Shelters far away, cramped: Little space for Delhi’s homeless displaced by demolition drives

DUSIB member Bipin Rai said, “People were moved from the streets with the help of NGOs and our rescue teams to shelters, depending on availability. The special drive shelters were selected because they are new buildings; they also have a higher vacancy.”

However, staff at these homes said occupancy has been low.

Employees of Sadik Masih Medical Social Servant Society, which manages a shelter in Dwarka Phase III, said daily-wage workers had shown up after eight shelters in Yamuna Pushta area were demolished in March — half of whom left after a few days.

Raja, a worker at the Dwarka shelter home, said, “People leave after a few days of being in shelters — either because the environment doesn’t suit them or their employment is elsewhere.”

Abhimanyu (62), a labourer who had been living at the now-razed night shelter on Yamuna Pushta for over five years, said, “The demolition notice came two hours before it started. All our belongings, documents are under the rubble now… There’s no way to say who went where. Some went to other shelters, others left for their hometowns… Most of them are still in the area as their means of livelihood is here.”

Space crunch

At other shelters, meanwhile, staff say they can only hold a fraction of the capacity claimed by DUSIB on its website. This is partially due to a push to put beds in place of the earlier mattress system, which has caused a dip in floor space and capacity.

Rai states that the capacity number — 16,964 — currently on the DUSIB website is old and has not been updated: “Not all shelters have beds. We are assessing the capacity of each shelter and how many beds are required. Beds will be allocated to shelters soon.”

At the Motia Khan shelter home, which has the capacity to house 540 residents, employees of Safe Approach, the NGO running the shelter, said the actual number is 30 due to five floors of the structure being dedicated to families from a rehabilitation project in 2010.

A shelter near Police Bhawan on Asaf Ali Road is also filled beyond capacity. Caretaker Vicky Singh said they house more people by placing mats in common areas. “Even after this, we have to turn anywhere from 200-300 people away every night,” he added.

The shelter has 50 beds and an estimated capacity of 290. Employees said with adjustments, they can house 240 people.

Staff said this impacts the quality of facilities available to inhabitants. “There is a major shortage in the shelter — I would assume at least 10,000 people live on the streets around Old Delhi. They can’t leave as they’re able to make a livelihood here at least,” Singh said.

There is also a dearth of shelters for families. According to the DUSIB website, there are six shelters for families, with a total capacity of 504.

Rekha Rajput (43), a resident of Moolchand Basti, Bela Estate, where consecutive demolitions have been happening since 2015, said families are also hesitant to move to shelters because of the loss of community. Residents here have been protesting, demanding compensation and rehabilitation, for the past 14 months.

“We have lived here since 1913. This is where we were born, where we grew up, where our employment is. How can we drop all of this and go to a shelter where there is no permanence?” she said.

Experts feel the state must make more permanent arrangements for the homeless. Dunu Roy, political ecologist and director of Hazards Centre, who has worked on urban labour, livelihood, and shelter for almost three decades, said, “Encroachers are not encroachers out of reason. They reside on so-called public land because of the state’s failure to provide adequate housing.”

DUSIB, however, said it has got no help from the Centre to rehabilitate people. “The Board is willing to take responsibility for all the homeless, even those affected by demolitions, but nobody from the union government has reached out to us yet,” Rai said.

Roy argues that DUSIB is not the competent authority for rehabilitation: “It wasn’t developed for housing people – it only had the responsibility of providing shelter for the night. The long-term solution is for land-owning agencies such as the DDA to provide land.”