The struggle for affordable housing

By Manav Khaire and Disha Bhanot

Urban regions worldwide are urgently seeking political commitment to address the lack of affordable housing. Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor-elect, campaigned on alleviating the cost-of-living crisis, including affordable housing, rent freezes, universal childcare, subsidised public education, free public transport, and subsidised grocery stores, positioning affordability as the core issue.

Many of Mamdani’s views resonate deeply with the Indian context; his emphasis on grassroots democracy, equitable development, and people-first policies mirrors the aspirations of countless communities here.

In a similar context, an email sent in 2020 by Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, has resurfaced in headlines, suggesting that student debt and unaffordable housing may push millennials towards greater support for socialism, potentially paving the way for the rise of political leaders like Mamdani.

Housing unaffordability is no longer a standalone issue; it has evolved into what social scientist Steffen Wetzstein refers to as a ‘Global Urban Housing Affordability Crisis’, an overall trend in which house prices and rents grow significantly faster than the median household incomes across urban centres worldwide. In other words, cities are becoming increasingly unaffordable due to the widening gap between what people can afford to pay and actual housing prices, indicating a lack of affordable housing options.

In an interview, the executive director of UN-Habitat (2020) stated that “around 80 per cent of cities worldwide do not have affordable housing options (either for rental or purchase) for half of their population.”

India has the second-largest urban population (461 million) in the world, with five megacities — New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, and Chennai. With rapid urban population growth, the need for affordable housing has increased proportionately.

However, the supply of affordable housing stock has consistently fallen short, leading to a persistent supply-demand mismatch. This mismatch reflects an inconvenient paradox in the Indian context: a significant disparity exists between the housing being supplied (targeted largely at middle- and higher-income groups) and the housing needed (for low-income populations).

This ongoing mismatch is not merely an urban planning issue; it strikes at the heart of poverty itself. When affordable housing is scarce, low-income households are forced to spend a disproportionate share of their income on rent or settle for unsafe, overcrowded dwellings. Such housing insecurity undermines every other aspect of well-being: families struggle to save, invest in education, access stable employment, or pursue upward mobility.

In this sense, poverty and housing are inseparable challenges. Without addressing housing affordability, efforts to reduce urban poverty remain fundamentally incomplete. Secure, dignified shelter is not an outcome of development, it is a prerequisite for it. Thus, the battle against poverty cannot be won without confronting the parallel crisis of unaffordable housing, as improvements in income, health, or social support can still be undone when families are pushed back into insecurity due to unaffordable living conditions.

Housing: an individual problem?

Following the 1991 reforms, the Indian government adopted market-driven housing policies to bridge the supply-demand gap. Under this model, housing is predominantly financed and built by the private sector, while the government acts mainly as a market enabler, regulating the broader ecosystem. On the supply side, individual households are expected to have sufficient income and financial resources to purchase housing in the open market.

Once this individualised narrative takes hold, the responsibility for securing housing shifts entirely to individuals. Essentially, if one cannot afford housing, the blame lies with the individual, and the market or government remains beyond question. Mamdani’s campaign directly challenged this framing, highlighting socio-political housing justice that confronts speculative forces and exposes the structural and systemic roots of unaffordability.

By presenting unaffordability as a collective, policy-driven problem, rather than an individual burden, the campaign resonated strongly with citizens. It challenged the popular narrative surrounding why a basic need such as housing has become so unaffordable. In doing so, it restored political accountability to an area where markets have been insufficient and positioned housing justice as a legitimate civic demand.

Mamdani’s victory is more than just an electoral win, it signals a resurgence of people-powered politics. His campaign, fuelled by grassroots support rather than corporate dollars, is a powerful reminder that democratic values and socialist principles still endure. Mamdani’s success underscores that the struggle for housing affordability, whether in New York or Mumbai, is a struggle for dignity, equity, and democratic agency.

(Manav is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Humanities and Social
Sciences, IIT Palakkad. Disha is Associate Professor of Operations, Supply Chain Management and Quantitative Methods, S P Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.