What are affordable homes?
Affordable houses are homes that a affordable to the people with low income or average income. Affordable synonyms are cheap, low-cost, in budget, reasonable and economical, etc. Affordable or low cost houses are for the people who earn low income, middle range of income or those people who are economically weaker to afford house, you can say even for people who have very low income to afford a house to live you can say urban areas.
It is very important for a developing country like India to provide low budget or affordable houses because the majority of the population in India is not able to buy house because of the high cost of houses. The cost of housing units in rural and urban area is completely different because of the cost and policies of land in both areas are different. In our country there is a very big difference between demand of housing units and supply of housing units. This problem is not only in urban area it is a issue in rural areas also. There is a huge lack of properties to buy.
As a research was conducted in 2012 and as per their Report of technical group on estimation of urban housing shortage they have come to know that the difference between demand and supply is very huge in both areas that is in urban and rural. As per the report there are two main categories who have a very big shortage in India i.e 96% shortage of housing units in these two categories. The two categories are Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) and Low-Income Group (LIG).
The increasing need of housing units in urban areas it is necessary to expand the facilities in urban areas. As per the status around 40% of Indian population is expected to live urban areas by 2030. As per the estimation of low cost housing needs the shortage of housing units are calculated by adding these factors first excess of households over housing stock second the number of households residing in unacceptable dwelling units, third the people who are residing in the unaccepted physical conditions because of overcrowded area and fourth the household people who are homeless. So this all results the there is obsolescence of houses, congestion of population and homeless people while estimating the need of housing units.
As knowing the importance of housing units for the poor people government is taking some good steps to provide houses to homeless in last fifteen years. In 2007 NUHHP i.e. National Urban Housing and Habitat Policy has been set for the target of affordable housing units for the homeless. There are 2 main initiative steps taken by the government to provide home to the needy people.under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, one is for the Urban area and second is for rural area. The yojana was launched and has a target of 2022 to provide home to the homeless people in 2022.
Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana for the Urban
The aim of this yojana is to provide house to the urban poor proplr. In june 2015 governemnt launched this scheme where they set a target to provide 20 million houses by March 31 2022. The scheme is to give financial help/assistance to the union/state territories who come under the categories of Economically Weaker Sections (EWS), Lower Income Group (LIG) and Middle Income Group (MIG) living in Urban areas. As per Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs they have approved 69 lakh housing units and have completed 13.59 lakh oh houses by January 2019.
Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana for the Rural
As per PMAY Gramin they have launched in 2016 and have a target to complere by 2022. As per them on Janauary 2019 they have completed 1.25 crore of housing units. In February 2019 the cabinet launxhed phase II with a target of 1.95 houses by 2022.
Under these both yojanas government has constructed nearly 1.53 crore houses by January 2019.
There are several measures government is taking for affordable housing sectors.
- Encouraging Developers to make affordable housing units – Government is providing several benefits for the developers like subsidies, tax benefits and institutional fundings.
- GST rates for the affordable housing units is reduced – Government has reduced the GST for the affordable housing unit to 1% from 8%. The government has implicated that the houses below Rs. 45 lakh will have to pay only 1% of GST.
- Carpet area limit – The terms of carpet area is defined as 90 sq mtr in non-metropolitan cities and 60 sq mtr in metropolitan cities. But with a ceiling value of Rs. 45 lakhs in both.
- RBI’s efforts for the affordable housing units – As RBI the cost of housing units should be not more then Rs. 65 Lakh in metro cities and not more then 50 Lakhs in non-metro cities.
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