Housing and Urban Development Department, Government of Tamil Nadu

The national urban population is 27.82 percentage of the total population of India. Tamil Nadu is the most urbanized State having an urban population of 3.5 crores which is 48.44 percentage of the total population of 7.2 crores as per 2011 census. The growth rate of urban population in the last decade has been 27.16 percentage vis-a-vis rural population growth of just 6.49 percentage. The increase in urban population has been due to various factors. Important among them are the natural increase in population in urban areas and migration of rural population to urban areas.

With rapid pace of urbaniztion. One of the biggest challenges is the availability of affordable housing in urban areas. Keeping in view the importance of housing in promoting helath and status of living of the people, Tamilnadu has the distinction of implementing a number of Housing schemes since 1947.

The constraints like lack of purchasing power, security of tenure of land, unclear titles of house property in rural areas, unavailability of flexible housing finance system, lack of awareness about building technologies and paucity of public fund are resulting in inadequate housing and habitat conditions especially for the poor and Economically Weaker Sections. As a result, the gap between housing demand and supply has increased considerably. Nearly 35 percentage of the available housing stocks are temporary and semi-temporary structures. This problem is more acute in rural areas accounting to nearly 48 percentage. The housing shortage is estimated to be 9.11 lakhs of which 50 percentage is in urban areas.

Tamil Nadu has been following its housing policy by creating conditions conducive to the provision of quality housing at affordable cost especially to the Economically Weaker Sections by regulating and encouraging developments through planned inclusions and balanced growth. With a view to encourage and facilitate private partnership in the development of Economically Weaker Sections, the Government has incorporated enabling provisions in the regulatory framework by making it mandatory for developers to provide 10 percentage of the developed area for the Economically Weaker Sections. The Government would involve the various stakeholders in the provision of housing at an affordable price through facilitation and regulation of the housing services.

The land planning and development regulatory bodies in Tamil Nadu are the Directorate of Town and Country Planning and Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority. The area covered under Directorate of Town and Country Planning is 1,28,869 sq.kms. and the area under CMDA is 1189 sq.kms. Both the regulatory bodies work towards the harmonious development of the State as per planning norms and parameters, by land use regulations through the preparation and implementation of Master Plans and Detailed Development Plans. The Plans take into consideration the need for the provision of effective road network fixing alignments of bye pass roads, ring roads etc. The regulatory bodies also take up several initiatives to improve traffic and transportation by creation and upgradation of infrastructural facilities.