Slum rehab projects to be brought under Maha RERA Act: Government circular

A rehabilitation project has two components — one being rehab, in which the redeveloper has to give homes to eligible tenants living in slums. The second is the sale component, as part of which the builder sells in the market after giving homes to eligible tenants. When the Act was implemented on May 1, 2017, in Maharashtra, builders only had to register the sale component.

Various housing associations raised a demand that rehab components should also be registered under MahaRERA. Shirish Deshpande, of Mumbai Grahak Panchayat Samiti, said the aim behind registering the rehab component was to give tenants the belief that there is an authority who will take care of their homes if there are any irregularities.

The state government’s move is expected to benefit over 10 lakh families, a majority of whom are living in slums or on rent. In many cases, the builder has taken on the redevelopment work, but the project has been stuck for over 15-20 years. As many as 1,516 rehabilitation schemes under SRA, which have been pending since 2004, are now expected to receive a boost in terms of the completion date.

In another step aimed at easing the financial crunch in the real estate market, the circular stated, “In order to give relief to the developer, the SRA scheme will be done on phase-wise. If builder constructs 100 homes for rehab then they can take permission from SRA chief executive officer for construction of 100 sale components as well.”