The housing project has won the Transformative Cities 2018 award, established by the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute. The award was announced at a public event in Amsterdam on Friday, 8 June.

The struggles led by the CITU in Solapur over the course of many years starting from the early 1990s forced the central and State governments to provide funding to housing projects which would provide relief to the workers of Solapur from squalid living conditions in slums.

The first housing project, with 10,000 houses at affordable cost, is named after legendary communist leader Godavari Parulekar, and was completed in 2006. Each house cost Rs. 60,000. The second project has 5,100 houses, and is named after the trade unionist Meenakshi Sane who did pioneering work in organising beedi workers. The project was completed in 2015. Both the housing schemes have been built at Kumbhari, about six kilometres from Solapur city. Cooperative housing societies of workers were formed by the CITU for the implementation of the projects. One-third of the cost of the houses was borne by the central government, another one-third by the State government, and the rest by the beneficiaries.

....