Govt needs to set up green channel for speedy hsg projects approval: MahaRera

Mumbai: The Maharashtra Real Estate Regulatory Authority (MahaRera) chief Gautam Chatterjee on Friday said that the government needs to consider setting up a green channel to ensure speedy approvals for housing projects in the state.

Speaking at the CII Real Estate Confluence 2019, Chatterjee said that out of the 6,900 new projects launched and registered under MahaRera, nearly 80 per cent are less than 640 sqft.

"We cannot treat a luxury project at par with an affordable one. The government is also putting a lot of emphasis on promoting affordable homes and therefore I feel, at the government level, there is a need to create a green channel to ensure speedy approvals for such projects," MahaRera chief said.

He further said that there is a need to earmark land for affordable housing or else it would result in mushrooming of slums or may be grabbed by land mafias.

"As we have done in the Mumbai Development Plan 2034 where we have specifically allocated plots for residential purposes, it is necessary that such demarcations are done in other parts of the state as well to ensure the land is used for the purpose of creating affordable housing stock," Chatterjee said.

Emphasising the need for creating more rental housing stock Chatterjee said, "currently all the schemes implemented by the governments are to create ownership-based affordable homes. But there is a significant demand in the rental housing space as well."

He noted that the rental housing schemes initiated by state agencies like MHADA and MMRDA lacked scale and had failed.

"There are people who are looking for rental housing stock which is available at affordable rates. We need to create such housing at a good scale and appoint agencies for operating and maintaining such units to ensure there is no misuse," Chatterjee added.