Focus on: the Kamgaar Putala story

Every week, the CoHabitat Network introduces you to a collaborative housing project documented on the cohabitat.io database.

Informal settlements in Indian cities are often located on land that is dangerous and inappropriate for housing. This makes those settlements especially vulnerable to natural disasters like floods, earthquakes, landslides and epidemics.

In Pune, India, 176 very poor riverside squatters used a terrible flood crisis as an opportunity to find new land and develop their own new, permanent secure cooperative housing.

With the help from a local NGO called Shelter Associates, the squatters organised themselves, started saving, surveyed their community, searched for land and eventually found new land where they got permission to develop their own new, permanent secure cooperative housing.

They were supported by their partner NGO, but also from the municipal government and from a state-level social housing subsidy scheme.

«We used to stay in a tin-sheet hut. Now we stay in a proper concrete building. Our children have a good school nearby. We have a good road nearby too. Everything has become easier for us. Our lives have improved here. The house is big enough to accommodate all of us, and our children can study well. We are living comfortably now and have no tensions about our housing.» Mr. and Mrs. Kamble

▶ Read the full story on cohabitat.io