The much-publicised housing project for the poor under the Basic Services for Urban Poor (BSUP) projects is coming up in Thane city. The twin projects involve the construction of several ground plus seven to eight storey buildings to house around 850 families in the city as well as from Kausa for the urban poor citizens of Thane. The said project is coming up at an open plot of land belonging to the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) at Tulsidham and will provide homes to around 500 poor citizens. The TMC has acquired the plot for development. The Kausa project is a small one, but it will also provide 350 homes for the urban poor. Interestingly, the twin projects were approved by the General Body (GB) meeting held in March this year after a heated debate over enhanced areas for the 850 homes. The two projects involve building of homes of around 279 square feet carpet area. The built up area of these homes comes to more than 400 square feet. As against this, the five previously cleared BSUP projects involved construction of homes of around 225 square feet carpet area each. Each of these 850 homes will cost around Rs 4.10 lakh. The corporation is getting 80 per cent of the project cost as grant from the state and central governments as the project has been cleared by the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission (JNURM) of the central government. The corporation is contributing around eleven percent of the project in the form of availability of land and the rest nine per cent of the cost is to be charged from the beneficiaries.