rupee spent. Unlike a private developer, it cannot freely pursue profit; unlike a welfare programme, it cannot indefinitely absorb losses. It is expected to provide housing on a cost-to-cost basis while simultaneously delivering affordability, transparency, efficiency, and accountability.

For the seeker, however, affordability is measured not by project economics but by personal capacity. Yet the housing equation does not begin with housing. Long before a government servant enters a housing scheme, the State has already shaped much of his economic reality through salary structures, annual increments, service conditions, retirement rules, and restrictions on supplementary employment. Having defined those limits, it is hardly surprising that the seeker expects the same State to recognize them when designing housing solutions.

From the seeker’s perspective, affordable housing is not merely about the price of a plot or apartment. It is equally about access to affordable housing finance. A housing unit that appears affordable on paper may remain inaccessible if financing costs, markup rates, or repayment structures exceed the financial capacity of the intended beneficiary. For many government employees, affordability is as much a financing challenge as it is a housing challenge.

The seeker’s frustrations are not without basis. The trust deficit that often characterizes public housing schemes is not entirely misplaced. Delays arising from litigation, administrative bottlenecks, funding constraints, and institutional inefficiencies can undermine confidence even in otherwise well-designed projects. When costs rise while progress appears stagnant, dissatisfaction becomes inevitable.

The maker faces an equally legitimate set of concerns. Construction costs, inflation, financing expenses, cash-flow requirements, contractual risks, and expected returns determine whether a project can be delivered at all. Housing projects are time-bound, yet the challenges confronting them often are not. The disruptions caused by COVID-19, supply-chain constraints, unprecedented inflation, and more recent energy and commodity price shocks demonstrate how quickly project economics can change. A project that appeared viable at inception may become significantly more difficult to execute under altered economic conditions.

Yet the equation becomes far more complicated once the word public enters the conversation. In a purely private transaction, the seeker and the maker may disagree on price, quality, timelines, or risk allocation, but market forces eventually compel both to find a point of equilibrium. The moment the word public enters the equation, the chemistry changes.

To the seeker, the public often signifies greater affordability and an assurance that the State will bridge the gap between aspiration and capacity. To the maker, the public signifies continuity, security, and a client whose obligations carry sovereign weight. To the keeper, however, public means accountability, transparency, procedural compliance, stewardship of public resources, and scrutiny from multiple directions. Thus, the same word acquires three different meanings and gives rise to three different expectations.

The paradox deepens further because each stakeholder expects something different from the same institution. The seeker expects protection from market realities. The maker expects insulation from extraordinary commercial risks. The keeper, meanwhile, is expected to satisfy both expectations while remaining bound by rules, procedures, audits, oversight mechanisms, and public scrutiny.

The situation becomes even more complex when uncertainty takes hold. Information gaps create space for speculation, competing narratives, vested interests, and market intermediaries. The least informed stakeholder—the seeker—is often the most vulnerable to misinformation and manipulation. In the absence of timely communication, perception often fills the space left by facts.

What begins as a delay in days gathers momentum like a snowball, eventually turning into months and then years of litigation. Each dispute adds another knot to an already tangled thread, making resolution progressively more difficult. The consequences are borne by all: the seeker waits longer for a home, the maker faces prolonged uncertainty, and the keeper confronts escalating costs, delays, and scrutiny.

Affordable public housing, therefore, is not merely a challenge of finance, construction, or project management. It is a challenge of alignment. The keeper, the seeker, and the maker do not operate in isolation, yet the policies governing them often do. Salary structures, housing finance, banking regulations, land management, infrastructure provision, contractual frameworks, risk-sharing mechanisms, and accountability systems are frequently designed and administered through separate institutions pursuing separate objectives.

Over the years, governments have established numerous authorities, agencies, regulators, financing programmes, oversight bodies, and policy frameworks to address the housing challenge. Yet the promise of affordable housing remains frustratingly elusive. Perhaps the problem is not the absence of institutions, but the absence of coherence among them.

The keeper’s effectiveness depends upon clear mandates, coordinated decision-making, realistic accountability, and timely support mechanisms. The seeker’s affordability depends upon income, access to finance, and confidence in delivery. The maker’s viability depends upon risk-sharing arrangements, contractual certainty, and mechanisms to address extraordinary disruptions. None of these variables exists in isolation, and neither can the solutions.

Perhaps the real challenge is not the absence of housing institutions, financing schemes, regulators, or oversight mechanisms. Pakistan has no shortage of these. The challenge is that they often operate as separate solutions to what is, in reality, a single problem.

Until the keeper, the seeker, and the maker are viewed not as competing interests but as interconnected parts of the same ecosystem, affordable housing may remain an objective pursued by all, debated by many, administered by numerous institutions, and achieved by far fewer than intended.