Punjab cabinet clears draft policy for rental housing

By Realty Quarter Bureau

The Punjab Cabinet approved for the first time the policy for Rental Housing to facilitate proper housing accommodation for the students, corporate professionals, senior citizens and specially migrant laborers.

The draft has been prepared by the department of housing and urban development. The cabinet also authorized chief minister Amarinder Singh, who is also holds the urban development portfolio, to approve any amendment to the policy, if required in future, without putting the amendment before the council of ministers.

The policy proposes several financial and physical incentives. It is proposed that the maximum ground coverage permissible would be 60% of the plot area with maximum floor area ratio (FAR) of 1:3.0, as against the general plotted residential developments that have maximum ground coverage of 50% and permissible FAR of 1:1.5.

Besides, up to 2% of the availed FAR may be used for daily use shops such as canteen, ATM, grocery, pharmacy, and fruit shop as per the draft policy that further provides that there would be no restriction on height of such buildings subject to fulfillment of fire safety, structure safety and parking norms. Other features of the policy include fixing of parking norms one parking for every 100 sq. metre covered area.

The policy also provides for financial incentives, such as change of land use, external development charges (EDC) and permission fee to be payable at 50% of the charges as applicable to residential plotted development. However, financial incentives will not be available to projects within municipal limits.

The draft policy has been formulated in view of the fact that due to lack of proper housing accommodation in educational campuses, corporate units/call centres, business or Industrial establishments, about 80% students and working professionals/migrant labourers have to seek accommodation outside educational campuses or work places/industrial establishments.