Affordable housing and Mumbai often sound to be quite contradictory. The peninsular city with limited land parcels and load on the infrastructure often makes an urban planner fumble for offering any sustainable solution. Critics hence dismiss the very idea of affordable housing in the city. In Mumbai the development and growth of affordable housing has also been facing significant challenges owing to a gamut of fiscal, regulatory and urban issues.
There is currently a shortage of 20 million homes. By 2030, 590 million Indians will live in cities, necessitating a further $2.1 trillion of capital investment in infrastructure. The challenge to house the future population is urban in scope and unprecedented in scale.
When one develops a slum, for instance, and even if 20 per cent of land is given for commercial use as incentive in the bargain, it is a deal for the developer. After all, in the space starved city like Mumbai even a small chunk of land in any of the prime location is a rare commodity. The question is if such a business dynamics is a feasible model, why did the developers shied away from making the best of it so far.
Mumbai, as a matter of fact, demands rental housing to be promoted as the feasibility of such an option provides a broad choice of homes to both the investors as well as the expat professionals. The recent economic turmoil also underscored the many advantages of renting and raised the barriers to home ownership, sparking a surge in demand that has buoyed rental markets across the MMR.
Urban habitation at the cost of environmental concerns have globally been debated and contested. In India the environmental concerns have often stalled big-ticket infrastructure projects and the government also vows its commitment to encourage the eco friendly and sustainable developments. However, some recent decisions have exposed the gap between the lip service of the policy makers and their commitment to the cause of eco friendly and sustainable developments.
Bhiwadi, as a matter of fact, has been the first town to conceptualise what is the most need-based housing in India. Facts speak for themselves. There are 98 million people over 55 with a steady growth of 3.5 per cent per annum. In terms of market numbers, in an analysis of 135 urban cities with a total population of 223 million and 52 million households, as many as 12.8 million families have senior citizens.
Urban planning experts believe this is a much deeper question because it is not just about the existing urban centres but also about the way urbanisation is eventually going to happen in this country. As per the UN statistics the urban population of 40 crore in India would be 60 crore in less than 20 years of time. It clearly suggests that the existing cities won’t be able to fit in this additional 20 crore population, whether indigenous or migrants.
In terms of pure economics renting out a property as against buying it may sound to be logical due to poor rental yield across India, the market reality beyond fiscal prudence is not that simple. In most of the Indian cities the tenants have to pass through a number of uncomfortable questions ranging from food habits to personal lifestyle choice before they can get a rental property for living. The process itself is very tedious and prone to leave grey zones.
There has been less of compact housing on offer and hence one wonders whether there are few takers for 1BHK in the city or there are certain other fundamentals of execution that come in the way of creating compact housing units.
Realty ratings have not grown in India and the issue of objectivity also makes it prone to criticism. However, there is no second opinion that if a standardised mechanism of real estate rating is evolved, it can differentiate between the men and the boys in the business.