Officials of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (MHUPA) met the representatives of other Ministries — Finance, Defence, Culture, Civil Aviation, Environment and Forests and Climate Change — on Wednesday to set up a system through which affordable housing projects are cleared at a faster pace.
At present, the government is battling a housing deficit of 18.78 million units and 95 per cent of it is required for the economically weaker population which lives in and around the urban centres.
Since the government takes an average of 18 months to clear one affordable housing project, it is hard to foresee it catching up on this massive deficit.
The Centre is already in talks with 20 States, urging them to “reduce stamp duties, registration and conversion fee” so that the housing stock for the poor and low-income people is quickly filled across 989 cities.
Single window clearanceUrban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu said on Tuesday that “considerable progress” had been made to set up “single window” clearance mechanism. Addressing an audience at a day-long workshop on affordable housing, Mr. Naidu said 140 lending agencies had signed Memoranda of Understanding with the Central nodal agencies such as the National Housing Bank and the Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO) for extending financial support to housing projects under the Credit Linked Subsidy component of the Urban Housing Mission.
These agencies include 54 scheduled commercial banks, 63 housing finance corporations, 16 regional rural banks and 7 cooperative banks.
So far, the main hurdle in filling the housing stock is shortage of land in urban areas, stringent land use regulations, inadequate infrastructure to support more housing neighbourhoods, rising costs of construction material, insufficient financing, restricted mortgage financing and rent control laws. The ministry aims to build two crore houses in urban areas by 2022.
