Taking forward its promise to facilitate construction of affordable housing projects by private players, the state government has set up a committee for accelerating such projects in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR). The state housing department announced the panel in a government resolution.
The panel, to be chaired by the state chief secretary, will have state housing secretary as member secretary and will iclude members from both the state government and the developers’ body, Maharashtra Chamber of Housing Industries (MCHI). State government members will include the Metropolitan Commissioner, vice-president of the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA), the BMC Commissioner and the principal secretary of the state Urban Development Department.
The committee comes in the wake of a Memorandum of Understanding between the MCHI and the state government signed over a month back where developers set a target of constructing five lakh affordable houses in the MMR over five years.
“There are several regulatory reforms and policy changes needed at the state and central levels. The committee will go into micro-issues such as height restrictions, environmental clearances, supply of raw material, infrastructure, density all with valuable suggestions from members from the industry,” said Sunil Mantri, MCHI president and member of the new committee.
The other MCHI members include developers Pravin Doshi of Acme Housing, Dharmesh Jain of Nirmal Lifestyles, Mayur Shah of Marathon Group and Nainesh Shah of Everest Developers.
The target of five lakh homes are to be achieved collectively under the MMRDAs rental housing projects and MHADAs joint venture projects, both of which offer developers higher floor space index (FSI) in return of reserving a portion of projects on land owned by them for affordable housing.
Till date, MMRDA has approved 25 letters of intent for more than two lakh such houses under the rental housing scheme while MHADA has sanctioned four projects in Thane under the housing board’s joint venture scheme which will lead to the creation of another 1,500 budget homes.
Pointing to the slow implementation of rental housing projects owing to duality of approval agencies, Mantri added, “The construction won’t happen overnight. Right now, the 60-odd no objection certificates from different agencies take anywhere between one-and-a-half to two years. To avoid higher construction costs due to the time lapse, there is a need for a single-window clearance for affordable housing projects, which is one of the several issues that the panel will delve into.”
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