The disastrous floods of 2017 and 2018 destroyed the homes of many waste pickers in Bengaluru. The affected waste pickers’ approached Hasiru Dala requesting for the provision of loans and help to rebuild their homes. This led to an urgent demand to reconstruct those houses in an affordable way. To address this need Hasiru Dala’s housing vertical “Hasiru Mane Project” was conceived in 2018.
‘Hasiru Mane’ literally means a Green home. The housing vertical works towards supporting the waste pickers to realise their dream of a home in an affordable and sustainable way. Today Hasiru Mane works in the cities of Bengaluru, Mangaluru, Chikkaballapura, Mysuru, Chamarajanagar, Tumakuru, Davanagere, Hubli, Chitradurga and Dharwad.
Our Approach
Hasiru Mane Project undertakes work under five main themes
Access to Public housing
Hasiru Dala believes in the principle that funding for housing and land rights for the underprivileged must come from Central, state or local governments. Affordable housing means the house that can be bought with subsidies from the government. However, the repayment of the loans should not compromise the nutritional intake of the family or adversely affect the education of the children. The Hasiru Mane Project works with the state machinery to facilitate zero interest or low interest funding for construction of homes.
Slum Declaration
The waste pickers’ community mostly live on rent or squat on untenable lands by making them liveable through years of incremental building. Very often, they do not have the ownership of the land or the documents of proof of residence. Sometimes their settlements are not even recognised as slums. Hence, they end up living without basic municipal services. Hasiru Dala believes that the waste pickers’ are entitled to get affordable Public housing provided by the government. The most important step in this regard is to get their settlements declared as slums. For this end, after consultation with the community the necessary applications are filled. Once declared as a slum, the residents would become eligible for Public housing provided by the Karnataka Slum Development Authority and other schemes.
Policy Advocacy
Hasiru Dala was part of a coalition of organisations and academics (led by National Law School) that drafted the new Housing legislation that addresses the many nuances of the access to public housing. The Housing Policy made suggestions regarding zoning for Slum areas and provision of housing for waste pickers. The proposal was accepted by the previous government. Hasiru dala tries to advocate for changes in the Housing policy of the state government of Karnataka to serve the underprivileged groups.
Reducing ecological footprint
Inspired by the Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat’s (KKPKP) (sister organisation in Pune) work, Hasiru Dala utilises second-hand materials to refurbish the houses at lower cost. Left-over construction materials and reusable construction and demolition waste are also collected through donation campaigns organised by Hasiru Dala for such projects. We believe this will make construction of adequate houses for the waste pickers affordable.
Spatial challenges
The homes the waste pickers live in, oftentimes also contribute towards their livelihood. Either they rent out a portion of the house, or use the space to store waste to stock up and sell later at a better price. State-built homes rarely account for such needs. They also don’t take into account the cultural nuances of living in such tight knit communities, making the homes provided for the beneficiaries inadequate to address their needs.
Design Inclusion
Our approach to designing does not just factor in the spatial needs of the house owners but also the way they use their homes.
From how the kitchens are structured to where water is stored and how their hygiene habits play out in design, the notion of private and shared spaces is quite fluid in these tight knit communities. By virtue of their lifestyle the residents have optimised the way they occupy space in ways where even the smallest nook and cranny has been given purpose.
Hasiru Mane tries to translate this knowledge into a design that is both climatologically comfortable and provides a safe and secure environment for the family to thrive and grow.
Climate adaptation
The residents in most inadequate houses in informal and crowded urban settlements like slums and the poor in general are more susceptible to climate change. They also disproportionately experience phenomena like Urban heat islands and other extreme weather incidents like excessive flooding. The Hasiru Mane Project believes it is important to work on climate crisis adaptation and mitigation.
Roofing solutions
The Hasiru Mane Project has collaborated as a resource organisation with cBalance in a step towards reducing the indoor heat stress. The collaboration aims to upgrade or repair the homes of the waste picking community. As part of the Fair conditioning project, cBalance designed a new roofing solution to provide thermal comfort to the households. A passive cooling system that enables us to maintain comfortable indoor temperatures to mitigate indoor heat stress.
The collaboration was an innovative step towards climate change adaptation for households in the informal settlements. This intervention was carried out under the Saamuhika Shakti initiative which works to enable the informal waste pickers of Bengaluru to lead more secure and dignified lives.
