‘State govt not helping create affordable homes’

Mumbai: With the cost of housing increasing, the Maharashtra Chamber of Housing Industry (MCHI), a developers' body, on Wednesday blamed the state government for not boosting measures to create affordable housing stock, including 5 lakh homes planned jointly between MCHI and the government. 

    In a statement, MCHI-Credai, as it is known on joining hands with the Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India (Credai), said two years after a deal (April 28, 2010) to construct 5 lakh homes, the government has not amended development rules and provided incentives nor set up a nodal agency to handle approvals through a single window clearance system to clear projects. 

    "The overall objective of the initiative was to go for construction so as to address the yawning housing demand-supply gap and to provide affordable homes to the EWS, 

LIG and MIG groups. The plan was to roll out in 60 days. But not a single paper moved despite several reminders,'' MCHI-Credai president Paras Gundecha said. "It would have kept market rates under check. Instead, Mumbai has emerged as the costliest real estate market,'' he said. 

    Senior government officials said the developers argument is based on half-truths. "The real issue is developers do not want the state to implement the Centre's scheme of compulsorily reserving 20% in 2,000 sq mts vacant plot for low-cost housing. They want the state to implement the incentive-based Mhada scheme wherein a developer gets a FSI of 1.75 against 1.5 earlier and also gets a higher cost of construction of Rs 6,000 a sq ft for every low-cost apartment he constructs for Mhada. 

    A bureaucrat said that in meetings with the CM, developers had been clearly told that the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (Mhada) and not the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority would be the nodal agency.