Self-redevelopment as a model for Mumbai’s housing crisis

Around 9 percent of the Mumbai city’s land possesses half the slum population and this glaring inequality is dominant at a socio-spatial level. The failure of government incentivized market solutions to resolve the affordable housing crisis (Slum Rehabilitation Scheme, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna) is evident across Mumbai except in a handful of projects. This research plans to investigate lesser known examples in the city of Mumbai, where communities have mobilized themselves to become housing providers, as a response to these market failures. A social innovation in itself, the process of Self Redevelopment involves communities coming together, registering themselves as a cooperative housing society, acquiring land and being at the forefront. Through a case by case analysis of scattered attempts of self-redevelopment in Mumbai and a comparative analysis we argue the presence and role of multiple stakeholders—like the State, private players, NGOs, activists, academicians, and certainly the users—without whom this community-led execution shall be impossible. Our hypotheses that, slum development/ redevelopment is successful only in places where the users have been an integral part of the decision-making process.

The article is an inquiry into existing and evolving housing redevelopment models in Mumbai. Through analyzing three concurrent real estate development cases, we are investigating the social housing in Mumbai by studying participatory planning, land ownership, and governance. The way we understand and conceptualize the term “social” housing is when different interest-groups and stakeholders in a system come towards a state of equilibrium but with a common intent of delivering effective housing services. The stakeholders can range from the State and NGOs to activists and beneficiaries. Each of them has a different intent and one of the major realizations after studying the failed models in the city—like the SRA (Slum Rehabilitation Authority)—is to have an alignment in the intent. In this, the roles different stakeholders shall play will vary considerably depending on a range of factors which we shall elaborate towards the end.

Social Housing and Public Participation

Since high real estate values generally characterize the settlement areas that are redeveloped, the opportunity to produce SRA rehousing schemes tends to excite developers and many of the city’s informal settlers alike. For the latter, who are living on valuable land, it presents an opportunity to negotiate the terms of resettlement, and to acquire formal housing free of cost in the general neighborhood in which they already reside.[1]

SRA resettlement projects have been described as neoliberal housing interventions (Nijman 2008) insofar as the cost of their construction is borne by private developers rather than the state; it is a system in which state agencies manipulate regulations, approvals, zoning, FSI (floor space index; a measure of air-rights) ratios and the like, often to benefit the interests of developers. The state’s role distinguishes SRA from many other conventional forms of low-income housing. Particularly, in SRA, the engagement of the original residents in the redeveloped product is nil or negligible. This further translates to only fulfilling of politicians’ statistical aspirations of providing a particular number of houses to the rehabilitated people, in turn, neglecting the quality of the same.

Social housing and Land Relationships

According to Berkeley Scholar David Dowall, Mumbai saw a sharp increase of 720 percent in land value between the periods of 1966- 1981. Post economic liberalization in the 1990s, real estate markets became even more speculative as land value shot up, owing to the burgeoning demand; thus, increasing real estate value four times between 1998 and 2012.[2] However, in between all the speculation over real estate, land ownership and titling has always remained suspiciously concealed in Mumbai. 8.5% of Mumbai’s land possesses 49 percent of slums in Mumbai.[3]

The major types of land ownership includes:

1) Central Government

(Port Trust, Airport, etc.)

2) State Government

(District collector, Housing Boards)

3) Municipal Corporation (Footpaths, etc.)

4) Private Ownership

Source: Sharma (2000)

Self-Redevelopment as a Nouveau Model

As defined by Severyn Bruyn (1995),” A social market (in a factual sense) is a system of exchange in which both economic and human factors are present. A social market (in a normative sense) is a self-accountable system of exchange which is more productive, profitable, efficient, responsible, non-bureaucratic, humanly-focused, self-managed, decentralized, and community-oriented. A social market sets norm in the public interest through its own system of self-accountability and through stakeholder involvement.”[1]

Self-Redevelopment is a process through which the existing dwellers of the place form a cooperative housing society by acquiring the land on lease and then govern the redevelopment process by selecting their own contractor - with the help of a finance agency like banks. Considering the majority of the unsuccessful results with the developer-led approach towards redevelopment, the self-redevelopment seems an apt model for its qualitative and quantitative advantages. At a qualitative level compared to the developer led approach, the households here have more corpus, large carpet areas, authority, and an improved quality of living. The method of forming the co-operative housing societies and acquiring the land on lease needs a deeper clarity for a self-redevelopment to start. The basis of appointing the representatives for the cooperative housing society to prevent the scam and the timeline for any project and the cost feasibility needs to be calculated.

To mention the protagonist here—whose work is prominently reflected in the case studies discussed ahead—is Madan Naik, the CPIM leader-activist of S-ward in Mumbai. Someone who used to stay in a slum settlement in his initial days in Mumbai, Naik has been fighting for the cause of the people to get them better quality houses at affordable prices. He has been at the forefront in mobilizing various slum communities to come and register as a cooperative housing society in the Bhandup area of Mumbai. Through this society formations, people started getting the autonomy for the kind of dwellings they wish to reside in. We owe the basis of our research to such persistent efforts by Naik and his team.

References:

https://www.mdccbank.com/board-of-directors.aspx

https://www.hindustantimes.com/mumbai-news/self-redevelopment-housing-projects-in-mumbai-to-get-a-boost-as-realty-sector-struggles/story-Rpyt5XAS9Oky1NCFli4HfI.html

http://www.redevelopmentofhousingsocieties.com/about-us/23-realty-frauds-and-scams/78-city%E2%80%99s-first-self-redevelopment-project-busted.html

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/opposition-calls-cms-push-for-self-redevelopment-a-failed-idea/article22399744.ece

[1] Anand, Nikhil. "Housing in the Urban Age: Inequality and Aspiration in Mumbai." In Ecologies of Urbanism in India: Metropolitan Civility and Sustainability, edited by Rademacher Anne and Sivaramakrishnan K., 201-24. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013

[2] Mukhija, Vinit. "Rehousing Mumbai: Formalizing Slum Land Markets Through Redevelopment." In Slums: How Informal Real Estate Markets Work, edited by Birch Eugenie L., Chattaraj Shahana, and Wachter Susan M., 125-39. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016

[3] Architect and activist PK Das

[4] R.N. Sharma. 2010. "Mega Transformation of Mumbai: Deepening Enclave Urbanism." Sociological Bulletin 59 (1): 69-91. doi:10.1177/0038022920100104.

[5] Banerjee-Guha, Swapna. "Shifting Cities: Urban Restructuring in Mumbai." Economic and Political Weekly 37, no. 2 (2002): 121-28. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4411593.

[6] Meehan, James. "Reinventing Real Estate: The Community Land Trust as a Social Invention in Affordable Housing." Journal of Applied Social Science 8 no. 2 (2014): 113–133

[7] Madan Naik, CPIM leader, S-Ward

[8] Baithi Chawls are ground structure unlike 2-4 storied chawl-like structures.