Maharashtra has unveiled its most ambitious housing roadmap in nearly two decades— “Majhe Ghar, Majha Adhikar.” With a promise to construct 35 lakh homes by 2030 and a ₹70,000 crore investment push, the new State Housing Policy seeks to redefine urban living for millions. Framed around inclusivity, sustainability, and scale, it offers bold solutions for longstanding problems. But as the dust settles on the announcement, one question remains—can it deliver where past efforts fell short? As this feature unfolds, we examine the policy’s scope, intent, and whether this blueprint can truly transform Maharashtra’s housing future. The Analysis By TITTO EAPEN
THE ANALYSIS
STATE HOUSING POLICY 2025
CHARTS AMBITIOUS GOALS AGAINST STRUCTURAL CHALLENGES
In the ever-expanding skyline of Maharashtra’s cities, one thing has remained constant: a widening gap between those who build the state’s economy and those who can afford to live in it. Housing, long caught in a tangle of policy paralysis, inflated costs, and infrastructure lag, has now taken centrestage once again—with the state’s most comprehensive reform plan in over 18 years.
The Maharashtra State Housing Policy 2025, launched under the compelling slogan “Majhe Ghar, Majha Adhikar” (My Home, My Right), marks a fresh attempt to reboot the way homes are planned, built, and distributed. Backed by a target of 35 lakh affordable homes by 2030 and a massive ₹70,000 crore investment strategy, the policy aspires to balance aspiration with accessibility. It promises not just housing, but a vision of inclusion, dignity, and urban transformation.
“This is not just a step forward—it’s a leap toward building a globally competitive real estate ecosystem,” says Dr. Niranjan Hiranandani, Chairman of NAREDCO, reflecting the sentiment of a hopeful industry that sees promise in the policy’s integrated, future-ready vision.
But for every bold ambition, Maharashtra’s housing history offers cautionary tales. Stalled slum redevelopments. Unclaimed incentives. High-cost premiums. Delays in approvals that often last longer than the construction cycle itself. For many, the memory of past policies—well-meaning but under-delivered—is still fresh.
What makes this new policy different is its broad canvas. It talks to stakeholders across the spectrum—urban poor, cooperative societies, women, senior citizens, industrial workers, developers, and municipalities. It acknowledges structural failures. It aspires to digital transparency. It speaks in the language of economic and social justice. And it attempts to position housing as a driver of equitable urbanisation—not merely a byproduct of it.
Yet, as promising as it sounds, a housing policy is only as strong as its execution. The blueprint, no matter how visionary, must contend with the complex realities on the ground: fragmented land ownership, sluggish local governance, premium-heavy regulatory frameworks, and a large population priced out of formal housing markets.
“The true test lies in implementation. Unless execution matches intent, the housing gap will only widen,” says **Keval Valambhia**, COO of CREDAI MCHI —a view shared by many in the developer community.
As we begin to unpack this landmark policy, this story will navigate through the promises made, the opportunities unlocked, the systemic gaps left unaddressed, and the real-world implications for developers, citizens, and the state’s urban future. From self-redevelopment and senior-living to rent-to-own housing and township incentives, each section ahead will probe a different layer of Maharashtra’s bold new housing blueprint.
Because in the end, this isn’t just about building homes—it’s about whether Maharashtra can build trust, access, and future-ready cities.
“The true test lies in implementation. Unless execution matches intent, the housing gap will only widen.”
Keval Valambhia, Chief Operations Officer, CREDAI-MCHI
THE ANALYSIS
A ROOF, A RIGHT,
A RESPONSIBILITY
It begins, as most revolutions do, with a promise.
This time, the promise is not just of homes, but of a different kind of Maharashtra—one where the right to a roof is not determined by income brackets or postal codes, but by the simple fact of being a citizen. The newly unveiled State Housing Policy 2025, launched under the banner Majhe Ghar, Majha Adhikar (My Home, My Right), carries the ambition to build 35 lakh affordable homes by 2030, underwritten by a staggering ₹70,000 crore investment plan.
But the numbers, bold as they are, are not the soul of this vision. The soul lies in its shift—from infrastructure as a statement of power to housing as an expression of inclusion.
