AID TO THE URBAN HOMELESS
An integrated tool to cater to the increasing issue of homelessness in India
Rationale:
Cities across North India have functioning night shelters for their homeless. Densely populated urban cities like New Delhi, Allahabad, Varanasi, Lucknow and Agra build ‘porta cabins’ (a 72 sq.m. open hall with wooden panels and a steel truss) across their cities. These shelters become a temporary ‘Makaan’ for them during harsh winters until they find something concrete for themselves.
With urban living conditions and the economy, an influx in such metropolitan cities is fairly evident. Intra-state and Inter-state migrations take place daily. The development draws in a greater number of the working class into the city. These new arrivals make the city their home and stay back. Such night shelters help them stay put during their initial times.
But what happens to cities like Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Pondicherry or Hyderabad, which equally get in influxes, but have no or as low as five to six functioning night shelters/ porta cabins for their homeless? To add to it, with unforeseen situations like the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, this class becomes the worst affected. Where do the homeless or the migrants go? How do they make spaces for themselves? Do they go back to their villages every time a situation like this arises? Do makeshift tents on pavements and tarpaulin sheets become a permanent solution for them? What happens to their need for basic services like ration, healthcare and sanitation?
Uncontrolled migration and homelessness later multiply into overcrowding, poor sanitation, squatter settlements, poverty, environmental pollutions, unemployment, shortage of safe water supply and urban crimes. These are nothing but increasing problems and issues in urbanization in India. By 2030, more than 50% of India’s population is expected to live in urban areas.
Such problems occur because of a major infrastructure problem by the state towards them. No proper welfare policies are in place. If cities like New Delhi and Lucknow can do it successfully, why can’t cities like Mumbai or Bengaluru act accordingly?
Objective:
To end temporary/ permanent homelessness, a community-wide coordinated approach along with a government policy action would be needed to deliver services, housing and programs. As per the National Urban Livelihood Mission (NULM), for every one lakh population in any city, there should be one-night shelter housing 50–60 people. According to that norm, Mumbai, for instance, should have 207 shelters. However, only seven functioning night shelters are operating at the moment (6 for children, 1 for women, 0 for men).
Our economic system is painfully exclusive and unfair. At one end, we see high-end residences towering cities, and on the other, we see children and families sleeping on cardboard on the streets. The growing issue of homelessness in India needs to be undertaken on a war footing, and any talk of our country being a developed nation before giving every citizen a safe home is a sham. The shelter is both a fundamental right and a privilege that each Indian should have.
On ground reality at present:
Although delivering housing is a permanent solution, it is a long-term process. A quick solution is required for them during unforeseen conditions. It becomes difficult to advertise technology and mobile applications to the already displaced, to the migrants who maybe do not own smartphones with internet services. What becomes easier for them is a connected experience. A human touch or primary human help only brings in a quicker solution. People experiencing temporary or permanent homelessness often need to seek support and services across multiple agencies. But they do not know where to go, where to find such agencies.
On the contrary, people with a socio-economic background who are willing to help, do not entirely know how to help. Because of the lack of trusted and unified resources, finding services is an unreliable and surprisingly manual process. The result is often wasted time and dead-end searches that lead to missed opportunities for housing or services.
Providing with funds can get only so much, but a wholesome experience can get in more. The current system is an unconnected, conflicting network that doesn’t work cohesively among both parties. Records should be easily shared across networks, counties, and providers.
For illustration, let us take the example of the city of Mumbai. Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has a tie-up with a few NGO’s in the city to work for the homeless. BMC has yet not directly set up shelters, nor provided any monetary help to these NGO’s, except for some tax benefits. Because of limited funds with these nonprofits, they are not in a position to provide maximum resources for the homeless in the city. They cannot help everyone, do not own enough land or property, and their overall objective and aim remain limited. Very few provide shelter. The others run educational and/or training activities for their children. No form of advertisement is made in the city for people to unite and help those in need. Hence, a lot of informal tarpaulin shelters are seen all across the city.
But what BMC does have are ready open lands allotted to them by the Bombay High Court. They are demarcated for homeless shelter building in the 2034 Development Plan. Plots ranging from 3000 to 7000 sq.m. are available and most plots are chosen next to:
1. Public Transport (mainly local railway stations), and to a major railway station, which brings connectivity to the city from other parts of the country.
2. A mixed-used area, with an equal number of residential and commercial buildings, with existing possible livelihood or employment options.
3. Government/ public healthcare, markets and different amenities, readily available around the site, so that less transit is done by the homeless.
At present, what BMC does, in an attempt to provide immediate relief to the homeless during calamities, is mark 120 municipal schools as emergency shelters in the city during monsoons. This scheme does not work during conditions like COVID-19, where there’s a complete lockdown.
