Rooftop Structures - Rezoning the Urban Environment for Migrants and Asylum Seekers

While the migrant labor issues tend to be overlooked by policymakers and sidelined by municipalities, the fact is that nearly a quarter of India’s workforce consists of migrants. While migrants can be found in virtually every sector of the economy, they tend to permeate the more informal sectors - such as domestic help, manual labor, and semi-skilled services - constituting roughly 50% of India’s GDP alongside MSMEs. If an open market and the launch of the BPO sector in the early 1990s kickstarted India’s macroeconomic rise on the global stage, access to cheap and available labor has fueled the engine of development ever since.

Poverty in developing nations is most often typified by the image of a slum - unplanned streets, ramshackle structures, open sewers, and ad hoc construction. While there is some variance in Indian slums (legal status, economic prosperity, access to services, basic hygiene), conditions are generally far above those in migrant settlements.

Blue tent settlements are so named for the blue tarpaulin used to waterproof the dwellings. They are windowless and without running water, though are usually electrified (Image Source)

Also known as blue tent settlements, migrant settlements house entire families in rows of tarpaulin tents leased through a labor contractor. Hundreds of families might share a single washroom, and the individual housing units expose residents and children to parasites, rodents, and pollution from dirty cookstoves. Security is tenuous as these tents lack solid walls, and the unventilated structures lead to heat stroke and exhaustion. As they are temporary, migrants typically don’t have the will or the means to invest in more permanent housing that offers better living conditions.

Bangalore, India, has roughly as many migrant families as slum structures with roof space. Rooftop housing as a micro-tenancy model benefits not only migrant families and slum communities but offers cities a way to more efficiently zone for inclusive development. By rezoning rooftops for residential use alongside lightweight, modular housing systems, developed nations might implement a similar solution to house refugees, homeless, and low-income residents.

This article covers the housing challenges facing migrant communities, the potential of rooftop housing as a micro-tenancy model, and ways developed nations might integrate rooftop housing to meet an increasingly diverse set of stakeholder needs.

Migrant workers earn subsistence wages as day laborers and experience grueling work conditions and job insecurity (Image Source)

Migrant Housing in Indian Cities

A typical migrant settlement in the Marathahalli area of Bangalore. I joined Pop-Up Housing to build bunk beds for migrant families in the settlement.

In India as elsewhere, people migrate for work wherever there is a gap between labor and opportunity - i.e. when home states have insufficient work opportunities and host states lack a sufficient labor force. Migrants are motivated by the prospect of sending remittances to their families, or (increasingly often) are forced to look for opportunities in cities due to food crises, disasters, and poor agricultural conditions caused by climate change.

Rather than the more global rural-urban migration trend, migrants in India tend to relocate from towns and cities in the migration belt (Odisha, Bihar, West Bengal, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh) to urban centers in the southern states. This migration serves as a demographic win-win – the migration belt boasts a surplus of working-age labor while the southern states require a young workforce to support an aging populace. Except for Delhi, southern metropolises including Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Chennai currently receive the highest rate of inward migration.

Unskilled migrants work at the mercy of their employers without job security or a standardized pay structure. In the already swollen megacities, the lack of affordable housing compels them to find refuge in slums or informal settlements such as blue tent settlements owned and leased by a labor contractor. State-specific health and social benefits aren’t portable for migrant families - meaning that NGOs and charities are left to fill the gaps in healthcare, early childhood education, and livelihood training programs.

The Pandemic forced millions of migrants to return to their home states, often by foot (Image Source)

Migrant Settlements vs Slums

Migrant settlements resemble refugee camps, though they lack resources from international aid organizations. Pests, illness, and disease are commonplace (Image Source)

Migrant communities are among the most vulnerable in Indian cities. Aside from adequate housing, these families are without familial or friendly ties within the greater city (or state) and aren’t able to access health-specific or other state benefits from their home state within the host state.

Conditions in a migrant settlement are among the poorest in the modern world. Families might pay anywhere from INR 1000-3000 (USD 12-36) per month for a single, windowless room with a charcoal or wood stove for cooking. Labor contractors supply electricity and water, though stagnant supplies of the latter often lead to illness. Hundreds of families might share a single restroom facility, and women are particularly vulnerable.

