A family finds a cheaper home on the outskirts of Dhaka. On paper, it looks affordable. But the father now spends hours commuting to work and a sizeable share of his income on transport. The children have little space to study. Waterlogging makes the neighborhood difficult to access during heavy rain. And every rent increase forces the family to reconsider what to cut from the monthly budget: food, healthcare, education, or savings.
So, is this really affordable housing?
This is the question we need to ask as we observe World Habitat Day and reflect on the call for “Adequate Housing for All.” Housing is too often discussed in terms of buildings: how many apartments have been constructed, how many plots have been developed, or how many families own their homes. But adequate housing is not simply four walls and a roof. It is about whether a home allows people to live safely, affordably, and with dignity and whether its location enables them to participate in the city.
Housing for all cannot mean home ownership for all
For Bangladesh, this distinction is increasingly important. The 2022 Population and Housing Census shows that while about 80.8 percent of households nationally lived in their own dwellings, the figure was only 55.6 percent in urban areas. Around 34.7 percent of urban households were renters who did not own another dwelling elsewhere.
The more recent picture suggests that rental dependence remains significant. According to reporting based on Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics data, around 45 percent of households in Dhaka Division were renting or subletting their dwellings in 2023, compared with about 19 percent nationally. At the same time, the House Rent Index has continued to rise; BBS data show a 5.19 percent year-on-year increase in the July-September 2025 quarter, followed by 5.24 percent in October-December 2025.
These figures make the issue very tangible. For a large share of urban Bangladesh, housing is not an ownership question; it is a rental question. Homeownership therefore cannot be the only measure of housing success. For millions of Bangladeshis, particularly migrants, young workers, students, newly formed households, and low- and middle-income families, rental housing is not a temporary arrangement on the way to ownership. Rental housing is their housing.
Yet our housing discourse continues to focus heavily on land ownership, apartment ownership and new construction. Rental housing deserves far greater policy attention. We need better rental-market data, greater tenure security, transparent mechanisms for rent adjustment and incentives to expand affordable rental housing in well-connected locations.
The hidden cost of location
This brings us to perhaps the most overlooked dimension of housing affordability: location.
A Tk10,000 home close to employment, public transport, schools and healthcare may ultimately be more affordable than a Tk7,000 home that requires several hours and substantial transport expenditure every day. Housing costs therefore cannot be understood separately from mobility costs. We need to start asking not simply, “How much does this house cost?” but, “How much does it cost this household to live here?”
A home is also a learning environment
Housing also has consequences that extend far beyond urban planning. Housing policy is education policy, health policy and, increasingly, climate policy. Consider a child living in an overcrowded home without adequate lighting, ventilation or a quiet place to study. Improving the school alone cannot remove all the disadvantages that child experiences. Housing conditions influence sleep, health, concentration and learning opportunities. Excessive rent can also leave families with less money for education, nutrition and healthcare.
Housing must be ready for a changing climate
Climate change adds another layer of urgency. In Bangladesh, flooding, waterlogging, cyclones, river erosion, salinity and extreme heat already affect where and how people live. A dwelling cannot be called adequate if it is affordable today but repeatedly flooded tomorrow, or if poor ventilation makes it dangerously uncomfortable during extreme heat.
Climate-resilient housing therefore requires more than stronger buildings. It requires risk-sensitive land-use planning, protection of wetlands and floodplains, better drainage, heat-sensitive design, energy efficiency, resilient infrastructure and community-based adaptation.
Better housing should not mean displaced communities
But resilience should not become an excuse for displacement. This is particularly relevant to informal settlements and historic neighborhoods such as Puran Dhaka. Demolishing older housing and replacing it with expensive apartments may improve physical building quality while making the neighborhood unaffordable to its original residents. The result can be better buildings but less inclusive cities.
Where feasible, upgrading existing communities should therefore come before displacement-oriented redevelopment. Better sanitation, drainage, water supply, waste management, public spaces, structural improvements and energy efficiency can improve housing conditions while allowing communities to retain their livelihoods, social networks and cultural identity. This principle is especially important in historic neighborhoods.
From counting houses to measuring housing adequacy
Bangladesh ultimately needs to move from counting houses to measuring housing adequacy. A national framework could assess affordability, tenure security, habitability, basic services, accessibility, location, climate resilience, and social and cultural adequacy. These dimensions could also be mapped through GIS to identify neighborhoods where different forms of housing deprivation overlap and where place-specific interventions are needed.
This would shift the housing conversation from “How many units have we built?” to a much more meaningful question: “Are people actually able to live well in those homes?”
What should “Adequate Housing for All” mean?
World Habitat Day should therefore prompt us to ask a different question. Not simply: How many houses does Bangladesh need? We should ask: Can a family afford its home without sacrificing food, education or healthcare? Can a worker reach employment without losing hours every day? Can a child study safely at home? Can a tenant live without constant insecurity? Can an elderly person reach essential services? Can a community survive both climate risks and redevelopment pressures?
If the answer is no, providing a roof is not enough. For Bangladesh, “Adequate Housing for All” should not remain an annual slogan. It should become a principle that guides how we plan our cities, invest in infrastructure, regulate rental markets, respond to climate risks and measure development itself. Because the real success of housing policy will not ultimately be counted in apartments, plots or buildings. It will be measured by whether those homes allow people to live with security, dignity and opportunity.
Mowtushi Poit is Assistant Professor, Bangladesh Institute of Governance and Management (BIGM).
