Shortage of 800,000 houses in the country, claims ex-NHDA chief

By Rathindra Kuruwita

There is a shortage of 800,000 houses in the country, former Chairman of the Housing Development Authority (NHDA) Lakvijaya Sagara Palansuriya says.Palansuriya said that during the past 18 months or so, the construction sector had suffered huge setbacks due to the economic crisis.

Low and middle-income families were the worst affected, Palansuriya said.

“Building a house is not a priority anymore. The number of those living in temporary residences have increased by about 50 percent,” he said.

Palansuriya said Sri Lanka had carried out the last survey on housing in 2016. It had revealed that there was a need to build another 500,000 houses. Now, the number has increased by 300,000, he said.

“There were 44,000 temporary houses in 2016. We can assume another 20,000 temporary houses have been added by now. The state used to spend a lot of money on building houses or giving low interest housing loans. Between 2015 and 2019, the state spent about 35 billion rupees on these. 90 percent of this amount was spent on low- and middle income families. The state is not in a position to do this right now,” he said.