Urban News

The Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) hopes to generate 1,000-odd affordable houses through redevelopment of four of its housing colonies.

The four colonies that are being razed and reconstructed are Aaram Nagar in Versova, PMGP Colony in Mulund, Patra Chawl in Goregaon and Lokmanya Tilak Nagar in Dadar. Officials said the colonies had approached the authority, offering to hand over a certain portion of the built-up area to the housing board in return for a higher floor space index of 2.5.

“These are large layouts and the premium to be paid to MHADA works out to a heavy sum. So instead of coughing up an upfront premium, these societies have agreed to part with a percentage of new flats after the redevelopment,” said MHADA chief engineer DR Hadadare. The flats that would come up for public housing would be in the 450-800 sq ft range.

Two lakh families stay in the 104 MHADA colonies in the city. The state government had, over a year ago, increased to 2.5 the FSI for redevelopment of these colonies Private developers taking up redevelopment can construct up to 75 per cent of the area used for rehabilitation of residents and sell it in the open market. Of the remaining built-up area created using the extra FSI, 70 per cent has to be given to MHADA and the rest can be retained by the developers. However, almost all developers have so far chosen not to part with any built-up area and have instead paid an upfront premium to MHADA. 

MHADA vice president Gautam Chatterjee said the option of paying a premium was only applicable in the suburbs. For MHADA societies in the island city, it is mandatory for developers to hand over a certain percentage of the houses. “However, we haven’t received a single proposal from the island city so far, mainly because most layouts are also affected by the Coastal Regulations Zone norms.”

Of the 400-odd projects that have so far been given the green signal for redevelopment in the suburbs, not one has offered to share flats with MHADA.