THE 2020 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress that was tabled by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development recently throws light on the alarming rise in homelessness in advanced capitalist countries. According to the report, there was a 7 per cent increase in the number of homeless people staying outdoors and a 13 per cent increase in the number of unsheltered families in the US during the previous year. It estimates that the homeless population in California alone was 161,548 as of January 2020. The annual homeless count, which is conducted during the last 10 days of January each year, was cancelled this year because of the Covid19 pandemic; however, the number is expected to have increased substantially. There was a 32 per cent increase in deaths on the streets during the same period.

Meanwhile, the central government scheme to provide housing for the homeless in India is in the news for all the wrong reasons. A front page ad for the scheme carried the photo of a woman with the claim that she was one among 24 lakh beneficiaries of the scheme. However, journalists who tracked down the woman, whose name is Lakshmi, found that she lived in a one room rented apartment without a toilet, along with her sons, their wives and children. Earning a meagre Rs 500 a month, she spends the whole amount on rent.

Kerala, on the other hand, is making immense progress in providing housing for the poor. The LIFE Mission was started by the ruling LDF government for the same. Apart from the completion of incomplete houses, the mission addresses restoration of existing dilapidated houses, financial support for constructing houses for those who own land and rehabilitation of landless-homeless people into apartment complexes. Each apartment complex has common facilities like lift, washing area, compost plant, health sub-centre, Kudumbashree counselling centre, youth club, gender club, and crèche. The beneficiaries also get access to various livelihood training programmes, loans and palliative care; ensuring that the scheme provides not just housing, but also a complete rise in standard of living.

Even as similar government-run schemes all over the country came to a standstill during the lockdown period, the Kerala government was able to ensure that work continued after an initial disruption. Around 60,000 houses were completed between March 2020 and January 2021, bringing the total number of houses completed to 273,632. The LDF manifesto promises construction of a further 500,000 houses in the next five years, with the aim of providing houses for all landless-homeless people. Landless-homeless people who wish to buy land and build their own house will now be eligible for government support of up to Rs 10 lakhs to do the same.

Going further, the LDF has also promised to enact a law that makes housing a right, under which eviction will not be possible without alternate arrangements for housing being made available. The LDF government had already started residential projects in different parts of the state to provide rental accommodation that is safe, hygienic and economical to migrant labourers; the first of which in Palakkad is already functioning. In the true spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, LDF is taking steps in Kerala to ensure that the right to adequate housing is more than having a roof over one’s head; it is the right to live in safety and dignity in a decent home.