CHENNAI : Chennai may be having huge number of unsold housing stock but only 40 per cent live in own houses while 44 pc live in rented houses and 15 pc live in other forms of accommodation, according to a recent draft report of state housing policy prepared by German agency GIZ.As per the study, Chennai has a shortage of 75,000 houses. This is based on ‘Report of the Technical Group on Urban Housing Shortage’, which measured households residing in unacceptable houses — non-serviceable and obsolescent, households living in congested conditions and houseless households.
Interestingly, this comes as Tamil Nadu has carried a demand assessment of 8.30 lakh houseless households under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) in urban areas of the state under PMAY’s four components — Insitu rehabilitation, Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme, Beneficiary led Construction (BLC) and Affordable Housing in Partnership (AHP). But this massive project is hit due to land shortage.
Despite declining household size and high number of houses getting added, congested houses have increased sharply in Chennai. “This suggests possibility of skewed income and asset distribution leading to few households occupying more houses and larger share of population ending up living in congested houses,” the report said.
Affordability of houses have been a biggest problem in Chennai and this has been the issue with most metropolitan cities. The dream of owning a home in the city and state has eluded economic weaker sections, as well as low-income groups during the last decade as credit flow from public sector banks, failed to reach the lower strata. Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation have stated that despite flow of credit to the housing sector in general has increased, the credit flow to the urban poor remained a challenge.
Statistics from MHUPA reveal that loans below Rs 2 lakh have declined from 51 per cent in 2001 to 4.1 per cent in 2014 for public sector banks in relation to overall housing loans. Similarly, the trend of lending for housing up to `5 lakh has declined from 36 per cent in 2006 to 9.75 per cent in 2010 in relation to the number of housing units financed, the statistics revealed.
Flow of public sector housing (around one lakh units as sanctioned during 2001-11) accounted for merely 4 pc of urban households increased during the same period. While public sector housing shall not be able to meet the demand of rapidly increasing urban households, there is a plan to involve market or private sector in provision of houses.