India's shortage of housing units in urban areas has reduced by almost half in the last six years — from 18.76 million in 2011 to 10 million now. Following the new revised downgraded estimate, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) has decided to use its own surplus land to build affordable homes.
Under the Prime Minister Awas Yojna (Urban) the Ministry has so far approved construction of 28,57,321 affordable homes for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS), low and Middle Income Groups with an investment of Rs 1,54,180 crore, Central assistance of Rs 44,278 crore has been approved for these houses.
"A technical study conducted by the Government in 2011 estimated housing shortage at 18.76 million units in urban areas, of which 96 per cent pertained EWS and lIG. Subsequent assessments that were carried out since 2011 onwards have resulted in this figure being revised to something around or near about 10 million units. Even 10 million is a very large number," Union HUA Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said while addressing at RICS real estate conference on Wednesday.
The Government will use its own surplus land to build affordable homes and address this shortage, he said, and asked the real estate firms to focus on affordable housing projects.
As per study on housing, there are 18 States together constitute around 95 per cent of the total 11 million vacant houses in urban India.
Maharashtra has the highest number of vacant houses (slightly greater than two million) followed by Gujarat (around 1.2 million) while Gujarat has the highest share of vacant houses to the total residential stock (around 19 percent).
Puri said the Government proposes to address this housing shortage through its flagship programme 'PMAY' (Urban) and Housing For All. The minister said that various PPP Models have been released to encourage housing through private partnership.
Under this scheme, he said the Government would make available the land as well as provide subsidy to allottees and assist them in getting concessional funding from banks. "The house will be registered in the name of the lady singly or co-jointly along with the male member. This will help our overall objective of gender empowerment. Even the smallest unit will have a kitchen and a toilet," he said.
The scheme is designed to ensure that by 2022 every Indian owns a residential unit, the minister said. For the realty sector, Puri said the Government has enacted the Real Estate Regulatory Act (RERA), which will have a long term transformative effect.
The Government has put in place an eco-system to ensure that real estate sector is properly governed and buyers are empowered, he said, adding that when the history of Indian real estate will be written in two segments — pre and post RERA.
The pre-RERA phase was characterised by the dreams to own a house of many being dashed for a considerable period of time by a few persons exploiting that dream, he said.