Maharashtra government to build 11 lakh houses
Maharashtra government will construct 11 lakh houses in Mumbai and about seven lakh in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR). The announcement was recently made by State Housing Minister Prakash Mehta. Out of the total, 50 per cent of the houses will be completed in next five years, he told the Legislative Assembly.
The minister also said that the redevelopment projects by Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) will be monitored to ensure the completion of the projects.
“We will not shrug off the responsibility of the completion of redevelopment projects by merely issuing no objection certificate. MHADA will monitor all the development projects till its completion so that they are not delayed,” he said.
“We will prepare the master plan of the slum rehabilitation by preparing a list of slum dwellers across the city. The projects will be allotted through e-tendering. This will help us in completing the projects on time,” he added.
Housing woes in Mumbai
The dream of owning a home in Mumbai has become a luxury, where prices have increased much faster than the increase in the average income. According to a report by ASK Property Investment Advisors, the overall requirement of houses is expected to be 120,000-125,000 units for Mumbai Metropolitan Region over the next three years.
However, scarce land availability with limited FSI in the island city has compelled commercial and residential development to move northwards. Supply is seeing bottlenecks due to two main reasons- unavailability of land and delay in project completions caused due to tedious approval processes.
With the current limited land bank, the state government is trying to open up options through redevelopment of cessed buildings and slums. Cessed buildings mostly located in the Island city offer higher incentive for development of residential space. Experts believe that slum rehabilitation holds the answer to affordable housing for the poor and unlocking surplus land.
More FSI for slum redevelopment
To give housing in the city an additional boost, the state government will give additional FSI for the redevelopment of all old dilapidated, cessed buildings of Mumbai. In the next five years, 5.5 lakh affordable houses will be constructed in Mumbai, of the total 11 lakh affordable houses planned. The state government will also make a master plan for rehabilitation of slums in the island city by preparing Annexure II on its own and developers will be appointed through an e-tendering process.
State Housing Minister Prakash Mehta has said that the issue of old dilapidated, cessed buildings in the island city, which has been pending for years, needed to be resolved. The state housing department has decided to come out with a policy for redevelopment of all such buildings in a time bound manner by offering additional FSI.
“The government could bring down the number of the cessed buildings in the city to 16,000 from 19,000 few years ago. We have decided to complete the redevelopment of all the cessed buildings in next five years. FSI for such buildings have already been raised to 3 from 2.5 and we would not hesitate to increase it to 3.5, if the need be,” Mehta said.
He admitted the work of slum rehabilitation in the island city had been too slow in the last 10 years and a solution was needed for improvement. “Developers also duped the government by adding fake names of beneficiaries to get undue benefit from the SRA scheme. To end this, the government will make a master plan of the city, along with Annexure-II.
With this, the government will have names of each and every slum owner and no developer will be able to add fake names in the SRA projects. The SRA projects will also be allotted by an e-tendering process,” the housing minister said.
He said that the rehabilitation of transit camps will be done in the next five years and their residents would be given new houses. The housing minister stated that the development plan for Dharavi, slums on BPT land and redevelopment of BIT chawls is ready and will be announced soon. “The government has decided that redevelopment of slums on MHADA plots will be allowed to be done by private developers,” he said. According to the housing minister, the government will soon announce its housing policy that would also address issues pertaining to police housing.
