Paper Title
A Study: Housing Finance Mechanism for EWS People of South Zone Surat City of Gujarat (India)

Abstract
While developers in India’s metropolitan cities are sitting on lakhs of unsold residences costing upwards of 50 lakh, the country is estimated to have a shortage of nearly 2 crore housing units needed by the rural and urban poor, at far lower price points of 5-15 lakh. This clearly states, that the major problem at hand is not “HOUSING SHORTAGE” but “AFFORDABLE HOUSING SHORTAGE”. In this present paper, investigations have been made on all the Housing finance institutes in India and their mechanism in the system. It further discusses the various housing schemes, the focus being on Economically Weaker Section(EWS). It’s an Indian idiosyncrasy to save a fraction of the total income for future use. Models that can be used by the government and financial institutes, fabricated using the ratio of EWS’s savings to their willingness to pay have been proposed. Concepts of micro-financing have been used to tackle the problem of non-availability of collateral with the EWS. This paper is very much useful for researcher, policy makers and financial institutions of all kinds including housing finance corporations (HFCs), commercial banks. Keywords- Affordable Housing; Finance Mechanism; EWS; Micro-financing