Urban homelessness needs compatible public interventions

The month of October is being observed as the United Nations Sustainable Cities to prompt the member nations to initiate sustainable and effective measures for the human settlement issues. It encompasses safe housing and decent access to all the housing amenities like safe and potable drinking water, affordable energy for lighting, household sanitation, tide environs and proper drainage facility.

From this perspective, urban India clearly portrays greater disappointment. The housing poverty exists quantitatively and qualitatively almost with equi-incidence. But the public intervention to erase the quantitative form of poverty over the years has been grossly inadequate, whereas the qualitative dimensions have not even given the due weightage. This apart, the housing amenities’ deprivations persists voluminously due to the marginal improvement.

Therefore, India’s responsive performance to the UNs call is rather disappointing and far from satisfaction, as the housing poverty is experienced by 46 lakh families in urban India. Of this, 22.45 lakh facing the poverty absolutely and the remaining 23.48 lakh families facing the poverty relatively. If the homeless people have resort to housing adjustment with relatives and friends, the others dwell in deficient/collapsible houses without escape.

These families face housing threats round the year either due to abnormal conditions or from incessant rain. The families would not have attended major repairs of their homes from time to time owing to their poor status and look up only for public intervention whereas the newly formed families separating from joint families resort to housing adjustments, uncaring the implications. Besides contributing to overcrowding, exerting pressure on the housing amenities like water, sanitation and others have been the other stresses of the adjustments.

With these housing realities across the length and breadth of the country, the urban homelessness is in the order of 6 per cent of the total families although the incidence is almost double or more than the average in many states. The ground realities are worrisome in 14 major states where the incidence more than the national average. Bihar with higher incidence registered the housing threat due to deficient dwelling over the crowded dwelling.

The situation is similar in Punjab, West Bengal, Odisha and north-eastern states - Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Tripura. The scenario is exactly opposite in Uttar Pradesh, which has occupied the second position and the incidence persists due to overcrowding. Implicitly, the number of new family formation is large in the case of UP, Sikkim, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. From these two perspectives, the major states account for 26.34 lakh families or 57 per cent of the total homeless people.

The remaining 24 states have registered the problem at 19.59 lakh families or 43 per cent. Notwithstanding the typical difference, the average requirement of new housing for each state is in the order of 1.88 lakh units for the first category of states and 1.39 lakh units in the case of the others.

Union Territories being small in their geography, demography and directly under the Central administration, are not free from the housing poverty. The total homelessness of all UTs is 2.43 lakh units or 5.29 per cent of the national incidence. But barring Delhi, all the other UTs have been together facing the incidence at 0.20 lakh units, not because of the resource crunch but due to scattered and sparse distribution of the families. Delhi on the other hand being the national capital account to a largest homelessness among the UTs at 2.23 lakh units (92 per cent).

The scale and volume being no less than any independent state, the homeless families (1.33 lakh) of Delhi preferred and resort to housing adjustment largely owing to spiralling housing cost and the others (0.90 lakh) deprived preferred to live facing the housing threats of all measures. It only speaks of the ugly dwelling scenario of the poor in the national capital and ineffective housing governance.

Housing is a concurrent subject with national and state governments equally share responsibilities to wipe out homelessness. The Centre, besides promulgating the policy, shall share housing expenditure of the states. Similarly, state governments are expected to effectively administer the housing development reflecting on the regional needs. But in reality, the housing administration and the governance have suffered largely due to political differences.

That apart, housing poverty has been misconstrued that all the homeless families need same intervention but in reality, single development approach cannot offer solution to the diverse housing poverty. Some need new housing units altogether and the others need improvement of the existing dilapidated houses. This invariably calls for a combination of the development interventions with complementary roles of the public sector to meet the housing needs of the unaffordable sections and the market for affordable sections.

It is indeed necessary to evolve a two-pronged strategy to erase housing poverty or homelessness. Unlike hitherto, redevelopment of the dilapidated housing stock needs priority, given its benefit and merit associated like retention of social life and cost effectiveness. Politically, redevelopment and in-situ improvement are the proven sustainable strategy.

Equally important is the new housing units to meet the growing number of new families by augmenting government efforts to develop new settlements with amenities like safe water, drainage, clean environment, solid waste management etc. The urban development authorities must also give up their indolent attitude to ensure these amenities in the already developed layouts.

Lastly, housing the floating population or families on temporary in urban areas is also a need of the hour, given the expanding employment opportunities and migration. Municipal administration can no longer be blind to this segment of the housing, to put an end to pavement dwelling practices. The aspirations of the new Urban Housing and Habitat Policy – 2007 could be realised only by changing the present functioning style of the municipal and other urban development institutions.

(The writer is Research Professor at the Institute of Finance and International Management, Bengaluru)