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Technical assistance challenges in self-construction

The self-construction opportunity: A bottom-up answer to low-income housing — Part II

This is a two-part blog on the self-construction housing opportunity in India's informal settlements. Part II highlights innovations needed to address issues of safety and quality in self-constructed housing, guidelines circulated by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), and what we can do to make innovations and information more accessible to communities. Part I highlighted the urgency to acknowledge and facilitate the self-construction market and shared experiences from the mHS pilot. Read more.

Implications of the new national measures on housing in Mumbai

Despite the Ministry of Housing revising the categories of urban poor (EWS) and low income (LIG) groups with annual incomes up to Rs 100,000 (USD 1800) and Rs 200,000 (USD 3600) per year respectively, the new estimates will still leave out 60% of Mumbai’s population from accessing the national government affordable housing programs. That is a hard measure to accept when the reality in Mumbai is that 2 in 3 people (or about 60%) live in substandard housing or lack security of tenure in current housing arrangements. Read more.

Self-construction: a bottom-up answer to low income housing

From such megacities as Delhi and Mumbai to smaller cities such as Jaipur, Ahmedabad, and Dehradun, self-construction is visible throughout India, a country where over 60 percent of the urban poor live in settlements where units have been self-constructed. Contrary to popular belief, these settlements are not all "slums" as seen near railway stations or large drains, but a range of neighborhoods including urban villages, unauthorized and planned colonies that vary both in terms of their legal status (right to sell, build, mortgage) and access to urban infrastructure and services. In the absence of scalable private and government housing initiatives, these low-income neighborhoods are the largest source of affordable housing for the country's poor. Read and discuss.

Designing for livelihoods in government slum-rehabilitation projects: Sundernagari, Delhi

A key principle of the central government's "Slum Free India" policy is to redevelop slums in situ (upgrading their current situation rather than dislocating slum dwellers) and offering them basic tenure security. Still in its pilot phase, the policy, Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY), emphasizes a process for community engagement and has laid down detailed guidelines for the interaction process. Mahila Housing SEWA Trust (MHT) was one of four NGOs tasked by the local municipality in Delhi to work on the pilot to be sponsored by the Ministry of Housing. MHT was to engage the community and propose an alternative design for redevelopment in an eastern Delhi neighborhood of Sundernagari; mHS engaged on data analysis, community facilitations, and architectural and urban design for the site. The results have the potential to influence redevelopment in the capital city as well as other major urban centers such as Mumbai. Learn more.

Taking an interdisciplinary perspective: shelter for Mumbai's working homeless

Roughly one percent of the urban population in India is believed to be homeless, amounting to an estimated 3 million people sleeping under flyovers, in parks, and on pathways. Although the Supreme Court of India issued a directive in February 2010 for a fundamental right to shelter, the response of the state governments has been nothing short of embarrassing. To address this issue, micro Home Solutions (mHS) brought its interdisciplinary expertise in architecture, community engagement, and program design to homeless shelters in India — designing and building two prototypes of temporary shelters, each with a capacity of up to 80 people, at the embankment of the Yamuna River, opposite the Inter-State Bus Terminal (ISBT) in Delhi. Their aim: to influence local government models on the design and operations of homeless shelters. Learn more.

Housing the poor: Mumbai's underground rental market

About 80 percent of low-income rental units in India exist in the informal market. These affordable units house Mumbai's working poor and are rented out by makeshift landlords, who are often poor themselves but who capitalize on any extra space they have at home. For migrant laborers, renting makes sense. Many migrants are short-term residents, earning enough during short spurts of work to then return to their home villages. While in the city, their circumstances are precarious, and work opportunities come and go quickly. Renting, as opposed to home ownership — which has dominated the government's policy focus for the urban poor — allows for flexibility and a fluidity that matches the migrants' life and experiences in the city. Chetan, for example, does not pay rent when he returns to his family in his home village for months at a time. While there is certainly a place for home ownership for the urban poor — some of whom have been the fabric of this city for generations — a mixed housing stock is essential for meeting their varying shelter needs. Learn more.