Union minister Housing and Poverty Alleviation Ajay Maken on Monday made a strong pitch for a review of floor space idex (FSI) policy of mega cities including Mumbai for encouraging the affordable housing. This can be one of the solutions to tackle increasing urban development challenges.
"About 50% of population in Mumbai stays in slums. In cities like Delhi also about 84% of homeless people are self-employed and contributes towards the economic growth. Since they live close to their workplaces and are an integral part of the India’s urbanisation story, irrespective of the location categories we need to create affordable housing even in the premium locations of mega cities. It is required to bring these service providers nearer to the service consumers,” Maken said in his address at the international meet on “Governance of Mega City Regions” organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in partnership with Centre for Policy Research (CPR).
Maken reiterated that there was a need to review FSI policy and make appropriate changes to boost the affordable housing in Mumbai. "The State is the responsible authority to do so and in our opinion it should consider this option," the minister noted.
About the initiatives at the Central level, Maken stated that the policy for providing ‘Infrastructure Status’ to the affordable housing schemes is on the cards to improve the urban housing scenario. “This can be treated as a sub sector of real estate and at least, this sub sector can be given the infrastructure status,” he added.