The majority of the houses in the district are made of clay and red (baked) bricks. The use of red bricks is most common. These brick houses have thick mud plaster / coating. Mud and clay bricks are used in rural areas by the villagers themselves or otherwise by those engaged for construction at low labor cost. In rural areas women participate in the construction. The mud made houses resist heat. Therefore, brick houses have mud covering on surrounding walls, roofs and interior. An average house has two to three living rooms with a yard. A house may have a room used as a barn. The concepts of flush cistern, commode and/or wash basin do not exist in rural houses. The urban areas in Dera Allah Yar and Usta Mohammad have strong resemblance with the rural areas. However there are a few private owned houses, which have a flush system and modern amenities. This system exists in government owned houses too.

There are residential colonies of the Irrigation Department in Dera Allah Yar and Usta Mohammad. The one in Usta Mohammad is large and pleasant. The rest houses built by the Irrigation Department in Hairdin and Usta Mohammad are very old. They were built in 1913 and 1923. There are a number of government houses for government employees. A number of houses is very old. The town of Shoubatpur has a number of old houses belonging to the Gola elite. The Superintendent of Police (SP) and Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) houses are mud-made and also very old.

Sixty three percent of the houses in the district is owned by the occupants. Twenty three percent is rent free. Only 14 percent is rented. The availability of rented houses in the district is limited to Dera Allah Yar. Because of the joint family system and close family / tribal setup, the number of rent free houses is large.

As mentioned earlier, the houses in the district are made of clay and baked bricks with thick clay / mud topping and roofing. Doors, windows, and ventilators are made of wood. The use of iron grills is rare. The use of cement, iron, and tiles is not common. The use of mortar is mostly found in floor boards. The joints are made of wood.

There are very few old buildings in the area belonging to Jaffarabad district. There is not any important historical architecture. The houses are generally 25 to 50 year old.

Seventy-nine percent of the district area is electrified. Gas is extended to Dera Allah Yar, Shobatpur and Usta Mohammad. Few of the remaining villages have been provided with gas. For industrial and mechanical / agricultural purposes electricity is the major source of energy. Both sources are used for cooking and heating purpose. Houses without electricity rely on kerosene oil and wood. The use of dung cake for fuel is very common among poor people, even in areas with electricity and gas. The persons from the upper / middle class use diesel powered generators for agricultural and domestic purposes in the areas without electricity. The use of kerosene and gas lamps is also common. Illegal electricity connections are common in the rural areas, in the sense that people have connected themselves illegally to the power grid or sabotage their meters.

The villages are situated at short distances from one another. A housing facility constitutes commonly a kitchen, a bath-room and a toilet. In most of the houses cooking is done outside or under a shelter, due to the long period of hot weather. The government owned houses and those belonging to rich people have a separate bath-room and kitchen. Seventy-six percent of the housing environment in the district is without proper drainage, human waste disposal arrangements or a sewerage system.

The district has no shortage of water except during the season when the canal is closed to be cleaned. The problem of clean drinking water and sanitation, however, remains. There are not enough water tanks and filtration arrangements, so that water can be purified. There is lack of sanitation in both urban and rural areas. Sanitation does not come under the Public Health Department. The sewerage systems in urban areas of Dera Allah Yar and Usta Mohammad are not well managed. They are blocked by plastic bags, dust or by rice paddies.

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