The overlooked housing crisis of migrant workers

Migrant worker communities in cities occupy precarious residences, ranging from informal rentals, employer-provided rooms or squatting on vacant lands. Can cities be reimagined to provide them dignified housing?

Renu Desai

Rooms in temporary labour colonies for construction workers lack adequate sanitation forcing workers to build semi-open bathing enclosures (as seen in the left) where possible. Picture credit: Renu Desai

India’s economy is sustained by a vast, informal migrant workforce that circulates between villages and expanding urban and industrial clusters. This migrant workforce contributes to 10% of India’s GDP, working in the construction sector, manufacturing industries, domestic work, the hospitality sector, and street vending. Their numbers range between a 2018 estimate of 63 million ‘vulnerable circular migrant workers’ in urban areas, to a 2020 estimate of 250 million circular migrant workers, not including those who migrate for agricultural work. The Covid-19 lockdown made visible this vast mobile workforce and their precarity. Since then, the migrant workers have returned to cities. Where do they stay? How does the state view migrants and their basic needs? How can the city be reimagined to ensure that migrants have dignified housing? 

Reimagining the city for a mobile, informal workforce

Scholars like Gautam Bhan have argued that the ‘housing question’ must be framed around the pillars of affordability, adequacy, security, and what he terms viability — referring to the proximity of housing to livelihoods, and connections to transport and mobility. There is also the factor of ‘sociality’ given the critical role of housing in generating a sense of community and belongingness. Of these, affordability and viability are primary considerations in favour of which migrants usually compromise on housing adequacy and security.

Migrant worker communities in cities occupy precarious residences, which range from informal rental housing, employer-provided arrangements or squatting on vacant lands. Their housing precarity is the result of two biases in urban planning and housing policy. One, is sedentary bias, which makes access to public goods and services contingent on being a permanent resident of the city with its attendant documentary proof of this status. It further assumes that households have the ability and willingness to invest their earnings in the city, thus focusing housing policy solely on home ownership. This excludes circular migrant workers whose residential documentation is of their village and who face the pressure of sending remittances to their village households. 

Second, is a deep bias against practices of ‘informality’. The growth of informal housing is often a result of the failure of the state to address the housing needs of urban poor communities. In addition, the state also views this informality through a lens of ‘illegality,’ resulting in its grudging, partial and fragile extension of housing security, basic services and social amenities to informal settlements. 

To reimagine the city to ensure dignified housing for migrants would mean recognising their mobility and multilocality, wherein migrants inhabit and develop relationships with at least two places—the village and the city. Such a recognition would expand the policy agenda to create formal rental housing and address the existing informal rental housing sector as well as employer-provided housing, so as to meet diverse housing needs amongst migrants. Similarly, acknowledging the role of informal housing in achieving inclusive cities will move policies towards supporting comprehensive and sustained improvements to such housing. 

Policy scaffolding 

As per the 76th round of the National Sample Survey (NSS) conducted in 2018, 33% of urban households live in rental housing, with the majority found across informal bastis (slums) and other kinds of informal developments. While such informal rentals are relatively affordable, the state’s lack of recognition, regulation and support for this sector leads to inadequate basic services, uncertain tenure security and exploitative conditions

Rows of rental rooms in an informal colony in Ahmedabad. The more affordable rooms are poor quality living spaces, without individual water connections and with poorly maintained, shared sanitation facilities.

Picture credit: Renu Desai

In response to the migrant crisis during Covid-19, India launched its first national urban rental housing programme, the Affordable Rental Housing Complexes (ARHC), in 2020.

However, government data shows that as of April 2025, less than 42,000 rental units had materialised under both ARHC’s modes of delivery — converting existing vacant public housing units into rentals through public-private partnership and construction of new rental units by public or private entities on their vacant lands. 

Meanwhile, the national urban rental housing policy (NURHP) is not just stuck in draft form since 2015, but the government has also made no effort to engage with the concerns expressed around the policy, including its lack of clarity around the role of different levels of government (Union Government, State Governments and city governments) in promoting rental housing. There are also concerns raised by researchers around the exclusion of informal renters in the 2021 Model Tenancy Act. 