If the previous housing regimes focused on FSI bonuses, market incentives, and mass allocation, this policy pivots the conversation toward urban dignity. Its design acknowledges something that earlier blueprints ignored: that housing is not just a commodity—it is context. It is proximity to work, safety for women, accessibility for the ageing, affordability for the young, and stability for the informal.
To that end, the policy introduces rent-to-own formats—a rare admission that home ownership isn’t immediately possible for all, but aspiration still must be structurally supported. In this model, working women, students, and industrial labourers can rent state-supported housing for up to ten years with an option to buy, gradually entering the ownership economy without the upfront burden of capital.
“This comprehensive plan, with its emphasis on rental housing and walk-to-work ecosystems, is not just social engineering—it’s economic logic,” says Dr. Niranjan Hiranandani, Chairman of NAREDCO, who calls the policy a timely correction to the way India has planned cities—by segregation instead of integration.
And integration is exactly what the state is now attempting. In a first, the government will allow up to 30% of MDC land to be repurposed for residential use, creating housing within industrial belts. If implemented well, it could rewrite the geography of Maharashtra’s urban workforce, ending the legacy of long commutes, peripheral ghettos, and fragmented living.
But perhaps the boldest departure in this policy is its framing of housing as care infrastructure. With India’s senior population projected to cross 19 crore by 2050, the policy officially recognizes elderly housing as a formal vertical. It offers incentives for developers to create universal-access homes tied to healthcare, assisted living, and community services—a nod to the invisible crisis of ageing in Indian cities.
The ambition doesn’t end at physical structures. A ₹20,000 crore Maha Awas Nidhi is being positioned as the engine that will drive social housing. It isn’t a subsidy fund—it’s a viability-gap corpus, designed to encourage developers, cooperatives, and housing societies to take on financially weak projects that were previously non-bankable. Parallel to this, a ₹2,000 crore fund is committed to self-redevelopment, offering thousands of Mumbai’s crumbling cooperative societies a chance to rebuild without needing a private developer.
Here, the shift is subtle but seismic: the citizen becomes the catalyst, not just the consumer.
“This is more than a housing scheme—it’s an invitation to reimagine urban Maharashtra,” says Prashant Sharma, President of NAREDCO Maharashtra. “It asks us to look beyond units sold and see who is being housed—and how.”
And at the policy’s heart lies a digital conscience: the State Housing Information Portal (SHIP). If it works as intended, it will track compliance, approvals, delivery status, and bottlenecks in real time—a far cry from the paper-trail paralysis that has plagued housing departments across the country.
But that’s the promise. What remains to be seen is whether this vision—bold, sweeping, and layered—can make it past the fragile scaffolding of bureaucracy, coordination, and legacy inefficiencies?
A WIDER NET – INCLUSIVITY REIMAGINED HOUSING FOR ALL, NOT JUST THE PRIVILEGED FEW
For decades, housing policy in Maharashtra—like much of India—served the visible. The salaried. The already-settled. But the cities were always built by those who remained unseen: the woman migrating for work without safe accommodation, the industrial worker sleeping above his workshop, the senior citizen quietly ageing in homes never designed for their needs.
It is this invisible city that the new State Housing Policy 2025 dares to name.
In his official statement, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis framed it as a “comprehensive programme” aimed at serving all strata—working women, students, senior citizens, industrial workers, and marginalised communities. His words, at first glance, read like political inclusivity. But what’s different is how explicitly those constituencies now shape the actual architecture of housing delivery.
At the heart of the shift is a recalibration of who Maharashtra considers a legitimate urban citizen. And that, in a state where ownership was always the final exam, is radical.
Unlike earlier schemes that assumed upward mobility before offering housing, this policy recognises transience and informality as facts, not failures. Deputy CM Eknath Shinde, who also heads the Housing Department, called the policy “revolutionary,” declaring that “no one should be denied a roof because they cannot afford to buy it outright.” It’s a subtle line, but a seismic departure.
This isn’t merely about adding groups to a beneficiary list—it’s about rewriting the script of legitimacy. In cities where renters have long been treated as second-class citizens, the state now envisions them as future homeowners. The rent-to-own model, while detailed in government documents, isn’t about convenience—it’s a structural correction. It legally encodes hope for those who had none.
But the real challenge lies beyond regulation—it lies in social perception.
