security of tenure

A major political question for governments around the globe is to determine which form of housing tenure – ownership or rental – would best fit their housing policy agenda. It is now well understood that both forms of tenure need to be taken into consideration as complementary and integral parts of urban housing markets. However, rental housing is not a distinct category, but an umbrella term which covers diverse manifestation of renting a home and various forms of supply. Based on fieldwork conducted in 2019, this piece explores the rental practices in Ambedkar Nagar, a 1990s sites and services scheme in Chennai, India in the context of recent changes in rental legislation in the state of Tamil Nadu where Chennai is located.

This post features highlights from a conversation between Gautam Bhan and Arkaja Singh at the 128th CPR-CSH monthly talk series, on September 29th, 2020. The discussion was held in the backdrop of a Supreme Court order directing the eviction of bastis adjoining railway tracks in Delhi. The discussion centred around how government policy around ‘slums,’ both at central and Delhi state level was changed, and how these changes came about, considering local and national, bureaucratic and political dimensions of these changes.

This is a diploma thesis profiling informal rental housing through fieldwork carried out in Ambedkar Nagar, a resettlement colony in Chennai. It looks at the differences between local Tamil residents and migrants from the north-eastern region of India, and analyses how financial means can affect housing pathways and the security of tenure for different income groups.