Indonesia's Housing Gap: 10 Million Households Without Homes

18 Jun 2026, 10:13 WIB

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Indonesia's Housing Gap: 10 Million Households Without Homes

ilustrasi benjolan di ketiak (magnific.com/stockking)

Behind the "Living at Home Longer" trend increasingly visible in Indonesia's big cities, there is a number that deserves closer reading. The phenomenon of young people living with their parents, or three generations sharing one roof, is not simply a reflection of Indonesian family values. It is also a signal of a housing crisis that has been running for years and shows no sign of easing.

Indonesia has a concrete, measurable housing problem.

According to official data from Statistics Indonesia (BPS) in the 2023 National Socioeconomic Survey (Susenas), the national homeownership backlog reached 9.9 million units. That means there are 9.9 million households living in homes they do not own and without a home elsewhere. The figure is concentrated on Java, with West Java (around 2.07 million) and Jakarta (around 1.08 million) as the largest contributors.

This is not the peak. The ownership backlog has actually declined in recent years: from 12.75 million units in 2020, to 12.72 million in 2021, 10.51 million in 2022, and 9.9 million in 2023. Then-President Joko Widodo himself noted that the growth of new families needing homes runs between 700,000 and 800,000 families per year.

The problem is that realized home construction is only around 600,000 units per year, far below the annual need that keeps growing.

This gap between supply and demand is not merely a technical issue. It is the real reason why millions of young Indonesians cannot yet move out of their parents' homes.

A Number Still Up for Debate

It is important to note: the 9.9 million figure is not the final word. Throughout 2025, an open debate emerged between government institutions over what the national housing backlog actually is.

The Deputy Minister of Housing and Settlement Areas (PKP), Fahri Hamzah, cited a far higher figure: around 15 million units. His reasoning is that the number of families has surged. Fahri stated that Indonesia's population reached around 289.5 million, and the number of families, which was 74 to 78 million in 2023 and 2024, is now 93.1 million, with a shrinking average household size. This 15 million figure is based on the National Socioeconomic Single Data (DTSEN), calculated on a per-family basis.

But BPS disputed that figure. BPS chief Amalia Adininggar Widyasanti affirmed that the 15 million figure is not official BPS data, and that the official figure in effect at the time was around 9 million units, pending the results of the 2025 Susenas for an update.

As of 2026, the situation is still unresolved. For "this year," there is no new official figure to replace the 9.9 million. What is available is only:

9.9 million — the 2023 Susenas figure, still the official reference in effect.
~15 million — the Deputy Minister's claim based on DTSEN, disputed by BPS, so it cannot yet be used as official data.
The final 2025 to 2026 figure — not yet released, scheduled to appear around August 2026 in a dedicated BPS Housing Statistics publication.

What is certain is that whatever the final figure turns out to be, the scale of the crisis is not shrinking, and may in fact be larger than what has been circulating.

Jakarta: The City Most Honest About This Problem

Jakarta is the starkest example of this crisis.

Research on young people's homeownership in Jakarta by Sunindijo et al. (2020) found that only around 17 percent of young people in Jakarta can afford to buy a home and pay the mortgage installments. The rest are trapped between unaffordable property prices and wages too low to enter the formal housing market.

The same study noted that only around 20 percent of Indonesian households can access the formal housing market. This constraint is followed by two other major barriers: insufficient income and the limited stock of affordable homes in desired locations.

Conditions in Jakarta are even sharper than the national average. Citing CNBC Indonesia (2023), around 1.77 million households in Jakarta did not have livable housing in 2022, equivalent to 63 percent of all households in the capital.

Nationally, only 65.47 percent of urban households have access to livable and affordable housing, based on data reported by perkim.id (2026) referencing BPS.