As Keval Valambhia, COO of CREDAI-MCHI, put it, “This policy opens up new horizons for private participation, but also forces us to rethink who we’re building for.” In an industry conditioned to serve aspiration over access, demand curves over dignity, this shift will demand more than new blueprints—it will require new business models.
For senior citizens, the policy extends far beyond accessible washrooms or emergency buttons. It marks the first time they are being positioned not as dependents, but as a demographic that deserves design. With over 1.4 crore elderly residents in the state and that number set to double by 2047, this is less a welfare measure than a form of demographic urban strategy.
“It’s about building an environment where ageing is not a burden—it’s planned for,” says **Anuj Goradia**, Director of Dosti Realty. “Developers like us now have a policy logic—and a moral logic—to respond to that need.”
The same goes for women-centric housing. For years, working women—especially single and migrant women—have been left out of the urban imagination. Homes were designed for the nuclear family. Hostels were temporary. Everything else was unofficial. Now, for the first time, the state speaks of housing as a right tied to safety, mobility, and tenure security for women. It isn’t just building spaces—it’s attempting to undo decades of spatial exclusion.
This policy doesn’t merely challenge who gets to live in a city. It questions where. Through the reallocation of government-held land in MIDC and MMRDA zones for residential use, the policy begins to reverse the logic of urban sprawl. Until now, the urban poor were pushed further and further out—off the grid, off the transit map, off the planner’s radar. Now, the state is bringing them back in. Into transport corridors. Into employment zones. Into proximity.
“For a long time, affordability meant distance,” noted Prashant Sharma, President of NAREDCO Maharashtra. “Now, it means access. The government’s township-led approach aims to integrate, not isolate.”
This is more than land reallocation. It is a reversal of spatial hierarchy. The geography of exclusion—where wealth sat at the centre and need was banished to the edge—is being redrawn.
And in doing so, Maharashtra may be executing its most quiet but profound political act: acknowledging that urban belonging isn’t earned—it’s enabled.
But inclusion on paper must still survive the crucible of execution. Will women actually feel safe in these new homes? Will senior housing attract long-term investment or just one-time incentives? Will renters be treated with dignity in ownership societies? These are not just logistical questions. They are societal ones.
And yet, what sets this policy apart is that it has, for the first time, placed these questions at the very heart of its intent. It’s no longer about delivering homes to those waiting. It’s about recognising who we’ve kept waiting the longest—and asking why.
Because inclusivity is not just a number to be met. It’s a silence to be broken.
THE GREEN PILLAR AND TECH PROMISE ECO-URBANISM MEETS DIGITISATION
If the first act of the policy is to correct who we build for, the second is to ask: how do we build—so that what we create doesn’t collapse under its own weight?
Maharashtra’s new housing blueprint does not shy away from this question. At a time when real estate development across India is increasingly under scrutiny for its environmental toll—on air, groundwater, energy grids, and heat resilience—the state has placed sustainability at the centre of its urban housing ambition. Not as a postscript. As principle.
But here too, it’s not the usual greenwash. Instead of vague eco-certifications and recycled promises, the policy anchors itself to performance. It borrows benchmarks from the Global Housing Technology Challenge (GHTC)—a national innovation platform launched by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs—to encourage carbon-light, energy-efficient, and climate-resilient construction across EWS and LIG formats. In a state battling rising urban heat islands and shrinking aquifers, this is less innovation than necessity.
The policy also offers incentive-linked green FSI to developers who adhere to sustainable building standards. In theory, this finally aligns market interest with planetary limits—inviting builders to earn higher buildability through performance rather than payment alone.
“This focus on eco-urbanism is deeply aligned with how we see the future of development,” says Shraddha Kedia-Agarwal, Director at Transcon Developers. “It allows us to create housing stock that’s not only accessible today—but liveable tomorrow.”
But sustainability, as the policy realises, is not just about materials and mechanisms. It’s about management. And this is where Maharashtra introduces one of its most promising innovations: the State Housing Information Portal (SHIP).
Far removed from the conventional opacity that defines most real estate regulation, SHIP proposes a real-time, publicly accessible platform to monitor everything—from land allocation and compliance clearances to environmental assessments, financial approvals, and project delivery milestones. If implemented as imagined, it would be one of India’s most ambitious digital governance reforms in housing.
