Functions of Housing Department.

West Bengal comprises 2.7 per cent of the total area of the country but has about 8 percent of the population. From the 11th Five Year Plan (2007-12), the State Government's priority is to address the State's needs for affordable housing and in particular, construction of houses for the urban poor and for the economically weaker sections of the society. The Housing Department had a major challenge to provide affordable housing in view of the fact that the urban housing shortage in the state is about 1.3 million as compared to the national shortage of about 10 million and most of the people in the economically weaker section of society are in want of their own shelter.

Housing Department is entrusted with the noble mission to provide shelter to all classes of people belonging to the lowest rung to the topmost rung of the society. Since creation of the Department it's able management has successfully provided roof over the head of more than 4 lakh families, scattered all over the State of West Bengal. Categorically, the Department's function may be broadly divided into three sectors –

(i) to provide a good number of accommodation to the people belong to economically weaker section of the society by way of construction or by financial assistance to construct the same under the social upliftment programmes

(ii) to construct flats and outright sell to eligible and prospective buyers through West Bengal Housing Board

(iii) to constructs flats and rent it out and to maintain the same.

Again the rental flat is of two types - one is absolutely meant for State Government Employees, who are allotted flats on joining the Government service or allotted on transfer from other places of posting. The other types of rental accommodation such as M.I.G., L.IG.etc. are allotted to common people who belong to those categories.

Apart from these , hostel accommodation for working women and night shelters for patient party at Hospitals are also included in the activity of the Department.

At present functions in nutshell:

1. To provide pucca dwelling houses to the permanent tea garden workers of closed/sick tea gardens who do not have pucca houses of their own by way of allotment through construction of dwelling units on lands in the tea gardens.

2. To provide financial assistance for the construction of a pucca house with basic amenities to such poor tea garden workers who own small parcels of land or who have been allotted land under tea garden patta or have small and/or dilapidated dwelling units of their own in the tea garden land.

3. Coordinate different line depts. for solving housing problem of different categories of people.

4. Accommodation for govt. employees throughout the state including districts and sub-divisions and maintenance thereof.

5. To provide tenancy of flats to the people belonging to LIG, MIG, HIG, IHE(Industrial Housing Estate) and SCP(Slum Clearing Project) categories at a nominal rent.

6. Accommodation for single working women in important town and cities.

7. Night shelters at different hospitals and medical colleges.

8. Apartment ownership act for establishing the right of apartment ownership of housing complex build by different promoting agencies.

9. To solve accommodation problem of people in general through PPP model.