The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana—India’s flagship affordable housing policy—was launched in 2015 with an aim to provide serviced dwelling units to every Indian citizen by 2022. With an aim to construct 11.2 million housing units by 2022, PMAY is at once looking at an immense development opportunity and challenge. If the challenge is not addressed in a timely manner, conventional planning practices will lead to the construction of an affordable housing stock that will be inadequate to protect the population against the consequences of climate change.

But, with adequate guidance, this is also a great opportunity to plan and design housing that is climate-appropriate, resource-efficient, safe, healthy, comfortable and, most importantly, affordable to the rapidly multiplying urban masses, especially the urban poor.

However, despite the fact that a slew of policy measures have been introduced to tackle the housing crisis, there are issues with the implementation of those measures. This policy brief investigates the latest housing demand in every state in India and the methods used to estimate it; as well as to throw light on how this demand corresponds to the issue of slums and sub-standard housing in states; the status of implementation in terms of houses sanctioned, grounded for construction and completed; and, how each vertical under the PMAY-U is performing.