Sri Lanka’s public housing policy should be integrated with public transport to avert further segregation of communities: Experts

Sri Lanka’s public housing policy should be integrated with the public transport to avert further segregation of communities in socio-economic lines, experts opine.
“When you have bad regulations that are really land or space-intensive, you get much less efficiency with your build, then you drive the price beyond affordability. It’s all linked. That may be the problem we are having in Sri Lanka as we look at housing policy in isolation with transport policy and vice versa or any kind of urban development,” John Keells Holdings, President - Property Group, Nayana Mawilmada said.

He was sharing his views on the weekly Advo Chats programme organised by the Advocata Institute. 
In particular, he stressed that Sri Lanka needs a complete U-turn towards mass-transit in order to rectify current distortions in the housing market.
“Connectivity is fundamental. You can’t talk about housing without talking about connectivity. Some people stay in appalling conditions to get to their workplace. Over past 3-4 decades, we have completely neglected our public transport. It has created so many distortions. 
We need a fundamental mindset shift towards mass transit, then we don’t need so much of parking; then we can repurpose these parking spaces. Once you make the shift to masstransit, you fundamentally change the way you build. 

At the moment, we build around cars, so we have huge roads and tons of parking,” he said.
Due to the shortcomings in housing policies, he pointed out that Colombo is increasingly becoming a segregated city between poor and rich while the middle-class is leaving the city to the suburbs.
“There is a lot of debate around the low-income housing, but there is virtually no discussion around middle-income housing. Over the past decade or so, what’s been happening was that Colombo is being emptying out of middle-class. I think this is a critical policy gap that Sri Lanka needs take head on and deal with,” he elaborated.

Mawilmada viewed that if right incentives and policies are adopted, the private sector could play a greater role in middle-income housing.
“My personal view is that the middle incoming housing can be completely done through the private sector given the right incentives and right structural approach without pumping much Treasury funds. There needs to be a sharp policy focusing on that. I think it’s completely missing now,” he pointed out.
Meanwhile, Colombo Urban Lab Founder and Director, Iromi Perera highlighted that the Urban Regeneration Programme, which aimed to create a shanty-free Colombo has failed to meet housing requirements of low-income families in Colombo, unlike the million housing programme in late 1970’s and 1980’s.

“If you take a look at the million-housing programme, it was a very successful programme for lot of different reasons. It was largely participatory and community-driven. People were involved in the designing of the project to designing of their own houses. Everyone who got a house under the programme received an official housing document; some were outright deeds, some came under NHD. When it’s an asset belonging to you, people feel safe investing in them and to incrementally improve their home. The current Urban Regeneration project has gone against these good principles,” she elaborated. 

Sharing his views, Mawilmada stressed that the current policy prescription of bulldozing low-income communities and building high rises must be changed.
“It’s unfortunate that we have regressed and started to do things perhaps little too aggressively, which is problematic. I think part of the problem is the rush to get results. However, you are doing shock treatments now by putting people to a new environment that they are not used to. A lot of times the justification was that we just don’t like the way it looks. At the end of the day, we have to remember housing is about live experiences,” he added.
(NF)