Solar lighting
Even today some of the waste picker’s communities live in settlements without basic amenities like electricity, water supply, sanitation or flooring. The Hasiru Mane Project has collaborated with the Selco Foundation to provide solar power to the community. In some of these communities this intervention is a stop-gap arrangement until they can avail electricity supply from the state. Otherwise it is used for the purpose of reducing the ecological footprint of the projects.
Designing Dry Waste Collection Centres
The Hasiru Mane Project also works on the upgradation and reconstruction of the Dry waste collection centres. Through this intervention, we found that there were no clear regulations or design standards in place for the construction and operation of DWCC.
The Hasiru Mane Project is working towards creating a standard model of DWCC. The design would be fully equipped with facilities and shall be fire-safety compliant. Keeping the design cost effective and replicable is one of the main design priorities. The aim is then to finally submit this model of DWCC to the BBMP and make it an officially approved design standard for all the DWCC’s.
Action based research
Harisu Mane does research on various aspects of housing connecting back to the larger policy ecosystem of urban development, affordable housing, public health, building technology and materials, and climate change.
Hasiru Mane makes use of the state’s machinery to get land allotments for waste pickers and then helps acquire zero-interest funding for homes.
Video: Hasiru Dala
Challenges
Our experience of almost ten years has shown that stability of family and access to social security schemes come when people have permanent housing. Hasiru Dala believes in affordable and sustainable housing.
Documentation
The urban poor and the waste pickers often do not have their documents or proof of residence in place. This is a big challenge in getting them recognised as local residents. In such a scenario, the work often begins with helping the residents secure the most important documents necessary for availing any of the social security schemes. Once in place, the process of applications under relevant schemes can begin.
Land ownership
Most public housing schemes have a strict eligibility criteria of land ownership even for upgradation projects. Eg: the Beneficiary led construction/Beneficiary led extension (BLC/BLE) scheme within the PMAY-U, among other schemes. The waste picker communities, like other urban poor, do not own the land they live on. Hence, they do not have land titles. This makes them ineligible to apply for some of these schemes. Historically, the marginalised groups did not have land rights. The Public housing schemes need to be designed to be responsive to these conditions. The Hasiru Mane project believes awarding land rights ought to be part of a good housing scheme to make affordable housing for all possible.
Access to formal finance
The traditional financing systems only operate with the cost considerations of virgin construction materials. The formal finance system does not grant assistance to the kind of projects we work on. Since there exist no standardised market costs for all kinds of materials we use like recycled construction materials or second hand materials. Using second hand materials or recycled C&D waste for non-structural applications in our projects have proven to reduce the overall cost of the project. It is one of the easiest ways to reduce the ecological footprint of the buildings while also keeping it affordable. This is one of the biggest challenges we face in financing and scaling up our projects. So, we have had to depend on low or zero interest loans from other partners and work on a limited number of projects.
Storage facility
Presently we do not have any storage facility in the city to store the sourced second hand materials for undertaking any of our projects of new construction or upgradation. In its absence we usually depend on makeshift storage shelters created near the project site. Since, our construction or design projects are few, the creation of a permanent storage facility would incur additional operation cost to the team.
Problems in accessing Public housing schemes
Getting a public housing project application approved under any government scheme is a time consuming process. After the submission of the documents along with proofs, the follow ups begin.
In some cases if any of the schemes are discontinued like the Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) or the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana – Urban (PMAY-U) whose plan period did end in March 2022. The applications and the follow ups all go in vain. Then we need to wait for the relaunch of the scheme or until a new scheme is launched, for the process to begin again.
Once, in 2018 we received an in-principle approval from the government of Karnataka that it shall build 500 houses for the waste picker community. With the change in the government, no concrete action was taken on it.
In some of the public housing schemes, the financial burden is shared between the state and the centre. In such cases, the application gets approval at the state level but gets rejected at the central level. The entire process had to be restarted with more follow ups under a different scheme then. Considering the fact that there are only a handful of such schemes, we often end up with no more choices left to approach.
We have also had to face setbacks in instances when the submitted applications or documents got misplaced or lost.
Adequacy of public housing units
The EWS and LIG households that experience housing shortage in India very often have large family sizes. They utilise their living space for their livelihoods as a workplace or for storage purposes. The affordable public housing projects do not account for these spatial needs of the people who live in it. The standard size for an affordable housing unit is 30 sq mt and 60 sq mt for EWS households and LIG households respectively. These homes are clearly inadequate to accommodate the standard of living and spatial needs of these families. It is one of the huge roadblocks in making adequate and affordable housing available to the people who need it the most.
