In its endeavour to make houses affordable for everybody under the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission, the government on Monday set up a 12-member high level task force headed by chairman HDFC Deepak Parekh, to help develop innovative financial instruments, with a view, to introduce flexibility in the housing market.

Other members in the task force include chairman and managing director National Housing Board, S Sridhar, and vice chairman DLF group, Rajiv Singh.

The mandate of the task force is to advise government to bridge the gap in housing.

As of now the country is short of about 2.47 crore houses in the urban areas. The committee is likely to submit its recommendation in the next four months, urban poverty alleviation minister Kumari Shailja said.

The minister said the government is also planning to provide subsidy in the bank loans to the economically weaker section.

Shailja said, the extent of subsidy is yet to be decided but the urban poverty alleviation ministry has proposed for 5% subsidy to the low-income groups.

The Centre has earmarked over Rs 361,000 crore to be spent on urban housing and has invited private players to build about 25 million houses across the country over the next five years.