Builders of stalled projects block transit camps, MHADA’S development work
@hepzia
Mumbai: About 4000 of the estimated 10,000 transit camps belonging to the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) in Mumbai city are occupied by tenants of private builders, whose projects are either being developed or stalled.
“Many of MHADA’s transit camps were also rented out to private builders, who had taken up redevelopment of buildings. Unlike the market rental rate of about Rs 45,000 per month in the city area, the MHADA tenements would be available for as low as Rs 3000 – Rs 6000 per month. With many building projects stalled, their tenants too got stuck up in MHADA’s transit camps”, chairman of the Mumbai Building Repair and Reconstruction Board (MBRRB) Vinod Ghosalkar told thenews21.
He explained: “The builders not just put their tenants on MHADA transit camps but also defaulted on their rents. On humanitarian grounds, it is unfair to evict such tenants as they are genuinely caught up in the middle. So, MHADA is now chasing builders to recover the rents. We have already recovered rents of Rs 103 crores and are in the process of recovering arrears rents of Rs 79 crores. We are dealing with about 50 complaints of defaulting on rents by builders.”
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Today, the scenario is such that people are stuck up in transit camps for decades together due to stalled projects with the result that MHADA now has to spend money on repairing those transit camps itself, a task it has undertaken at Colaba and Vikhroli recently. There are also instances where the builder has already completed his project but continues to occupy housing units in the MHADA transit camps and MHADA is trying to retrieve such units.
Ghosalkar says the situation has to come to such a pass that MHADA is unable to provide transit camps for its own redevelopment projects. “Unavailability of transit camps also means that MHADA is not able to redevelop buildings at the pace at which we would like to. The only place we have some housing units is around Borivali and people from town are reluctant to be shifted that far,” Ghosalkar informed.
The new Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government wants to push forth redevelopment projects especially of 14, 207 cessed buildings in the city that are old and dilapidated. The MHADA also wants to push amendments to acquire stalled redevelopment projects and complete it in order to accelerate development of dilapidated buildings. The MHADA had already approached the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and state to seek land in Mumbai to build transit camps to expedite the redevelopment process.
Ghosalkar stated that MHADA also gets entrusted with the task of providing housing for those rescued from crashed buildings or staying in dilapidated buildings or whose buildings catch fire or any such exigencies that emerge from time to time. Recently, the Bombay High Court ruled that tenants should vacate dilapidated buildings on their own and should not insist on transit camp accommodations for them.
