Charter of the Economy There were 29 million housing units in Pakistan in 2017, excluding FATA and Islamabad. The number of persons per housing unit varied significantly among the Provinces. It was the highest in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa at 8.02 and the lowest at 6.47 in Punjab. This reflected not only the variation in household size but also the difference in the extent of overcrowding. Home ownership rates were at 82 percent for the country as a whole. The quantification of the housing shortage requires data on the distribution of housing units by number of residents and number of rooms. This information has now become available from the Housing Census. Most studies have assumed that a housing unit is overcrowded if it has more than 3.5 persons living in a room as the housing standard. This has been used to determine the housing shortage in Pakistan in 2017, according to the Population Census. The number of overcrowded housing units is given in Table 22.3. The Table indicates that as many 10.4 million, out of the total of 29 million, housing units are characterized by overcrowding. This is equivalent to 36 percent of the housing units. The total population of the country which was living in overcrowded conditions in 2017 is 87 million, equivalent to 44 percent of the population. As estimate has been made of the number of additional rooms required in the overcrowded units to eliminate the congestion. The number is 12.3 million. This is equivalent to 15.5 percent of the total number of rooms in the housing units of Pakistan in 2017, implying a shortage of almost 5 million housing units. Table 22.3: Number of Overcrowded Housing Units Persons per Unit Number of Rooms in Housing Unit 1 2 3 4 1558- ­5 1555- ­6 1353- ­7 970- ­8 624 911 ­9 362 598 ­10 456 971 1048 TOTAL 6878 2480 1048 Source: Housing Census, 2017 (000) 4 ­­­­­­­TOTAL 22.4. Housing Finance One important finding is that the addition of only one room to the existing housing units can remove the overcrowding in existing 3.1 million units. Therefore, the appropriate 216