Housing for the poor is all about good neighbourliness.

I read that there are millions of people who are homeless even in the United States. Do I hear some people saying ‘serves them right’ or is there any sympathy for the ‘poor American’. Homeless in the USA used to mean that they don’t have their own little house surrounded by a neat lawn and picket fences and all that. But then I also hear that there are plenty now who only the sky for a roof. That is quite unbelievable.
At the same time my friends and relatives in the US say that all this talk about homeless in the USA is just bullshit and ask me whether I have ever heard of emigrant Indians who live on the streets. Was it because they saved up sufficiently or is it that their needs were low? I would say a bit of both.

In the late sixties and seventies I used to visit ports in the US first as an apprentice and then as an officer on Indian Merchantman. What always fascinated me about even the smallest towns and ports were the neatly painted wooden houses with manicured lawns on every street. They were small but had a picture postcard look about them. Even the longshoremen lived well and drove large automobiles.

In contrast back in India where I grew up in Trivandrum, Delhi and Madras only the houses of the rich and powerful had a wall around it. Others were ramshackle with raggedy yards. Of course the houses we lived in were always large brick structures as my father was an I.A.S. man. He was entitled to houses that had a garage and sometimes an outhouse that contained the servant’s quarters or sometimes just a room for the driver. I don’t ever remember our house being painted or if it was ever done, it was done when I wasn’t around. The reason why I mention painting is because the exteriors of houses in India are never touched up. Windowpanes were never clean and sparkling. Even the well to do folks do not keep their houses clean, so why are we surprised that the poor do not either.

As for housing for the poor, I did not have any really poor friends or if they were poor I had no way of knowing they were poor. In any case no one discriminated in Kerala on the basis of being poor and my cricket playing friends came from all sorts of families. I assumed that they too had houses somewhere. Now when I look around Chennai I realize that we just never though about the poor, period. Housing for the poor was never thought about. Our parents never talked about it and neither did our teachers or religious leaders tell us about it.

City living is now all about living in ‘flats’ with little or no greenery around. The buildings are mostly ten storey blocks with four apartments to a floor fronting a narrow street. When I was growing up I remember drains bordering the street but now the streets are flooded even after the smallest rain and I am talking about housing for the upper middle class, so you can imagine how the poor live? Lately a little attention is being paid to housing for the poor but they always look like cheap tenements.  Is it because the occupants of these small units do not know how to live in them?

In the absence of a sense of neighbourliness you get only quarrelsome families. They should have a sense of community but sadly that is almost impossible in India, given our caste differences. I can only hope that a good religious leader will emerge someday who can teach good neighbourliness among Hindus.

Watch Rana Bubber talk passionately about low cost housing talk about it with me on ‘RUMBLE’ at