Affordable plotted housing scheme suspended in city, Real Estate News, ET Real Estate

Gurugram: The state government has put its ambitious Affordable Plotted Housing Scheme on the backburner- Deendayal Jan Awas Yojana (DDJAY) – in Gurgaon And FaridabadCiting the high cost of land and its failure to benefit low- and middle-income families, TOI has learnt.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched DDJAY in the state in November 2016, with the aim of curbing the development of unauthorized colonies, besides providing affordable housing units to low- and middle-income families.

Chief Minister for more than six years Manohar Lal Khattar During a recent meeting with senior officials of the Department of Town and Country Planning (DTCP), the two neighboring towns ordered the suspension of the plan.

In the meeting, sources said, Khattar expressed his concern over the high prices of these affordable units in Gurgaon and Faridabad. He told the officials concerned that the main objective of the policy was to provide affordable houses to the people, but the high cost of land in these cities defeated the entire objective of DDJAY.

According to DTCP data, around 60 licenses for development of housing units on 600 acres of land and around 40 licenses for 400 acres in Faridabad were issued under DDJAY in Gurgaon and surrounding areas since the launch of the scheme. Around 60 licenses are under process for the same scheme in these two cities.

Confirming the development, a senior DTCP official said that due to the high cost of land in Gurgaon and Faridabad, the affordable plotted housing scheme has “become unaffordable for homebuyers of the said segments”. “Hence, the scheme has been put on hold in the two cities.”

A city-based real estate expert said that apart from the cost of land, another flaw in the policy is the absence of a cap on rates, unlike high-rise affordable projects, where the rate per square foot is fixed by the state government.

“Even the developers are helpless as they buy land at a high cost and hence the project is sold at a high cost keeping the margin,” he said.

Developers also said that affordable plotted housing schemes in Gurgaon and Faridabad have failed due to the high cost of land. “DDJAY is more beneficial for realtors as the profit margin is higher as compared to highrise affordable housing projects,” said a developer.

“Also high-rise projects require construction cost, which is not the case in plotted housing schemes. But then the price of the plots is in crores, as opposed to the fixed price of affordable flats which are as low as Rs 26 lakh, thus making them unaffordable for the common man.

In August last year, to boost the scheme, the state government announced that developers who have launched projects under DDJAY will no longer be required to freeze 50% of the plots. They will be required to pledge only 10% of the project land to DTCP as security for external or internal development charges.