4 years on, most low-cost homes for mill workers occupied by tenants in Mumbai

Former mill workers cite the high maintenance costs in the tall towers on prime Central Mumbai and South Mumbai plots, lack of alternative incomes, and the burden of home loans as some of the main reasons why it is more lucrative to rent them out.

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Virendra Kumar Singh, who heads the Standard Mill Housing Society at Prabhadevi, said, “Nobody can run this society three years from now, considering the condition it is in right now. There should be an audit of the infrastructure here.”

Unions of the 1.5 lakh retrenched mill workers of Mumbai had fought hard with the state government for years to get free or subsidised houses in the city, on a share of the erstwhile mill lands. Even by modest estimates, the market value of each apartment located in some of Mumbai’s prime areas is close to Rs 1 crore.

However, the state government, after negotiations with mill workers’ unions, decided to sell them the tenements at Rs 7.5 lakh per unit.

The Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA), which built the apartments and sold them to the mill workers through a draw, had permitted them to rent out the homes.

In the first draw, MHADA sold 6,925 low-cost houses of 225 square feet each, located across 19 defunct mill complexes of Mumbai. Residents of these complexes say nearly 70-80 per cent of the houses in most of the 19 mills have been put on rent for an average sum of Rs 15,000 per month.

Ganpat Baburao Chavan, one of the few mill workers who has decided to stay in his house allotted on the erstwhile Piramal Mill complex, said, “We were provided with barely any facilities, and the construction was also of an inferior quality, leading to a high maintenance expenditure.”

Every family in the 24-storey building has to shell out a maintenance amount of Rs 2,720 per month for the flats and for the upkeep of the highrise. Similarly, residents of the Sriram Mills complex have to pay a maintenance cost of Rs 3,100 per month.

Also, MHADA has marked a third of the low-cost homes built on every housing complex as transit camps for residents displaced from dilapidated cessed buildings.

Residents complain that transit camp residents don’t pay for maintenance, which adds to the burden of mill workers.

Prabhakar Parab, a resident of Sriram Mills, said, “MHADA should give these flats to mill workers instead of using them as transit tenements.”

The state housing authority is now preparing to conduct a second draw of low-cost homes for mill workers on May 9. It will sell 2,634 affordable houses on six defunct mill estates in the city.

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