Vulnerability Dimensions and Access to Affordable Housing: The Case of the Waste Picker Community in Amritsar City, India

Abstract

Concentration of urban poverty within the milieu of rampant urbanization in the neoliberalist era and its manifestation in the forms of informalities in housing and infrastructure access and occupation has become more of a rule rather than an exception in cities of the developing world. The Indian cities are no exception to this trend. However, the filtration of the benefits aiming to remove urban disparities by providing access to housing and infrastructure to the most vulnerable poor communities has remained elusive. Resultantly, the poorest sections continue to remain “invisible” on the radar of the city housing reforms and provision agenda. Left to fend for themselves, they respond by creating informal and precarious housing solutions on their own, sadly unrecognized and sidelined by state interventions. The research article investigates the vulnerabilities afflicting the waste picker community through detangling physical, social, economic, and politico‐legal vulnerability dimensions and their access to affordable housing in the formal sector. The article argues that affordable housing remains more of an allegory than a veracity for the most vulnerable communities such as the waste pickers and emphasizes recognition of the multidimensional vulnerabilities and protecting their right to live with dignity, free of contestations and threat of evictions.

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