Assessing Low-Income Housing Redevelopment Projects to Derive a Financially Viable and Sustainable Model for Mumbai, India

The entry into the thesis is through development of a housing project for low income group that is currently being worked upon by the author. The project is an alternative approach to the conventional housing redevelopment mechanism in the city. It is community-driven where the community is currently struggling to find an equal space in the development processes in Mumbai. The thesis stems from being part of this struggle with an objective to bring about socio-economic improvement through redevelopment programme and reinforcing the idea of equity by helping the community in getting equal opportunity within the decision-making process of development in the city. The thesis identifies the composition of the housing model applied in this alternative redevelopment project by learning through international literature on housing delivery systems, history of self-help housing and factors influencing current delivery of housing. It identifies that, housing delivery systems that dominate world housing for low income groups are: either market-driven, community-driven or a hybrid of the two, with extent of government involvement varying in all cases. The thesis identifies factors that decide the financial viability of a housing project and the also sustainability of the housing model with focus on economic, socio-economic, institutional and physical factors. The project under study is assessed using the derived financial viability and sustainability indicators and compared with the typical redevelopment mechanisms in the city to note its strength and weaknesses. The process reveals that it is not only financially viable but the most sustainable model too. It is further compared with other local and international case studies to explore other ideas which could be used to improve upon the alternative approach and which would suggest relevant options to reach the objectives of sustainability and equitable development processes. The study reveals that the alternative approach has a very high potential to succeed in providing solutions to affordable housing to the low income communities but also has drawbacks in terms of lack of government assistance, long period to bring about development, very few examples of community initiated projects and politically unsuitable scenario for the private sector developer lobby. Before suggesting improvements, the research learns from the case studies, assesses the drawbacks of certain mechanisms which would affect sustainability and appropriates that learning in the suggestions. It further suggests approaches which would bring about more involvement of the government bodies, NGOs, private sector and community at the localised level to make the development process more collaborative instead of making them dominantly single actor driven.