Bhubaneswar: To address soaring rental costs and housing challenges in cities, the Odisha government has initiated steps to convert vacant and unutilised government buildings into low-cost rental accommodations for urban poor and vulnerable groups.
The initiative under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana Urban 2.0 will primarily cater to migrant urban poor, industrial and commercial workers, informal sector employees, and working women.
Additional Chief Secretary, Housing and Urban Development, Usha Padhee, has written to multiple departments — Home, Agriculture, Energy, Finance, Food Supplies, Women and Child Development, Panchayati Raj, Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Development, Health, and Cooperation — seeking details of vacant government-owned housing assets in urban areas across the state. These buildings, previously funded by central or state governments, will undergo necessary repairs, retrofitting, and infrastructure improvements to make them habitable, with funding support from PMAY-U 2.0 under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs.
The letter stated that the PMAY Urban 2.0 scheme has introduced a rental housing model to address the needs of people who cannot afford to buy homes, while earlier housing policies promoted ownership models. It further noted that access to rental housing can help curb growth of informal settlements and boosts urban productivity by offering workers in industrial and informal sectors stable and secure living conditions.
“Rental housing plays an important role in the overall housing demand environment, as it addresses the need of a large segment of urban poor, especially who are urban migrants, industrial workers, working women. Moreover, rental housing is flexible and suitable for beneficiaries who can’t afford to own a house right now. Further, ensuring access to affordable rental housing for industrial and informal sector workers will help to strengthen urban economies with improved productivity and avoid the proliferation of informal settlements,” the letter said.
The rent for these housing units will be fixed by local authorities based on local surveys and revised periodically. “The initial affordable rent will be fixed by the local authority based on a local survey and rent will be enhanced biennially by 8%, subject to maximum increase of 20% in aggregate, over a period of 5 years,” it said.
All departments have been asked to identify such unutilised government buildings or houses located in urban areas across Odisha and inform the Odisha Urban Housing Mission, the state nodal agency for implementing PMAY Urban 2.0.
According to the operational guidelines of PMAY-U 2.0, the Affordable Rental Housing (ARH) vertical is being rolled out through two main models:
Model-1 focuses on converting existing vacant government-funded buildings into rental units, either managed directly by public agencies or developed in partnership with private entities through the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) mode.
Model-2 encourages private or public organisations to construct, operate, and maintain new rental housing projects targeted at Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) and Low-Income Groups (LIG), with investments recovered gradually through rental income over an extended period.
