The AOAs, claim members, are not against bachelor tenants, but against the practice of commercial PG accommodations, where sometimes 3 BHK flats are occupied by 10 occupants!
To curb the menace of crammed PG accommodations, managements of Indirapuram high-rises are now mulling several screening measures, including interviewing bachelor tenants, demanding documents related to identity and address proofs among others.
Apart from collecting the required documents and issuing guidelines, the AOA of Krishna Apra Garden, an Indirapuram high-rise, has now started sending security guards to such accommodations to check the actual living conditions of the occupants.
Clearing the air, Mohit Dwivedi, AOA president, categorically stated, “The management is not against bachelor tenants, but against the running of commercial PG accommodations. On several instances we have found 3 BHK flats with 10 occupants. We found rooms with three single beds! These occupants, mostly students from the nearby districts and states, have been paying around Rs 6000-10,000 per bed.”
The PG providers quite craftily rent out the beds to employees who work in different shifts, thus leaving only four to five people in a flat at any given time.
AOA members from various societies said that high number of occupants in such accommodations stresses out the society’s common amenities such water, electricity and common areas.
According to the AOAs, while the basic rent of the flats range from Rs 18,000-Rs 22,000, people running PGs earn over Rs 60,000 on a per bed basis from these flats. Dwivedi further said that, on most occasions, the occupants have no details of the original owners of the flats and only have bank account numbers and phone numbers of the middlemen. “They do not even know the names of people who provided the accommodation. On one such occasion, I connected the occupants directly to the flat owners, thus saving them a lot of hassle and money,” he added.
Krishna Apra Garden now has a set of guidelines which mandates that 3 BHK flats can have only four bachelor occupants, whose names are to be included in the rent-agreement document. The occupants have been asked to deposit identity proofs, address proofs, along with police verification details. These documents will be provided to the authorities by the society management in case of any unfortunate incident.
AOAs from several high-rises in Indirapuram are set to take part in a general meeting to decide upon a concerted course of action.
