REAL ESTATE

“My landlord asked me to vacate the house I had rented, on two days notice, as he was unhappy that I had a friend visiting me. I was blindsided at having to leave with my belongings at such short notice. I stayed at a friend’s house till I was able to find another place”, says Aditya (name changed), a researcher at a think-tank in Chennai. This scenario might sound all too familiar to those living in rented homes in the city. Aggrieved tenants can be seen taking to the various Facebook groups dedicated to finding rental homes, to seek opinions…

Bhubaneswar municipal corporation has been razing down dozens of land encroachments ahead of the Hockey World Cup to be held there in November 2018. About 250 families living in slums around Kalinga stadium where the world cup would be held are facing the threat of eviction. Municipal authorities are trying to use police support to do it, but the residents are insisting on proper rehabilitation before eviction. The land freed after all evictions will be used to create a land bank for development projects, say municipal authorities. As per a recent report ‘Forced evictions in India in 2017’ by the…

In the year 2017, data collected by Housing and Land Rights Network India (HLRN) reveals that government authorities, at both the central and state levels, demolished over 53,700 homes, thereby forcefully evicting, at a minimum, 260,000 (2.6 lakh) people across urban and rural India. The total number of persons affected has been calculated by multiplying the number of homes demolished by the average household size according to the Census (4.8). However, many demolished houses had more than one family, and most of the affected families have more than five persons. The real number of people displaced is therefore likely to…

The sight of dry fish shops on the roads, the smell of fish in the air, rickshaws all around -- the setting is unmistakably north Madras! As I get down at the N4 bus stop and go in search of Nagooran Thottam, it is not too difficult to locate the freshly painted yellow housing board quarters constructed for the welfare of slum dwellers residing in Nagooran Thottam. Just in front of the new buildings, I see a deep well hand pump and next to it, a man trying to open his suitcase and unbox his belongings. “We had our housewarming…

It was a heartrending sight. People sat or stood in groups watching their belongings being moved into lorries from the houses they had occupied for generations. The houses were being destroyed before their eyes, one by one. On Monday, November 20th, residents of the Thideer Nagar Slum on Greams Road had to vacate their houses under orders of the Corporation, the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board (TNSCB) and the Chennai Rivers Restoration Trust (CRRT). They are among the 603 odd families being moved to TNSCB’s new shelter at Perumbakkam as part of the Cooum River Eco-restoration Project. The TNSCB has…

It was a Herculean task for John Jesudason, Chief Executive Officer of Creative Huddle, a startup digital advertising agency, to build his business while also taking care of the nitty gritty of office administration. He was left with no time for the real work, after supervising the housekeeping and management of office amenities in his own office space. But since the time that he switched to a co-working space called The Executive Zone on Anna Salai, with his four-member team, he has been able to focus singlemindedly on growing his business. Co-working spaces are slowly catching up in Chennai, providing…

So you won’t live for another 115 years, but your house may. Even the angry monsoon waters that have hit Indian cities real hard this year - from Bengaluru to Mumbai to Gurugram -- might decide to break the record and roll in even faster and more furious next year. While they don't always make it to the headlines, many homes have got damaged due to the floods, and you certainly don't want your home to feature in that list. So why don’t you plan to insure it? Let’s begin. What is home insurance, anyway? It isn’t about being sure…

Three months have passed since the Goods and Services Tax (GST) was applied to housing societies/apartment associations, yet protests and confusion prevail. Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) collect monthly charges from residents, to provide goods/services for their common use. Now RWAs have to register under GST and pay tax on the monthly charges they collect; this tax burden is passed on to residents. So, instead of being the end consumer, the association is seen as a service provider to the residents. Association has to pay taxes to the vendor while buying the product, and then collect taxes from residents on maintenance…

Over the past few days, we have been seeing some disturbing pictures of eviction of families from canal banks and sea side tenements. On September 9 and 15, 2015, hundreds of families were evicted from their homes in Maduravoyal and Aminjikarai respectively, with the promise of resettlement in Gudapakkam near Thirumazhisai and Perumbakkam. I know that this is not an issue that resonates similarly even with my peers, most of whom see this as encroachment that needs to be removed. For the moment, therefore, let us set aside the question of justification. The point that must nevertheless be considered is…

As Indian cities expand at breakneck speed, they gobble up surrounding villages at a blistering pace. Mumbai is no different.  However, if you look for it, you will still find traces of several villages, older than the city itself, that have survived the onslaught of urbanisation. Some maintain their way of life, because they are fishing villages and depend on the sea for survival. Others are not so lucky and have become sites for low-income housing in a city where real estate is one of the most expensive in the country. These images bring us snatches of life from a…