The Times of India            04.02.2014

Civic body to amend housing laws, could change cityscape

THANE: Imagine, you are standing in your kitchen, living room, dining room and a bathroom, all rolled into one tiny, compact apartment! This is how housing tenements in Thane would look like in future with a single building consisting of hundreds of 'micro-apartments', and little or no restriction on internal construction of an apartment under the prevalent housing laws.

The Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) is amending the city's housing laws to remove as many as 25 conditions under the development control rules (DCR) that currently regulate micro detailing of a tenement, such as the size and area of a single room, height and width of kitchen, bathroom, loft, mezzanine floor, partitions, among many others.

The move could change the way apartments are constructed in Thane, where currently there is a high density of tenements of a single room, bordering the city on overcrowding. The number of dwelling rooms in census houses is less, with majority of houses (59%) having one-dwelling rooms or less showing the extent of overcrowding in Thane.

By making the changes, the corporation also wants to put the onus of micro detailing on either the housing society or shared between the developer and the buyer. Sources in the corporation said this will allow the TMC to opt out of adjudicating petty disputes of internal changes and modifications for which it is forced to at the moment issue notices under the Maharashtra Regional Town Planning (MRTP) Act. It can then divert machinery on violations of floor space index (FSI) instead of those related to internal changes and modifications, said officials.

Once the changes are made, the modified DCR will also ensure developers make and sell better constructed apartments instead of passing them off into certain categories of one, one-and-half or two-BHK (bedroom, hall, and kitchen).

"He (developer) just constructs a one-room flat, but cuts off a part into a study room, later sells it as a one-and--half BHK. The new rules will ensure builder makes only those homes that are habitable under the law at the same time saleable," said a senior officer of the TMC town planning department who is working on the new law.

Globally, housing norms rarely regulate internal space of an apartment to get the most of the available tenement area. The concept of minimum internal regulation or waiving of zoning has been taken as a measure to create more space for single people and protection against overcrowding.

"If you look at tenements that are being sold in low-budget areas such as Govandi, you would think they are being sold as a single khoka. This simply means apart from the area enclosed under the four walls, the rest of the construction is managed by the buyer. If this is applied in the rest of the city, with better control of course, we could make compact homes with little or no room for disputes," said an official of the TMC town planning department.