All this while their open lands are just huge piles of garbage dumps. Because no one knows what could be done of them. The non-profits cannot decide for these government-owned lands. Imagine what kind of wonders could such open lands do, apart from providing housing. Imagine what every city without shelters could do with their available allotted.
Intervention Idea:
To strengthen state and national level interventions in the area of homelessness, an integrated tool facilitating monitoring and modelling decision making related to shelter building and services for the homeless needs to be introduced. A tool that can then be implemented on all available allotted open lands in the cities. There is a lack of coordination and support by the officials/ government bodies to the NGOs’ working towards the issue. This issue would not have accelerated in cities like Mumbai, Hyderabad or Bengaluru if a government-approved integrated tool was enforced. Therefore, a single unified tool that benefits everybody involved should be designed and introduced right from the top. It would be beneficial in monitoring the homeless situation in each city and identify the shortfalls. This tool can help inter-connect regions to one another: Neighbourhood > City > Districts > State > Region > Country.
One single platform with two dashboards- one for the government/ shelter board of the city, and the other for the NGOs working in the niche. All ultimately profiting the homeless- with services and housing. For the government, urban local bodies and shelter boards of all cities, the tool provides missing data and records and offers suggestions with constraints. For NGOs’, the tool addresses the welfare policies put forth by the shelter board, land use and land cover plans, development plans, advertisements and the current scenario of the issue.
Benefits for the Government:
1. A template that helps in making environmentally sensitive design strategies for shelters and housing.
2. Mapping and monitoring data and records for individuals. This helps in framing the right welfare policies for the right user groups.
3. To provide individual city shelter boards and local bodies a head start in possible new migration influxes in their city.
4. To provide updated land use and land cover maps of all cities on a single platform. This helps cities learn from each other’s processes.
5. Shelter boards can also put-up administration offices, public toilets and job fairs under this scheme to also cater to issues like poor sanitation, poverty, environmental concerns, unemployment, and urban crimes.
6. It can hence become a nationalized one-stop-shop solution for all building needs, training modules, government policies and guidelines, orders and reports, case studies, etc.
Benefits for the NGO’s:
1. At present, because the NGOs’ are the frontrunners with providing shelter and services in most Indian cities, they can have collective information of all government-approved data and records of individuals without shelter.
2. They can know the status of the allocated lands, and the status of housing/ shelter construction by the government.
3. They are aware of welfare policies put forth by the shelter board, land use and land cover plans, development plans, advertisements and the current scenario of the issue.
4. They can identify potential influxes and locations of maximum congestions in their neighbourhoods.
5. They can also make citizens aware and involve them in the delivery of services.
This tool can be developed as a free cloud-based ETL solution. Different organizations can extract, transform and load data from multiple systems into a single database. This tool indirectly helps the migrants and the homeless who do not have access to smartphones and internet services. They know who to go to, where to find agencies. When privileged resident of the city sees that the government is doing its best in their power, they are bound to come forward and help. Such a tool can also be used by residents of the squatter settlements during calamities, floods, electricity cut-outs and pandemics. The allocated lands then become spaces for intervention. These lands can be designed to act as a temporary relief which helps the permanent solution of housing. These lands act as an emergency shelter for the services for the people until permanent housing is provided to them.
Reflections and Potential for Replication:
The current approach followed by the shelter boards needs to be scaled up. It is important to use new and updated reforms and technology for better outcomes. The integrated tool becomes a realistic approach for the issue because it addresses a solution that can be incorporated right from the source. Various solutions are possible with the practice of the tool:
1. Because of the time constraints and increasing pressure of delivering housing, this tool can start helping NGOs and citizens in providing services and temporary relief to the homeless.
2. A design strategy can also be implemented via the tool in which a system of pre-fabricated housing units could be developed, where the design of the units is already pre-fixed, and they are just assembled on the site as soon as possible (for the fast delivery of permanent housing).
3. This design also has the potential for replication on different sites/ different cities. Such pre-fabricated units are also easily detachable and can be transported to sites where influx is more.
4. The tool can also encourage peer-to-peer learning through formal and informal workshops, meetings, visits, knowledge exchange seminars and engagement with the private sector.
Communities of the different classes have strong ties with the city and are involved in providing essential services to the city. No one should face any kind of problems in finding a safe and suitable home, access to private and public services and access to vital necessities. The tool helps surface information, guidelines and policies- it doesn’t make the decisions. It does not replace a skilled employee or a social worker, rather it provides valuable insights into what is working or could work, and gives an in-depth analysis of homeless services in our country.
