Experiences leading the "National Resource Team for the Urban Homeless"

Dear Friends;

This is Shashank Shukla and I am tasked with a wnderful opportunity to work on a Supreme Court of India mandated National Resource Team for the Urban Homeless which will act as a laboratory to test shelters as a hub of entitlements enabling the residents to climb out of destitution. The work will seek to implement the vision outlined in the National Policy for the Homeless (attached) and will help define its guidelines when it is taken up for pan India implementation by the Ministry for Housing and Urban Poverty.

The Need and the Vision

The population growth of India’s cities – which, in 2009, contributed over 55% to the country’s 8% GDP - currently, outpaces that of the entire population.  Yet, while India’s economic growth is closely linked to the productivity of its teeming city dwellers, such growth has not been inclusive: the decline of urban poverty has not accelerated with GDP growth (UNDP) and today more than 80 million poor people live in India’s cities, over 61.8 million in slums (NSSO, TCPO).  Many of these people comprise India’s increasing shares of informal workers, which today account for more than three-fourths of the total workforce, up from one-third of the total workforce in 1976-77 (UNDP).  While these women and men contribute to almost 60% of their cities’ economies (ToI, Mehta), and India’s growth as a whole, many struggle merely to survive. The plight of the urban poor – characterized by little social protection and abysmal living conditions – has often been the result of state failure to respect and uphold their constitutional rights to life in the face of sweeping economic changes post-liberalization.

In fact, economic gains have not only failed to result in any acceptable measure of equity for the urban poor but have sadly, at times, been predicated on the outright violation and denial of their human rights through forced evictions, demolitions, the neglect of in-situ redevelopment of slums, and a general decline in the provision of social housing.  The most visible manifestation of the problems wrought by rapid urbanization, state negligence, and non-inclusive economic growth is the lack of affordable housing for the urban poor.  According to the National Urban Housing and Habitat Policy (NUHHP, 2007) 99% of the housing shortage at the 10^th plan pertains to the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) and Low Income Groups (LIG) sectors. This problem is coupled with the lack of services and resources provided for the homeless.  Delhi, for example, has a homeless population of over 100,000 people but with only 14 night shelters in the city that house a maximum 2,937 people, 97% of the homeless have nowhere to go (Supreme court commissioners survey-May 2011)

The Supreme Court of India has repeatedly upheld the right to shelter and basic services as a fundamental human right of all citizens. It observed in the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation vs Nawab Khan Gulab And Others case (1996)“ (The) right to residence is one of the minimal human rights as fundamental right. Due to want of facilities and opportunities, the right to residence an settlement is an illusion to the rural and urban poor. Articles 38, 39, and 46 mandate the state, as its economic policy, to provide socio-economic justice to minimise inequalities in income and in opportunities and status. It positively charges the state to distribute its largess to the weaker sections of the society envisaged in Article 46 to make socio-economic justice as reality, meaningful and fruitful so as to make life worth living with dignity of person and a equality of status and to constantly improve excellence”. This right extends not just to shelter, but also clean water, sanitation, child care, education and health services. The Supreme Court observed in Chameli Singh vs State of UP (1995), while dealing with Article 21 “Shelter for a human being, is not a mere protection of his life and limb, it is home where he has opportunities to grow physically, mentally, intellectually and spiritually. Right to Shelter, therefore, includes adequate living space safe and decent structure, clean and decent surroundings, sufficient light, pure air and water, electricity, sanitation and other civic amenities like roads etc so as to have easy access to his daily avocation. The right to shelter, therefore, does not mean a mere right to roof over one’s head but right to all the infrastructure necessary to enable them and develop as a human being. The Right to Shelter, when used as an essential requisite to the right to live, should be deemed to have been guaranteed as a fundamental right. As is enjoined in the Directive Principles, the State should be deemed to be under an obligation to secure it for its citizens, of course subject to its economic budgeting. …..”

    Solving acute problems such as the urban poor’s access to housing, water & sanitation, and social pensions have to be viewed in the broader context of tackling the growing problem of urban poverty in a rapidly changing India.  Particularly, providing opportunities for housing and other basic services to the urban poor may be seen as a necessary step the state must take to uphold simultaneous duties of managing inclusive economic growth and protecting constitutionally guaranteed human rights (which, in the case of many urban poor, have often been violated in the very name of “economic development”).  Going forward, India will face inevitable challenges that will make achieving these twin goals even more difficult. 

    

     The mandate of the Nation Resource Team for the Homeless 

    Keeping this context in mind the “National Program for the Homeless” has been formulated and the National Resource Team for the homeless has been set up to do micro work in 8 cities of India with state governments and Urban local bodies to showcase the various components of the work as well as replicability of the model.  The key components of the work includes:

1. Establishing shelters providing dignity and unconditional acceptance to the residents and acting as a space for both physical and mental healing
2. Shelter based entitlements like identity, financial inclusion, legal aid, pensions, insurance etc.
3. Establishing India’s first street medicine program based on Jim Withers model in the US
4. Establishing a comprehensive drug de-addiction program linked to the livelihood program
5. Shelters as a means of livelihood like resident run community kitchens, rag picking cooperatives, vocational training etc.
6. Forward linkages to government schemes on social housing and ongoing skill development

The vision is that the above mentioned steps will act as the multiple pillars to support the homeless as they try and climb out of destitution.

As I grapple with the myriad issues at the grassroots level and seek to translate the learning as policy inputs, I will like to seek inputs of seniors through blogs and other mediums and look forward to your comments