30 homeless shelters planned across Tamil Nadu

Chennai: The Tamil Nadu government plans to construct as many as 30 additional homeless shelters across the state under the National Urban Livelihood Mission’s 'Shelter for Urban Homeless' component, sources said.

Last month, under pressure from the SC, the Union ministry for housing and urban poverty alleviation had directed the state government to provide a timeline for achieving targets under the NULM and asked the state to furnish the report by the end of August.

In line with this, the municipal administration and water supply department, the nodal agency for execution of NULM schemes, had conducted a high level meeting recently in which the decision to construct more shelters was taken.

However, activists pointed out that the TN government's repeated failure to devise a state specific comprehensive policy for the homeless, which will also include rehabilitation and reintegration components, will defeat the purpose of the scheme executed under NULM.

“It has always been about providing affordable housing instead of adequate housing. A comprehensive legislation and inter-departmental co-ordination is required because it is also necessary to provide the homeless family with entitlements afforded by other citizens,” said Vanessa Peter, policy researcher with the Information and Resource Centre for the Deprived Urban Communities (IRCDUC).

IRCDUC, whose recent survey showed that over 80 percent of the homeless poor in Chennai lived as families on the pavements of Chennai for decades together, suggested that lack of clarity on housing continuum was affecting rehabilitation of urban poor.

“In providing permanent housing, the government is also relocating the urban poor to far off settlements ensuring, in the process, that their livelihoods are affected,” Vanessa added.

The Chennai corporation, compared to other municipal corporations in the state, is faring better in the regard, although with only 28 operational shelters in the city — with five more expected to open soon - the corporation is wide of the mark set by the SC, which had said that there should be one shelter for every 1 lakh population. Chennai is around 45 shelters short of the mark.

However, the corporation has not done a convincing job of enumerating the urban poor in its limits. While it places the homeless number at around the 8,000 mark, a look at the Census 2011 report, puts the figure closer to the 17,000 mark. Though calls for re-enumeration continue to grow loud, the Chennai corporation has remained silent on the issue.

The SC had, earlier this year, pulled up the Centre and in a stinging criticism of its execution of NULM, called it “a big sham” because crores of rupees, released by the Centre to the states in this regard, went unaccounted.

It was in this regard that the Supreme Court, back in 2014, asked the Central government to verify the number of homeless in a time-bound manner, after expressing its reservation against the figures supplied to the Centre by the states.

The SC had, earlier this year, pulled up the Centre and in a stinging criticism of its execution of NULM, called it 'a big sham' because crores of rupees, released by the Centre to the states in this regard, went unaccounted.