Post-Occupancy Maintenance in Redevelopment Colonies
December 19, 2020
- By Meghna Mohandas,
Independent Researcher
As of 2020, India is home to six megacities (urban areas with over 10 million inhabitants) - Delhi (30.7 million); Mumbai (20.5 million); Kolkata (14.9 million); Bengaluru (12.5 million); Chennai (11.1 million); and Hyderabad (10.1 million). The population density in these urban areas ranges from 9,000 to over 30,000 persons per sq km.
As Indian Tier 1 cities continue to exponentially grow, there are limits to the capacity and availability of land to support the traditional typology of low rise houses sprawling across independent plots that is common in villages and small towns. Consequently, most large cities in India have witnessed the growth of extremely dense and congested informal settlements, often called slums, in the absence of prior urban planning.
The only typology that can potentially accommodate this density as well as future population growth, while ensuring dignified and adequate housing with access to light, ventilation, hygiene and basic amenities, is building vertically. High-rise residential structures that accommodate a larger number of people on smaller plot sizes have become the preferred route for slum redevelopment to ensure optimal and habitable use of the highly limited serviced land.
Avoiding Vertical Slums
However, there have been instances where the process to transition from horizontal sprawl to vertical high-rise developments has met with limited success, resulting in either vacant houses or decaying buildings that could be deemed as ‘vertical slums’. One example is that of the Railway Housing Colony in Pune that was developed from a squatter settlement into a high-rise building. The following images clearly indicate the deteriorating conditions of common areas in this housing society merely within a few years of occupation.
Figure 1: Ill—Maintained Common Spaces at Railway Housing Colony, Nagpur
While there are multiple aspects, from design to handover, that need to be considered while planning slum redevelopment projects in the vertical high-rise format, this article discusses the important aspect of ensuring the upkeep of these residential developments post handover to the resettled low-income communities.
Post-occupancy maintenance is essential in residential communities to maintain a healthy and sustainable living environment. Provision of services like water, electricity and garbage collection are basic requirements that need to be moderated by responsible individuals. In the case of affordable housing communities occupied by low income households, the maintenance of housing societies becomes critical to the success of the project. The very purpose of rehabilitation and redevelopment of slums is to provide communities with better quality housing that is healthy, hygienic and sustainable. The lack of maintenance deteriorates the quality of built structures, resulting in inhabitable houses and communities.
Who Pays for Post-Occupancy Maintenance?
While middle and higher-income groups prefer outsourcing maintenance services by paying a predetermined monthly maintenance fee to appoint professionals or facility management companies, this is not the case with low-income households that manage monthly household expenditures with extremely tight budgets.
Across the world, housing societies have come up with innovative practices to maintain services and common spaces in their respective communities. In the urban Indian context, maintenance cost is calculated as a cumulative of property tax, water charges, electricity charges, repairs and maintenance (including that of elevators) and other factors of upkeep of common areas in residential societies. The developer is responsible for maintenance of all the aforementioned services during the construction phase, up to the formation of the Residents Welfare Association (RWA), post which the RWA is responsible for implementation of the maintenance plan for common areas through collection of charges from residents.
The maintenance cost can either be divided equally between all residents, or households can be charged on a per sq ft basis. Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act (RERA) has formalized the system by making it compulsory for builders to specify the maintenance costs in the agreement at the time of purchase. Although this can be modified mutually between the RWA, builder and resident, the regulation prevents households from having to pay exorbitant costs at a later stage of occupancy. Typically, the monthly maintenance charges range from Rs 2-4 per sq ft (paid monthly) for EWS housing to Rs 5-10 for HIG which would typically include luxury facilities such as gyms and swimming pools.
However, in the case of slum redevelopment/rehabilitation projects, post-occupancy maintenance becomes a challenge due to the financial shortcoming of beneficiary households to afford the monthly maintenance charges as required by RWAs. Typically, affordable housing projects feature carpet areas ranging between 250 sq ft to 400 sq ft with selling prices of apartments in the range of Rs 7-15 lakhs. Thus, maintenance costs can be calculated to be in the range of Rs 500-2,000 per month.
