Hardlook | Christmas cheer for homeless in Ahmedabad: A new night shelter, the city’s biggest

The shelter home is run by Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation’s (AMC) Urban Community Development Department (UCD) under its scheme of Homeless People in Shelter for Urban Homeless (SUH). Officials at the UCD say they try their best to provide facilities for occupants of such shelters. They may come from different parts of the state and the country and may have different needs.
Challenges galore

With new rain baseras shelters coming up in the city, officials say one of the many challenges is to encourage people to choose night shelters over homelessness.

During the UCD’s daily drives, officials claim they’ve noticed a pattern — 30-40 per cent of people who sleep under the bridges have homes. But they might be living without a roof in a bid to get clothes, money, and free food donated to them. “We have found out during our surveys that many people encroach footpaths and sleep on places like Sabarmati Riverfront, trying to get alms or donations, even when they have houses,” says Akhil Brahmbhatt, Deputy Director, UCD. The civic body has been trying to discourage people from making donations to homeless people.

“With government schemes like the PM Vishwakarma Yojana, we have directed efforts to support these rain baseras. It is hard to secure land in the city, especially for a social cause. So we identified hot spots based on which we are constructing new rain baseras,” says a UCD official.

A total of 30 rain baseras in the city are maintained regularly while seven new shelters are in the works. The existing set of rain baseras can accommodate 40-90 people, as per officials. The new shelters will have a higher occupancy of 500 or above.
A new shelter will be inaugurated in Chandkheda on Monday. At 712, it will have the highest occupancy among all the rain baseras in the city.

Taking care of needs

Citing the guidelines set by the central government, a UCD official highlights that the night shelters are required to have separate spaces for men and women, a geyser and cooler, and a kitchen. Bunk beds are provided with lockers. The staff works in three shifts – a caretaker is always present at the place along with a manager and a security guard.

“People are taken in at the shelter homes every day during our night drives in different zones. Due to the cold weather now, homeless people in urban areas are mostly found staying under the bridge. We meet them, convince them with our facilities to not sleep in the open and pick them up to drop them to the nearest rain basera,” shares a UCD official. A large number of occupants at such shelters in the city are believed to be labourers.

Till 2019, Brahmbhatt shares, a small amount of fee was charged by the occupants. “However, when we filed the report on our earnings from these places, we noticed that they were very small next to negligible… so it was decided to not charge it anymore and keep it free for everyone. Also, that small fee was a deterrent for the homeless people… so it was waived off,” he adds.

The AMC also gives one free vegetarian meal daily to the occupants. That doesn’t fall under the guidelines for the shelters. The contract for that has been given to the NGO Akshaya Patra. UCD officials state that the current occupancy is above 80 per cent, which usually goes down during the festivals of Diwali and Holi.

As per civic officials, they have been trying to make constant improvements. “We also did a separate survey just to understand why people wouldn’t come to the rain baseras. We found one of the reasons was food habits. As we have vegetarian and not very spicy food… they did not seem to like it,” shares an official, adding that a note was made.

Another observation made during the surveys has been that couples didn’t want to come to night shelters because they would have to live separately as men and women have designated spaces. In the new night shelters, provision has been made for couples and families.

At a night shelter near Shivranjani Cross Road in Ahmedabad, inmates prepare food; (right) a staff member takes care of an infant. (Express Photo by Nirmal Harindran)

Documents are not compulsory for the entry of homeless people as everyone doesn’t have papers to show. UCD officials say that they also help homeless people avail facilities at medical camps, get access to government schemes like Aayushman cards, and enrol the children in municipal schools.

Pragneshbhai Vinodbhai Raval, a caretaker at a shelter home in Ghatlodiya, shares, “We help our residents avail necessary documents like Aadhaar card, Ayushyaman card, ration card, and set up bank accounts. We talk to people who are homeless and stay on the streets.

