Rental Housing : Power to clear all housing plans will help us fight delays,agency tells government The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) has requested the state government to grant it powers and relaxations on par with the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) to expedite its rental housing projects. This would mean the MMRDA will have the authority to clear building plans of all rental housing projects that will come up in the region,a power that otherwise vests only with the SRA in case of slum rehabilitation buildings and municipal corporation in case of other building projects. The SRA is restricted to Mumbai but the MMRDA is concerned with areas spanning across 20 urban local bodies (ULBs) in addition to Urbanisable Zone-1 (U1) and Urbanisable Zone (U2). The clearance of building plans through the ULBs takes a long time. A single window system,in which the MMRDA will be authorised to clear these plans will expedite the process, said metropolitan commissioner Ratnakar Gaikwad. Pointing out the 30 per cent reduction in realty rates at a time when the construction cost remained the same,he said conferring the MMRDA with powers on par with the SRA would require an amendment to the Mumbai Regional Town Planning (MRTP) Act. The MMRDA has also given the state government a list of 24 points,asking for relaxation of norms to make the scheme more feasible. These demands include allowing development in No Development Zones and increasing the size of the rental homes from an uniform 160 sq ft to a 160-400 sq ft range. Following a meeting with developers from the Maharashtra Chamber of Housing Industry (MCHI),the MMRDA has asked the government to increase the developers sale components as well as allow those in the low density U1 and U2 zones to construct bigger flats. At present,the flat size in these zones is limited to 250 sq ft. The rental housing scheme is meant to check the proliferation of slums by getting private developers to build rental homes on their land in lieu of higher floor space index. For every rental home,the developer gets to construct three more for making his profit. The authority wanted to generate one lakh tenements per year to achieve the target of 5 lakh rental houses in the MMR by 2013; it received 62 proposals for a total of 3 lakh homes in Vasai-Virar,Panvel,Thane,Kalyan-Dombivli and Karjat. Of this,only 13 have been cleared and work on ground has started only in case of the Tanaji Malusare City at Karjat,DB Realty at Mira Bhayander and Aakruti Developers at Thane. Additional metropolitan commissioner SVR Srinivas said the projected population of MMR by 2021 is 3 crore. What will the additional 1 crore population do? Barely 7,000 rental homes will be ready by the end of this year. At this rate,it will take 40 years to achieve our target.
