The ‘Housing for All by 2022’ under the scheme of “Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana – Housing for All (Urban)” launched by the central government aims to provide housing to all urban people by 2022. It provides central assistance to States and UTs for constructing houses to all eligible sections by concentrating on urban slums and economically weaker sections. Hence, slum rehabilitation and affordable housing to Economically Weaker Sections are the major features of the project.
The programme has following components/options to States/Union Territories and cities: –
a) Slum rehabilitation of Slum Dwellers with participation of private developers using land as a resource;
b) Promotion of Affordable Housing for weaker section through credit linked subsidy;
c) Affordable housing in partnership with Public & Private sectors and
d) Subsidy for beneficiary-led individual house construction or enhancement.
All statutory towns as per Census 2011 and towns notified subsequently would be eligible for coverage under the Mission.
A major component of the scheme besides slum rehabilitation is to provide affordable housing to all Economically Weaker Sections (per capita income less than Rs 3 lakh). As per the criterion of the project, a house constructed for EWS will be an all-weather-single unit or a unit in a multi-storeyed super structure having carpet area of upto 30 sq. m. with adequate basic civic services and infrastructure services like toilet, water, electricity etc. States can determine the area of EWS as per their local needs.
Financing of the scheme
The project will be implemented as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme. But the credit linked subsidy component will be implemented as a Central Sector Scheme. The Mission also prescribes certain mandatory reforms to make adequate urban land available for affordable housing. Houses constructed under the mission would be allotted in the name of the female head of the households or in the joint name of the male head of the household and his wife.
State governments have considerable participation in the programme as it would have the flexibility in deploying the slum rehabilitation grant to any slum rehabilitation project taken for development using land as a resource for providing houses to slum dwellers.
Under the Credit Linked Interest Subsidy component, interest subsidy of 6.5 percent on housing loans availed upto a tenure of 15 years will be provided to EWS/LIG categories. Central assistance at the rate of Rs.1.5 lakh per house for EWS category will be provided. State Government or their affiliates like Housing Boards can take up project of affordable housing to avail the Central Government grant.
The scheme will cover the entire urban area consisting of 4041 statutory towns with initial focus on 500 Class I cities and it will be implemented in three phases as follows, viz. Phase-I (April 2015 – March 2017) to cover 100 Cities to be selected from States/UTs; Phase – II (April 2017 – March 2019) to cover additional 200 Cities and Phase-III (April 2019 – March 2022) to cover all other remaining Cities.
Credit linked subsidy component of the scheme would be implemented across the country in all statutory towns from the very beginning.
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