Through drives, we convince them to stay in the government shelter homes. We have convinced three families and brought them here in shelter homes from various areas in the northwest zone. For those who are unable to find work and are jobless, we find different jobs for them. Like we have a senior citizen in our shelter home and he is 66 years old. He said he could drive an auto rickshaw. So we helped him to get a rickshaw and we helped him with documentation.”

The maintenance cost for each of these shelters ranges between Rs 75,000 and 1,12,000 per month, as per people aware of the details, depending on the occupancy, which is borne by the AMC. These maintenance costs do not include electricity and gas charges.

Established in 2016, the shelters were previously under the AMC’s Housing Department under the Slum Networking Project and came under UCD. Finding plots to set up new shelters and “political interference” are among the other challenges faced by the officials.

The Labour Department in Ahmedabad is also constructing Shramik Baseras, which will be inaugurated in 2024 and will be only focusing on labourers staying in Ahmedabad.

Meeting the occupants

While a large number of people in the shelters are said to be labourers, there are people from other walks of life too. S Raja, 28, from Tamil Nadu’s Madurai is pursuing distance education from the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) and a short-term tourism course from the Gujarat University. His parents were farmers in Madurai but due to various challenges, they could not rely on farming as a means of livelihood for too long. “I came to Gujarat to study… the state also has a lot of tourist destinations,” Raja who presently lives in the Vastrapur shelter near the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) tells The Indian Express.

“If I go for any PG in Ahmedabad, I have to pay Rs 6,000 per month and also a deposit which I can’t afford. I would like to thank whoever has set up this place (rain basera) from the bottom of my heart,” he shares.

The shelter home has a capacity of 60 occupants. According to manager Chetan Patel, however, it has an occupancy of 78. Most of them are labourers from different parts of the state who are working in urban parts of Ahmedabad. “The shelter was started five years ago after donations from a corporate firm — the Wagh Bakri group — to us. We have regular drives where we see homeless people and convince them to come join us at the shelter. They are given a free meal per day,” says Brahmbhatt.

The shelter home accommodates people “from states like Rajasthan and Bihar where people often marry early and elope, come to Ahmedabad and live here”, says Dimple Parmar, one of the caretakers .

As per the data accessed by The Indian Express, the estimated average occupancy percentage of sheltered dependents in the city against shelter capacity has gone substantially up in the last five years — from 56 per cent in 2009 to 85 per cent in 2023.

“As of today, we have 85 per cent occupancy in the rain baseras. However, one of the reasons we still see homeless people on the streets is because people donate stuff like blankets, food and more to them which encourages some people to stay on the street and collect these from people who are sympathetic to their conditions,” shares Brahmbhatt. At Shivranjini night shelter, families and children are among the occupants. The shelter also has couple-friendly rooms.

Even though the space has a capacity of 35, the shelter is home to around 60 people. According to the caretaker, most of the families are from Dahod who “eloped” after marrying early. Some of them came in search of work in Ahmedabad. But many of them continue to embrace the old ways of living. Bunker beds may be kept inside. But people find their comfort sitting on the charpoys outside.

They like to cook meals on the wood fired stove even as there is a gas connection at the shelter because “they’re scared of the gas lines and prefer spicy food,” according to Shivranjini shelter caretaker Jaya Parmar. While many of the men leave the shelter in the morning to work on construction sites, women and children stay behind. Volunteers from a nearby NGO come here and teach the children.

At a rain basera in Ghatlodiya, Surekhaben from Jhalod stays with her family. Her family members work at a construction site. Albeit, she is thankful for the shelter, she still does not use the LPG connection facility On choosing traditional cooking method out in the street, she says, “I am cooking ‘Bajra no rotlo’ which is difficult to cook on gas cylinder”. Despite the hardships and challenges, gratitude is a common sentiment among a lot of occupants for having a shelter. Jeevabhai Marwada, who also stays at the Ghatlodiya shelter home, sums up, saying, “This has become a second home for me, offering not just a roof over my head but also a chance to rebuild my life.”

(With inputs from Nidhi Bhadra, an intern with The Indian Express)