In Mumbai, a Focus on Deadly Building Collapses

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A spate of recent deadly building collapses in Mumbai has brought inferior building standards and the city's lack of affordable homes into sharp focus.

A total of 61 people were killed two weeks ago in a deadly collapse in Mumbai in the area of Mazgaon. Mumbai's municipality has declared some 950 buildings across the city to be dilapidated and dangerous.

Yet residents and workers continue to live in many of these buildings. High property prices in the overpopulated city mean that many of the city's poorer residents are only able to afford to live in substandard quality buildings that are old and crumbling or in some cases have been built illegally by unscrupulous developers. Several buildings fell down in Mumbai during the monsoon season this year, with the rains further weakening already shoddy structures.

"There are historical buildings that require a significantly more robust redevelopment plan," said P S Jayakumar, the managing director of Value and Budget Housing Corporation (VBHC), a developer building affordable homes in India, including properties outside the main city of Mumbai. "Sometimes there are unapproved projects by fly-by-night operators. That problem is there in the suburban parts of the city as well."

Rajan Tambe, 60, a retiree, is one of many residents who have refused to leave a crumbling building -- located near the site of the recent collapse -- that has been declared unsafe, despite plans by local authorities to forcefully evict all the tenants.

"If they give us a better quality transit camp, we'll move," he says, explaining that the residents are concerned that the temporary accommodation is equally unsafe.

There are similar examples to be found across the city.

"It's definitely dangerous but I can't afford to rent another shop in the city," says Chenraj S Chopra, 70, who runs an umbrella store on the ground floor of a building in south Mumbai that has been vacated by all its residents because it is so badly dilapidated.

"In light of the recent building collapses, the need for quality construction materials and techniques has once again been brought to the forefront," said Anurag Mathur, chief executive of projects and development services at Jones Lang LaSalle, India. "Many of the older buildings in Mumbai and its surroundings were constructed along inadequate quality parameters and should have been redeveloped long ago. Structural audits need to be performed on older buildings."

Mr. Jayakumar says that changes need to be made at a government level to ease bureaucratic processes that delay projects, in order to help solve the problems caused by the lack of affordable property in Mumbai.

"The best way to address the challenge is to increase the supply," said Mr. Jayakumar. "Increasing the supply in our view requires two things."

The first key to bringing more homes to Mumbai is improving the timeline for approvals of projects, he said.

"Approval timelines are very long and complicated in India," Mr. Jayakumar said. "Simplifying approvals would mean that more projects could come in a faster period of time. That would also lower the costs because the interest costs [on the land] while waiting for the approvals, which is sometimes up to two years, is extremely expensive and drives up the price."

The second key is developing a good quality transportation system for the region, giving people more options on where to live and work, he said.