ARHC Sanctions over 78,800 Units, Identifies 83,500 Govt-Funded Houses

Chennai: Under the Affordable Rental Housing Complexes Scheme for industrial workers, 78,885 units have been sanctioned and Tamil Nadu accounts for 90 per cent of the sanctioned units. Of the 83,534 government-funded vacant houses identified for rental housing, only 7 per cent have been converted into units under ARH.

The Affordable Rental Housing Complexes (ARHCs) scheme launched in 2022 and announced as part of the pandemic package, is a sub-scheme of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban (PMAY-U) to provide affordable rental housing for urban migrants and industrial workers near their workplaces.

This scheme is implemented under two models - converting existing government- funded vacant houses into ARHC through public-private partnership and construction of greenfield ARH housing through PPP.

In the first model, governments have identified 83,534 government-funded vacant houses in 13 states. Of this, 32,345 houses have been identified in Maharashtra and 29,112 houses in Delhi. Houses have not been identified in any of the southern states.

Of these identified houses, only 5648 have been converted into ARH units and this is 7 per cent of the identified houses.

In the second scheme, the government provides certain benefits to reduce the overall cost of constructing and operating ARH units to encourage Public-Private partnership (PPP).

Under the second model, a total of 78,885 units have been sanctioned by the government. Of this, 90 per cent or 58,386 units are in Tamil Nadu. The entities that have received permission for construction in Tamil Nadu includes SPR City Estates, SPR Construction, Tata Electronic, State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu, and Chennai Petroleum.

Sivani Infra has received government nod to construct 14,490 units at Nizampet, Telangana.

The government provides loans at lower interest rates through a concession window, and grants in the form of Technology Innovation Grant (TIG) for the use of innovative, sustainable, green and disaster resilient technologies under this model.

According to Niti Aayog, a closer analysis of the scheme highlights a low level of private sector participation.

Under the first model, the average rent for the proposed projects is just over Rs. 2,500 per month which falls within the affordability range of industrial workers. However, accurate locations of the proposed projects are not available. “Moreover, data shows that only 7 per cent of the proposed vacant houses have been converted into ARH units. The conversion rate also does not paint a complete picture since there is no visibility on the occupancy of converted houses,” finds Niti Aayog.