As per income standards defined under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana - Urban (PMAY-U), the maximum monthly income of economically weaker section (EWS) families is Rs 25,000. However, households being rehabilitated under in-situ brown-field projects or relocated to rehabilitation colonies with zero or negligible beneficiary contribution have significantly lower incomes than this threshold value, making a monthly maintenance charge of even Rs 1,000-2,000 relatively high. This results in non-payment of maintenance fees and deterioration in the quality of housing societies.
A Case Study: Affordable Post-Occupancy Maintenance
The Naman Viksak Apartments is a residential project in Pune, Maharashtra developed as an in-situ redevelopment project under the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) of Pune. The project has been developed by Naman Associates, a partnership between three Pune-based companies - Naman Enterprises, Kushal Developers and Span Constructions - in return for free sale components and transferable development rights (TDR). A documentation team from Indian Housing Federation (IHF) visited the project in 2017 to study an innovative practice for post occupancy maintenance. The 10-storeyed residential building, located at a prime location in Shivaji Nagar, looks appealing to visitors due to its well-maintained painted exteriors and landscaping.
The original settlement featured multiple small tenements that were temporary in nature, constructed by residents using metal and other scrap. The developers identified the slum as a potential site for redevelopment wherein they were required to accommodate all residents in clean and hygienic houses under the SRA in-situ redevelopment scheme.
The developers were cognizant of the issue of post-occupancy maintenance faced by most SRA developer-led projects. As per SRA regulations, private developers are mandated to contribute 4 percent of the total construction cost as a one-time maintenance charge to the housing society formed by residents. This corpus is deposited in a nationalised bank in the name of SRA with the builder being the first signatory and chairman of the housing society being the second. Quarterly interest from the corpus is transferred to the society’s account and is then utilised by the RWA to maintain the community.
Naman Enterprises created a fixed deposit of Rs 25,000 for each household which added up to about Rs 22 lakhs for 87 households. However, it was observed by the developers that the interest obtained from this deposit would not be sufficient for efficient maintenance of the large society. It was then that Naman Enterprises decided to propose a long-term idea for post-occupancy maintenance within the community. It was calculated that a contribution of Rs 30,000 from every household could create an additional fixed deposit of around Rs 26 lakhs in total. Interest generated from this when added to the earlier interest generated from the developer’s contribution created sufficient funds for maintenance of the society.
The idea faced initial resistance from the community. Beneficiaries did not want to contribute Rs 30,000 to a problem that they were unaware of and had not faced in their lives. Thus, Naman society took the help of a group of volunteers from the community and explained to them why this contribution was critical for the successful running of the society. The volunteers then took it upon themselves to convince the rest of the society who then accepted the idea since it had been proposed to them by members of their own community. The one time investment of Rs 30,000 from beneficiaries eliminated the burden of either shelling out monthly maintenance fees or suffering decay due to lack of maintenance.
Figure 2: Well-Maintained Common Spaces at Naman Housing Society, Pune
Key Takeaways
Since Naman Viksak Apartments were constructed under the in-situ redevelopment scheme of Maharashtra, under which beneficiary contribution for house occupancy is zero, it was possible to raise the additional corpus for maintenance through one-time beneficiary contributions, since the beneficiaries did not face the burden of down payments or equated monthly installments (EMIs).
Extending this approach to housing projects where beneficiaries contribute to the house cost through personal contributions (in addition to receiving subsidies) would be feasible where:
The beneficiary group isn’t from the lowest income decile and has some disposable income
The timing of contributions is adjusted such that the beneficiary contribution for maintenance is collected before the monthly EMIs kick in, and
A portion of the subsidies provided for the project under PMAY-U could be redirected to maintenance contributions on voluntary basis.
It is also recommended that public/private/public-private projects develop relationships with Community Sector Organisations (CSOs) or Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) familiar with the target communities to implement such processes, as a large amount of hand holding is required to build trust and understanding about the importance of post-occupancy maintenance among the low-income communities.
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As urban India moves into an era where affordable housing is evolving to embrace the high-rise typology, it is imperative that stakeholders of the sector be cognizant of the various issues that accompany this transformation and work towards resolving the same.