Housing for All: Govt identifies 305 cities & towns

NEW DELHI: The government has identified 305 cities and towns for constructing homes for the urban poor under the ‘Housing for All by 2022’ mission.

These cities and towns are spread across nine of the 15 states that have signed memoranda of agreement (MoA) with the ministry of housing and urban poverty alleviation for the programme.

Of the cities and towns identified, 74 are in Madhya Pradesh, 42 in Odisha, 40 in Rajasthan, 36 in Chhattisgarh, 30 in Gujarat, 34 in Telangana, 19 in Jammu & Kashmir and 15 each in Kerala and Jharkhand. The other states that have signed the MoA include Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Uttarakhand.

By signing the MoA, these states have agreed to implement six mandatory reforms that are essential for making the housing mission a success in the urban areas.

These include doing away with the requirement of a separate non-agricultural permission (NAP) in case the land for the project falls in a zone earmarked in the master plan of the city/town as residential; preparing or amending master plans by earmarking land for affordable housing; putting in place a single-window time-bound clearance system for layout approvals and building permissions; doing away with approvals below certain built up area or plot size in respect of housing for economically weaker sections and low-income groups; legislating or amending existing rent laws on the lines of the Model Tenancy Act; providing additional floor area ratio (FAR), floor space index or transferable development rights (TDR), and relaxing density norms for slum redevelopment and low-cost housing.

Under the Housing for All initiative, also called the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, the central government has targeted to build 2 crore homes for urban poor by the year 2022. This will coincide with the 75th year of India’s independence. The initiative was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on June 25.

Getamber Anand, national president of the Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Association of India and managing director of ATS Infrastructure, said this is a very doable plan.

“Some fiscal incentives by way of tax exemptions like they give to SEZs need to be given to the private sector to energize them. The margins in this segment of housing might be low, but they there are huge volumes to be achieved, for which the private sector is keen. If this happens, then this target can easily be achieved in the next three to four years,” said Anand.

The government will provide Rs 1-2.3 lakh assistance per house under different components of the scheme, including in-situ redevelopment of slums using land as resource, credit-linked subsidy scheme, affordable housing in partnership and beneficiary-led individual construction or improvement of homes.