Unable to provide houses to the urban poor on its own, the Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (HUPA) Ministry is now looking towards aggressively promoting Public Private Partnership (PPP) for addressing the increasing gap between demand and supply of dwelling units in the country.
Also, even as the fate of the Aadhaar card hangs in balance with the Supreme Court saying that it has no legal value, the Ministry has asked the States to link beneficiary identification as a pre-condition in its Aadhaar enrolment schemes wherever these cards have been issued. These are some of the main features of the draft guideline of the Model State Affordable Housing Policy for Urban Areas 2013, recently prepared by the Ministry with an aim to enable the State Governments to work within its framework for construction of houses for the urban poor.
“The demand for dwelling units is on rise due to rapid urbanisation and population growth. The mammoth investments needed for creation of the housing infrastructure is much above the limited public resources available with the Governments and therefore, private sector needs to play an important role in this,” said a senior official from the Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Ministry. He referred to the observation of the report of the Technical Group on Urban Housing Shortage (2012-17) which noted that there is a shortage of 18.78 million dwelling units out of which nearly 96 per cent belongs to the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) and lower Income Group (lIG) households.
The guideline also seeks to set up a State Shelter Fund in each State that would be exclusively earmarked for funding affordable housing projects to be undertaken on Public Private Partnership (PPP) model. According to Census 2011 estimate, about 27.5 per cent of the urban population is living in rented accommodations. The Affordable Housing Policy scheme would also encourage creation of rental housing stock for the new migrants, he said. The draft guideline is now available for public comments from stakeholders, including States. “The last policy was framed in 2009. This new guideline has been proposed following a meeting with the State Governments recently,” the official added.