In 2024, a Niti Aayog  report titled ‘SAFE Accommodation – Worker Housing for Manufacturing Growth’ suggested creating site adjacent factory employee (SAFE) accommodation for single men and women workers near their industrial workplaces, which could be rented by employers or workers themselves.

Earlier in the year, the Union Budget 2024-25 had announced rental housing with dormitory-type accommodation for industrial workers through public-private partnership (PPP) with industries. In this year’s budget, 2,500 crore rupees was committed towards this, a welcome initiative to boost employer-provided housing.

But these initiatives do not address the diversity of migrant workers — from their sector of work, occupation, skill and terms of employment to gender and household type (single males, single females, families), to the size and kinds of worksites and employers.

It will thus have little impact in improving most employer-provided living arrangements within or near industrial and construction worksites which are poorly regulated either because the existing labour laws have inadequate provisions and standards or are weakly enforced.

Our instruments for planning and regulating urban development—such as master plans, town planning schemes, development regulations and building bylaws—also continue to neglect the housing made by employers for workers within or near worksites. 

In the manufacturing sector, inadequate facilities are widespread, whether migrant workers live on the shop floor, in rooms attached to worksite premises, or in hostels located farther away. A 2024 study of live-in factories in Ahmedabad’s textile industry revealed that these arrangements increase the exposure of workers to hazards and bodily injuries and severely compromise their ability to mend and nurture their bodies every day.

Squatter settlements of seasonal migrant construction workers in Ahmedabad are denied basic services like water, sanitation and electricity. Picture credit: Renu Desai

Worksite living is a matter of concern for another reason. The rationale for workers to enter these arrangements includes convenience in an unfamiliar context. It also means lower housing expenses in the city which would maximise remittances to the village home. However, these ‘workplace-residence regimes’  may also allow employers to maximise labour extraction and extend labour control to workers’ living spaces, thus controlling social reproduction and undermining these spaces as potential sites of social mobilisation.

Policies and programmes to address tenure security and basic services for informal bastis created through squatting on vacant lands are also selectively inclusive in design or implementation. Permanent and semi-permanent migrants are often able to incrementally develop their bastis over time through their participation in the urban political process as voters, which brings pressure on the state to officially recognise their slums and extend basic services through various slum schemes. In contrast, the bastis created by circular migrant workers often remain 'unrecognised slums' and are denied security and basic services as absence of voting rights in the city weakens their attempt to access these slum schemes.

Experiments in dignified housing

In October 2023, the non-profit ShelterSquare Foundation started the Republic Hostel and Mess (RHM) in Sayan, an industrial suburb of Surat, a major textile hub that came into prominence on the back of an informal workforce after the Mumbai and Ahmedabad textile mills shut down in the 1970s-90s. 

RHM was started in partnership with non-profit Aajeevika Bureau that works on labour issues and Pravasi Shramik Suraksha Manch (PSSM), a union of powerloom workers in Surat. ShelterSquare’s goal is to promote equitable and dignified housing for workers engaged in the informal and unorganised sectors.

ShelterSquare envisions four housing verticals to address different types of housing requirements: rental housing, worksite housing, improvement of existing informal housing of worker communities and rent-to-own housing. At RHM, ShelterSquare is evolving a model of social rental housing for migrant workers, which combines technical, financial and social aspects of housing management. 

The hostel is set up in an existing building retrofitted for the purpose. It is designed to provide good-quality accommodation and food to 162 single male migrants working in the powerloom industry. It consists of three dormitory halls, each with 27 bunk beds and individual storage lockers, well-ventilated sanitation blocks, and a dining hall that doubles up as a TV room and space for communal activities. Other amenities include filtered cold drinking water, fire safety and security measures. Two facility managers oversee the hostel’s daily operations.

The monthly rent for accommodation and two daily meals is 3,600 rupees, with workers paying only for the number of days of stay (approximately 120 rupees per day).

Mess halls in Surat, which house 60-100 workers sharing the space across two shifts, have little natural light or ventilation, poor facilities for water and sanitation, and cooking and food storage in the same space.

