Socio-Economic Aspects
Affordability, income categories, and the slum-rehabilitation question.
Housing is a social and economic act before it is an architectural one. This unit covers the social factors that shape housing design — family, community, the privacy gradient, gender and culture; the economics of affordability and its norms; the PMAY income categories EWS, LIG, MIG-I and MIG-II and their carpet-area limits; and the hardest question in Indian housing — slum rehabilitation, the choice between in-situ redevelopment and peripheral relocation, and the cross-subsidy model of the Mumbai SRA.
Learning objectives
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to — mapped to the course outcomes for Housing:
Explain the social factors — family, community, privacy gradient, gender, culture — that shape housing.
Apply affordability norms (price-to-income and EMI-to-income) to classify a household by income category.
State the PMAY income categories and their carpet-area limits.
Weigh in-situ slum redevelopment against relocation and explain the SRA cross-subsidy model.
Society, money and income
Housing answers social patterns and economic limits — affordability norms and the EWS/LIG/MIG income categories decide who can be housed by the formal market.[3, 5, 14]
Family, community, culture
Housing design must answer real social patterns: FAMILY STRUCTURE (joint vs nuclear — affecting room count and expandability), COMMUNITY and neighbourliness (the mohalla, the shared court), the PRIVACY GRADIENT (public → semi-public → semi-private → private — Alexander's 'Intimacy Gradient'), GENDER (safety, sanitation access, women's use of thresholds and work space, women-headed households), and CULTURE (ritual, cooking, religion, and resisting caste-based segregation). Doshi's and Correa's clusters were explicitly shaped around these patterns.[5, 8]
Can this household afford a home?
Enter a monthly household income and see the PMAY income category, the affordable house price (the price-to-income rule) and the loan an EMI of 40% of income can carry.
Affordability · enter a household income
Income category (annual ₹4,20,000)
LIG · Low Income Group
₹3–6 lakh/year — together with EWS, ~95%+ of the urban shortage. Dwelling: up to 60 m².
₹18,90,000
affordable price (4.5× income)
₹14,000
max EMI (40% of income)
₹15,56,029
max loan @ 9% / 20yr
On ₹35,000/month, the price-to-income rule (≤4.5×) suggests a home up to about ₹18,90,000; a 40%-of-income EMI of ₹14,000 supports a loan of roughly ₹15,56,029.
Indicative — PMAY-U 1.0 income bands; the stricter UN-Habitat benchmark is ≤3× income. Add transport cost before judging affordability.
The slum question
In-situ redevelopment keeps people near their livelihoods; relocation severs them. Mumbai's SRA gives free rehab units cross-subsidised by TDR — an ingenious but contested model.[3, 15]
The central choice
IN-SITU redevelopment rebuilds a slum on the SAME land, preserving the livelihoods, schooling and social networks tied to the location. RELOCATION moves dwellers to (usually peripheral) resettlement sites with cheaper land — but severs the very job links that made the location valuable, causing impoverishment, high vacancy and abandonment. The evidence strongly favours in-situ upgrading for serving the poor; land economics keep pulling the other way.[3]
At a glance
| Aspect | One | The other |
|---|---|---|
| Affordability multiple | UN benchmark: price ≤ 3× income | Indian texts: ≤ 4–5× income |
| EWS vs LIG | EWS: ≤ ₹3 lakh, up to 30 m² | LIG: ₹3–6 lakh, up to 60 m² |
| Slum strategy | In-situ: keep on-site, near jobs | Relocation: peripheral, severs livelihoods |
| SRA funds rehab via | Not public money | TDR / extra FSI free-sale component |
| High-rise rehab | Myth: solves slums | Reality: contested, builder-driven, poorly maintained |
Key terms
The graded sequence public → semi-public → semi-private → private (Alexander's Intimacy Gradient).
House price ≤ ~4–5× annual income (UN-Habitat benchmark ≤3 = affordable).
Housing cost/EMI ≤ ~30% of monthly income (welfare) up to ~40% (lending ceiling).
Economically Weaker Section (≤₹3 L/yr) and Low Income Group (₹3–6 L/yr) — the bulk of the shortage.
The net usable floor area within walls — the basis of PMAY dwelling-size limits.
Rebuilding a slum on the same land, preserving livelihoods and networks.
Mumbai's Slum Rehabilitation Authority (1995) — free rehab units cross-subsidised by TDR/extra FSI free-sale.
Funding affordable units from the profits of a market-rate component of the same project.
Studio task
Use the affordability explorer to find the maximum home price a family earning ₹25,000/month can afford. Compare it to the cheapest formal flat in your city. If there is a gap (there will be), explain in one paragraph how an in-situ upgrading scheme, a CLSS/ISS subsidy, and the right income category together could close it — and what is lost if the family is instead relocated to the periphery.
Self-assessment
1. A common affordability rule is that a house should cost no more than about —
2. Under PMAY-U 1.0, the EWS category was defined by an annual household income up to —
3. The Mumbai SRA funds free rehabilitation tenements mainly by —
Recap
References & further reading
- [1]Turner, John F.C. — Housing by People (Marion Boyars, 1976).
- [3]Payne, Geoffrey K. (ed.) — Low-Income Housing in the Developing World (Wiley, 1984).
- [5]Alexander, C., Ishikawa, S., Silverstein, M., et al. — A Pattern Language (Oxford University Press, 1977).
- [8]Correa, Charles — Housing and Urbanisation (Thames & Hudson, 2000).
- [9]UN-Habitat — affordability benchmarks (median multiple); World Bank — Housing: Enabling Markets to Work (1993).
- [14]Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs — PMAY-Urban Guidelines (income categories EWS/LIG/MIG; carpet-area limits).
- [15]Slum Rehabilitation Authority, Mumbai (est. 1995) — SRA scheme and TDR cross-subsidy model (MHAD Act amendment).
Further reading
- John F.C. Turner — Housing by People (1976).
- Christopher Alexander et al. — A Pattern Language (1977).
- Charles Correa — Housing and Urbanisation (2000).
Sources gathered and fact-checked June 2026. Published values vary by source, sample and method — treat as indicative and confirm against the cited standard before structural use.