Habitat India’s Housing Support Services (HSS) is a service offered to provide technical advice to homeowners and masons to empower families living in poor housing conditions with knowledge, capacity and even delivery. Through HSS, the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) scheme can achieve greater efficiency in helping families build their homes to completion.
The HSS model ensures that the benefits of affordable housing, financial inclusion, rural development and social protection reach the lowest rungs of the population.
Habitat’s HSS will provide housing and household related services ranging from technical assistance, financial knowledge, and documentation support, and empower families to realise their dream of building a home.
The following services are available to families under HSS:
- Community survey and homeowner assessment
- Construction Technical Assistance (CTA)
- Skill Training: Plumbing, Electrical and Masonry
- Formation of tool bank for construction: Rental of Tools and Equipment
- Access to Resources: Information / networks, supplier and contractor linkages, Government, private subsidy programs and services
- Finance: Enhanced Access to Finance
- Education: financial literacy, health and hygiene
- Legal: tenure, permits and entitlements
- Habitat India can connect the families to MFIs/ SFBs for consumable loans
- Water Resource Management
- Community Capacity Building
- Construction Monitoring / Handholding Support
Download OGP/P4 IMPACT STUDY REPORT
KERALA
As part of our 2018 Rebuilding Kerala efforts post the floods, Habitat India launched the pilot HSS initiative in North Paravur, Ernakulam district. Designed as a ‘Hub and Spoke’ model with a core team of two people functioning out of the Municipal Office (hub) and also supporting a nearby Panchayat (spoke), HSS in Kerala helped families successfully build their homes.
On 20th May, HSS on Wheels was released, providing 258 families with household services, shelter-related technical services, document services for government schemes, disaster mitigation and risk reduction training and consulting, financial product integration, BCC+++ (WASH and COVID-19 related support) and a mammogram unit managed by a partner organisation.
ASSAM
The HSS initiative in Assam is being piloted in Lakhimpur district in coordination with the District Administration to ensure acceptable quality and timely completion of houses under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY). The HSS offers services such as financial planning and assistance and technical guidance for incremental housing where families add to built spaces and maximise the financial resources available.
TAMIL NADU
Habitat India has been working with the disadvantaged Irula tribal community with the aim of building a better future for them through housing and allied interventions in the housing-eco-system. Undertaken in partnership with the local community and district authorities of Cuddalore, Viluppuram, Chengalpattu, Tiruvallur, Kancheepuram, Vellore, Tiruvannamalai and Tiruchirappalli, our work involves empowering the Irula families obtain government identification, tribe certificates, land title and building homes to help them break the cycle of poverty.
Through HSS, Habitat is helping the Irula tribal families – who have access to land title – avail PMAY subsidy and other Government schemes which will help them improve their standard of living.
ODISHA
Habitat India’s Odisha Gruhabikas Program (OGP) began in Puri and Konark districts supporting the State Government’s vision of creating a slum-free Odisha by transforming slums into livable habitats.
A vital aspect of this project is to grant land rights to slum dwellers which allows the families to avail Government subsidy for building a permanent home under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY). Despite the subsidy provided under the commendable PMAY, houses remain incomplete as families at the bottom of the pyramid do not have technical or financial knowledge, nor do they have savings to fall back on.
To resolve this, Habitat India partnered with Svatantra Micro Housing Finance Corporation (SMHFC), J. K. Lakshmi Cement and Sa-dhan to provide invaluable gap-funding and supply-chain management to ensure people complete their homes.
Through this unique HSS model, Habitat India mobilizes the community, builds capacity of homeowners and masons, provides construction and technical support, monitors progress and quality along with the facilitation of gap-funding. Swift implementation of this community-led housing program in Odisha and its far-reaching impact has the potential for tackling the urgent issue of housing and urban poverty elsewhere in India and across the globe.
