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our city
sunday, may 10, 2015, mumbai, web www.mid-day.com, twitter @mid_day

Draft policy to make

houses affordable
Policy proposes a new scheme where societies and builders will get
a government loan for building affordable housing units
MHADA will create a
fund with an initial
corpus of R1,000 crore
for this purpose
A loan will be granted
by the fund to a
developer for 15 years at
the SBI PLR for an
amount not exceeding
R10 crore per borrower
A detailed scheme
will made within three
months after the policy
is cleared
VARUN SINGH

File photo of a MHADA building nearKandivali Link Road

builders who actually couldnt
borrow from the banks
banks hesitate to lend money
to this sector will have access
to loans from the government.

varun.singh@mid-day.com

Affordability, the key

THE state government has

come up with a draft housing
policy, and it has a provision
where a builder or a housing
society can avail a loan from
the government to construct
buildings and provide housing
for the Economically Weaker
Section (EWS) and Lower
Income Group (LIG).
The good thing for homebuyers is that these units will
be sold to citizens with not
more than 10 per cent down
payment and the balance 90
per cent will be paid by the
purchaser at the end of 15
years, and only interest will be
serviced by the buyer in the
meantime. The other good
thing is that Cooperative
Housing Societies (CHS) will
be given preference for the
loan. This also will mean that

The policy claims that affordability is an important aspect

of providing housing to the
EWS/LIG strata of society.
The policy further reports that
there have been several studies
that have indicated that
though the need for housing is
prevalent, affordability is the
key impediment and the government is planning to
intervene
by
providing
finance.
According to the policy, it is
proposed that the Maharashtra
Housing and Development
Authority (MHADA) will create a fund with an initial
corpus of R1,000 crore for
this purpose.
A qualified fund manager
having experience in providing
housing finance will manage
this R1,000 crore corpus. The
selection of the fund manager

will be done through a competitive bidding process. The

manager will be mandated to
provide funding to developers
who are building LIG/EWS
type of houses.
The fund manager will be
responsible for evaluating the
project, the credibility of the
developer, and will approve the
loan to a developer only after
detailed due diligence. The
policy specifies that existing
CHS going for redevelopment
will be given preference.
Under this scheme, a loan
will be granted by the fund to a
developer for a period of 15
years at the SBI Prime Lending
Rate (PLR) for an amount not
exceeding R10 crore per borrower or the CHS.
The policy will enable individual societies to undertake
self-redevelopment. In turn,
the developer or CHS will be
mandated to sell units of equal
value of LIG and EWS type in
the schemes to eligible persons
in the LIG and EWS category
on the basis of interest only
basis with bullet repayment

(where the borrower does not

pay the principal amount over
the duration of the loan, but
makes the payment only at
maturity) at the end of
15 years.
The policy states, In case
the cost of the unit is R10 lakh,
then the developer or CHS will
sell the unit to LIG and EWS
citizens with not more than 10
per cent down payment, and
the balance 90 per cent will be
paid by the purchaser at the
end of the 15 years and only
interest will be serviced by him
in the meantime.
The developer or CHS will
be liable to service the interest
on the loan granted by the fund
for 15 years and will be liable to
repay the principal at the end
of 15 years. The developers or
CHS liability to service/repay
the loan will be unconnected to
the servicing/repayment by the
flat purchaser. In other words
the credit risk in this regard
will be always borne by the
developer and not the purchaser, and it will be the developers
liability to repay the loans to
the fund.
If the housing policy gets
passed, then a detailed scheme
in this regard will be notified
by the Housing department,
within three months.
The department has submitted the housing policy to
the government, which has to
take a final call on it. Its
expected that the policy will be
tabled before the Cabinet within a week, and the policy is
expected to sail through. Calls
to Housing Minister Prakash
Mehta went unanswered till the
time of going to press.

People enjoying the calm of Sanjay Gandhi National Park. FILE PHOTO

Pucca structure
crops up inside
SNGP; residents
question officials
According to the forest guard it is a
temporary shed erected by an NGO
to keep gardening equipment
TANVI DESHPANDE
Tanvi.deshpande@mid-day.com

AN approximately 1-km road

and a white, pucca, twostoreyed structure with a
garden, has come up
overnight on Sanjay Gandhi
National
Park
(SGNP)
land. And this has got the
residents
of
nearby
Lokhandwala Complex in
Kandivali worried.
The structure has a
cropped lawn in front of it
and
the
picture
of
Nanasaheb Dharmadhikari
at the entrance. Believing it
to be a farmhouse where illegal activities are taking
place, residents alerted midday. When we asked around
many were of the view that it
is a forest department office,
but on checking with the
SGNP official it was evident
that the forest department
had no inkling about the
concrete structure.
Kiran Dabholkar, assistant conservator of forests
said, We do not have any
such office there. I think you
are talking about the temporary shed erected there by
the Nanasaheb Dharmadhikari Foundation, but
that has been there for at
least two years.
Citizens refuted these
claims, saying the structure
is fairly recent. It is not
older than 6-8 months. And
why do they need an NGO to
do charity for them? Dont
they have enough resources
themselves? Im confident
that the structure has come

up before our eyes, said

Parminder Dureja, a resident
of Sapphire Heights.
It was only later that a
forest guard clarified that it
was an office of the
Nanasaheb Dharmadhikari
foundation, which does philanthropic work for SGNP.
They have been allowed to
erect
this
shed
to keep saplings and gardening equipment.
Its a temporary aluminum structure they have
built to keep their saplings
and garden equipment. The
Foundation has planted at
least 15,000-17,000 trees in
SGNP in the past few years.
They work closely with us.
We have not given them
written
permission
to
construct anything. We have
just allowed them a temporary arrangement for the
monsoon. said forest guard
Sandesh Patil
To
this
Manohar
Ghanekar, another resident,
said, It all starts with temporary construction like this,
which later leads to builders
usurping the land. If slum
dwellers from Gautam Nagar
are not allowed to live there,
how can an NGO set up shop
there? I demand that the
SGNP officials allow us to
inspect it.
SGNP is Mumbais only
connection to nature. Spread
along the Aarey Colony, this
land has been fiercely protected by locals and activists
for decades to make sure it
does not fall into the hands
of builders.

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