What it promises is nothing short of a systems shift: fewer manual interventions, shorter approval cycles, early detection of delays, and near-zero room for speculative manipulation of data. More importantly, it may finally give the end user—homebuyers, housing societies, even journalists—visibility into a system that has long thrived on invisibility.
This isn’t just about speed. It’s about trust.
“Transparency is the new credibility,” says Samyak Jain, Director at Siddha Group. “Buyers today aren’t only looking at price and location—they’re asking what they’re buying into. This kind of digitisation can become a major competitive advantage for Maharashtra.”
But digitisation isn’t only meant for governance—it is also being envisioned as a tool for design. In partnership with IITs, IIMs, and urban research bodies, the policy aims to integrate GIS-based planning, environmental modelling, and performance analytics into township design and housing placement. The idea is to move beyond top-down land-use plans and create responsive cities—designed around liveability, not just legality.
What emerges is a housing vision that refuses to pit scale against sustainability. Where affordable housing doesn’t have to mean poor ventilation, and EWS blocks don’t have to sit in the shadow of neglected infrastructure. Where speed does not sacrifice standards.
Yet the success of this eco-digital paradigm will depend entirely on its operational independence. Will SHIP be governed by urban technocrats or passed down to already-overstretched local bodies? Will green FSI be handed out with rigour—or become just another form of discretionary approval? And will the state’s construction arms—MHADA, SRA, PWD—be mandated to build green too, or will the burden fall solely on private developers?
The answers to these questions will determine whether Maharashtra’s smart-housing ecosystem becomes a replicable model for India, or simply a chapter in the state’s long book of unrealised reforms.
Still, in the arc of the policy, this is the first time technology and ecology are being asked to speak the same language—not in abstract, but in actionable frameworks.
Housing here is no longer just about building faster. It’s about building with foresight.
And that’s what gives this policy its edge: it doesn’t just aim to shelter more people—it wants to prove that how we house people is just as critical as how many we house.
THE MISSING BRICKS – POLICY GAPS
BLUEPRINT VS BULLDOZER: WHERE THE CRACKS LIE
The state has promised homes. But what it has not promised is how it plans to dismantle the obstacles that have long prevented those homes from being built.
Take the question of premiums—the invisible tax on every square foot of buildable land in Maharashtra. Mumbai, in particular, remains India’s most expensive city for real estate approvals, with over 36 different premiums, levies, and cesses imposed on developers before a foundation stone is even laid. According to a recent CREDAI-MCHI Urban Acres report, premiums in Mumbai account for 30–35% of a project’s total cost, compared to 8–10% in Bangalore and under 12% in Hyderabad. Yet, the new policy makes no mention of rationalising this high-premium regime—a gaping omission in a document that otherwise claims to promote affordability.
This silence is more than bureaucratic. It is ideological. Because until the state confronts the uncomfortable truth that it has priced itself out of the very housing it seeks to promote, inclusion will remain an intent, not an outcome.
And then there is the elephant in the room—the over 500 stalled Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) projects spread across Mumbai, locked in limbo due to title disputes, financing breakdowns, and regulatory red tape. Some of these projects have been stuck for over a decade, leaving tens of thousands of families stranded in half-demolished tenements or incomplete transition housing. While the new policy speaks of cluster redevelopment and slum-free cities, it offers no operational roadmap for reviving these critical SRA projects—no clarity on funding mechanisms, arbitration frameworks, or fast-track approvals. It’s as if the policy is content to build afresh, while the wreckage of yesterday remains untouched.
Meanwhile, the state’s endorsement of rental housing—through rent-to-own schemes and worker hostels—is an important and welcome shift. But it comes without the legal foundation needed to make renting a viable, protected, and formal option. Maharashtra has not adopted the Model Tenancy Act notified by the Centre in 2021. As a result, the rental ecosystem continues to operate in an informal zone—unregulated, unstable, and unprotected. For industrial workers, students, and even women’s hostels, this lack of tenancy safeguards renders the policy’s inclusive rhetoric structurally fragile.
“Without strong boots on the ground, even a bold policy risks being another PDF document,” says an urban policy consultant involved with earlier housing reforms. “We’ve seen too many plans with vision and zero velocity.”
Perhaps the biggest question mark of all hangs over execution.