Picture credit: Swastik Harish

The hostel is a sharp contrast to the living conditions in existing housing options. The worst living conditions are in the ‘mess rooms’, which are large 500-800 sq. ft. halls providing accommodation and two meals a day for 2800-3600 rupees per month. The rent is affordable but the halls are densely packed with 60-100 workers across two shifts, with little natural light or ventilation, poor facilities for water and sanitation, and cooking and food storage in the same space.

The other option is worksite housing. These are rent-free shared rooms built on the rooftop of powerloom units with dismal basic services. The vibration and deafening noise of the powerloom units permeates into the rooms, giving workers no respite even after their 12-hour work shift.

Rental rooms are a major option for families and groups of single male migrants. Basic facilities like sanitation are inadequate, made worse by poor maintenance. 

Workers have moved from all the above housing options to live at RHM. Those who have lived at RHM for more than 5-6 months have reported improvement in their health and well-being. They have also reported fewer sick leaves or skipping work due to poor sleep, which translates into reduced loss of earnings.

"In other [housing], we come back exhausted [from work] and cook. It is quite hard. We would wake up at 3-4 am, cook, pack food and go to work. I felt more tired and sleepy at work because of that,” said a 26-year-old powerloom worker, who stayed at RHM for more than 7 months.

 “Here, there is nothing to worry about... I have not fallen sick since I came here. There has been no fever, cold, cough, or headache here… There is no tension. There is no work, good facilities to bathe, sleep… You come back [from work], socialise with people, eat and sleep. No tension. I feel joy,” he added.

Adapting to worker needs

When RHM opened in 2023, hostel admission entailed an advance rent of 1,800 rupees for 15 days. Many workers could not pay this as indebtedness and cash flow issues are widespread among powerloom workers, majority being from Ganjam, Odisha, one of the poorest districts of India. Worksite rooms were rent-free, and joining room rentals taken by friends and relatives gave workers more time to make the advance payment.

RHM then introduced a ‘guarantee letter’ in which workers unable to pay advance rent could get surety from the ‘master’ or supervisor under whom they worked, a friend or relative in Surat, to guarantee advance rent payment within 10 days of hostel admission. 

ShelterSquare has also been flexible about rent collection, which follows the wage payment cycle of 15 days of most powerloom workers. Although many workers do not pay rent in a timely manner, overall rent collection loss is very low. ShelterSquare is currently studying workers’ cash flow in the context of their informal work, mobility and multilocality to arrive at a rent collection model and rental support measures that ensures the hostel’s long-term feasibility. 

The ShelterSquare social housing model includes ‘value-adds’ which connect workers to entitlements, awareness of their rights, services (health, financial literacy and inclusion, etc) and opportunities (skilling, job placement) as well as build community.

This contrasts with government housing programmes that limit housing to physical provisions instead of facilitating its broader role in social reproduction. Awareness meetings by PSSM around workers’ rights and occupational safety are already regular events at RHM. ShelterSquare has also recently formed a hostel committee to facilitate workers’ participation in hostel management, resolving conflicts and building community. 

In a research study with former tenants of RHM, ShelterSquare found that many tenants had left RHM due to a change in their workplace. Powerloom workers lose their job due to village visits as well as other reasons as there is no job security. The search for a new job often takes them to a new housing location.

Over the last several months, RHM’s facility managers have tried to use their contacts through PSSM to link workers to jobs in the vicinity of RHM. This might evolve into a structured programme to link workers to jobs in RHM’s vicinity. 

This experiment for dignified housing, which depends on a revenue-cum-grants financial model, is thus evolving ways to address the pillars of the housing question in the context of migrant workers’ mobile and multilocal lives. The broader goal is to inform policymaking and practice in the future and reconfigure the urban housing ecosystem to be more inclusive and equitable.

Edited by Meetu Desai

Renu Desai is an Ahmedabad-based independent researcher with an interest in urban transformation, informality and housing. She is a co-founder director at ShelterSquare Foundation, a non-profit established to develop dignified housing solutions for workers in the unorganised and informal sector.