In over 250 cities and towns across Maharashtra, it is the Urban Local Bodies (ULBs)—municipal corporations, councils, and nagar panchayats—that are responsible for everything from planning permissions to project monitoring. Yet, the policy offers no clarity on ULB readiness. There is no mention of human resource capacity, training, digital infrastructure, or institutional restructuring. In fact, in many smaller towns, the urban planning department operates with a skeleton staff—often without even a dedicated town planner.
Without administrative devolution and capacity building, the best-designed policy will still choke in the system it seeks to bypass. It’s a blueprint staring at a bulldozer.
This is Maharashtra’s recurring problem. It doesn’t fail to dream. It fails to deliver. Its housing ecosystem is littered with well-intended frameworks—from Prime Minister Awas Yojana (Urban) to SRA and MHADA regulations—that begin with momentum and end with bottlenecks. And what makes it worse is that each failure builds public cynicism, not just policy fatigue.
Developers, too, are watching closely. “It’s a promising policy,” says one Thane-based developer off the record. “But unless the approvals timeline is shortened and premium costs are brought down, even we will struggle to make these projects financially viable.”
And so, the dissonance builds.
On one hand, Maharashtra wants to lead India in social housing reform—integrating care, inclusion, technology, and green development. On the other, it refuses to let go of the revenue-first model that treats development control regulations as a fiscal pipeline rather than a governance tool.
On paper, the state is building homes. On the ground, it’s still building hurdles.
Until the policy addresses the hard infrastructure of finance, legal frameworks, municipal coordination, and regulatory reform, it risks becoming what so many urban policies before it have become: a story of good intentions that couldn’t survive their own ecosystem.
A POLICY AT CROSSROADS FROM VISION TO VERDICT—WHAT MAHARASHTRA MUST DO NOW
Policies do not change cities. The people who execute them do.
And that is precisely where the fate of Majhe Ghar, Majha Adhikar now hangs—in the narrow, volatile space between a bold idea and its everyday implementation. Maharashtra has crafted what is arguably one of the most layered housing policies in the country’s recent history: ambitious in its scope, inclusive in its intent, and refreshingly future-facing. But ambition is not an outcome. It is an invitation. And invitations, no matter how well-written, are meaningless if no one shows up to deliver.
The stakes could not be higher. Maharashtra is standing atop a housing crisis decades in the making—where over 45% of Mumbai’s population lives in slums, housing costs outpace median incomes in every major city, and thousands of projects are delayed or frozen in litigation. Meanwhile, rising intra-state migration is exerting invisible pressure on second-tier cities like Nashik, Aurangabad, and Nagpur, where planning capacity remains skeletal. And in boardrooms across the real estate sector, there is growing fatigue—with investors wary of high premiums, unpredictable approvals, and opaque governance.
For this policy to move from vision to verdict, it must do three things—and do them fast.
First, empower the Urban Local Bodies. The most elegant policy designs collapse when handed to institutions not equipped to implement them. ULBs must be staffed, trained, digitised, and de-politicised if they are to deliver on affordable housing with accountability. This requires not just intent, but investment—into people, processes, and planning systems.
Second, the state must unlock funding with radical transparency. The proposed ₹20,000 crore Maha Awas Nidhi has the potential to de-risk the most fragile parts of the housing market—but only if its disbursal is predictable, monitored, and audited. Developers and cooperative societies alike will only step forward if the pipeline of capital is clear and insulated from political volatility.
Third, the government must act on what it has long avoided: simplify its regulatory web. This means reducing approval timelines, rationalising premiums, reforming building codes, and addressing the legal backlog of redevelopment. Without this, even the best ideas will get lost in translation—buried in the weight of their own paperwork.
Because what’s at stake is not just homes. It is urban credibility.
In an age where cities compete for capital, talent, and innovation, housing has become the true test of governance. It reflects a state’s values, its capacity to plan, and its ability to care. Maharashtra has always built tall. But this time, it must build deep. It must build fair.
“Majhe Ghar, Majha Adhikar could be the turning point,” says an urban development analyst. “But only if it turns into action.”
This is no longer about drafting policies. It is about building trust in them. And trust, like housing, cannot be promised—it must be constructed, brick by brick, decision by decision.
Maharashtra’s housing policy stands at a crossroads. One path leads to delivery. The other, to déjà vu. What the state chooses next will decide not just where its people live—but how they live, and whether they feel they belong.