While they aren’t without room for improvement, slums are vastly preferable to blue tent settlements. While the quality of life varies by individual slum and slum type (notified, recognized, and identified), slum houses usually have a concrete floor, piped water system, and load-bearing walls. TVs are common, and families may even own a vehicle.

As they are usually larger and more permanent than migrant settlements, NGOs and local civic organizations are able to affect social change within these communities, advocating for access to health services, legal land ownership, children’s education, and social services.

Slums communities are more established than migrant settlements, often with multi-story concrete structures and improved utilities (Image Source)

Case Study - Pop-Up Housing’s Solution

Pop-Up Housing builds rooftop structures from lightweight frames and composite boards (Image Source)

Pop-Up Housing offers a rooftop housing solution wherein slum residents and migrant families help each other. Because municipal zoning laws don’t apply to slums, residents are free to rent their rooftop units to migrant families through a micro tenancy arrangement.

By providing lightweight structures to slum households as incremental housing, migrants have access to secure, dignified housing for the same price they would pay a labor contractor to live in a migrant settlement - but with access to privacy, basic amenities, and a lockable home. Slum residents earn back their investment in the structure as micro-landlords, diverting profits away from (often exploitative) labor contractors.

The solution uses recycled materials that can be assembled into a functional home without requiring specialized knowledge or tools. Migrants, slum residents, and cities benefit in unique ways.

Living on a rooftop offers security, access to running water and electricity from the landlord’s unit below, and a degree of privacy not available in a blue tent settlement. NGOs and civil organizations often have a longstanding presence in slums, meaning migrant families living on slum rooftops have improved access to essential health services, childhood education, and livelihood training programs.

While the central government has introduced plans to subsidize migrant housing in unoccupied apartment complexes, the reality is that Indian cities lack the physical infrastructure to accommodate 140 million or so seasonal migrants. Housing located far from the job site is likely unfeasible for migrants. A rooftop housing market geared toward migrant labor allows migrants a greater degree of choice in where they can stay.

Pop-Up Housing’s structures are finished with roof and wall materials made from recycled post-consumer plastic.

For Migrants

Pop-Up Housing builds rooftop restrooms in areas that lack adequate sanitation

A rooftop rental unit is a reliable source of passive income for slum residents - something like a small-scale Airbnb. Built from customizable frames and recycled panels, Pop-Up Housing’s structures can fit virtually any rooftop and are lightweight enough to be supported without requiring additional structural reinforcement.

A complete housing unit from Pop-Up Housing represents an investment of around 800 USD. By financing the investment with micro-loans, residents can potentially pay off the investment over two years with 2500 INR monthly rental payments from tenants.

For Slum Residents

This solution leverages slum rooftops as an asset for cities to use in their urban planning strategies while supporting the following Sustainable Development Goals:

#1 No Poverty

By allowing slum residents to become landlords, migrant rent payments benefit communities at the base of the pyramid rather than labor contractors.

#9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

Pop-Up Housing’s modular housing infrastructure represents an affordable housing system that can be replicated in a variety of urban contexts, making use of otherwise unusable space.

Pop-Up Housing’s structures are finished with roof and wall materials made from recycled post-consumer plastic, helping cities meet sustainable development targets.

#10 Reduced Inequalities

Together with #1, the micro tenancy model benefits slum residents and migrant families. Slum residents generate income while migrants have access to affordable housing that is safer, cleaner, and more dignified than in a blue tent settlement.

#11 Sustainable Cities and Communities

This model can be replicated across India, or wherever migrant communities coexist with slums. By implementing a formal model for housing loans, tenancy assignments, and basic service provision, cities increase their capacity to adequately house migrant families.

#12 Responsible Consumption and Production

By using recycled metal frames and composite panels (made from recycled plastic, tetra packs, and discarded wood), this housing solution offers a low-carbon affordable housing solution.

For Cities

Rooftop Housing Elsewhere

Rooftop slums in Hong Kong evolve dynamically to suit the changing needs of their residents (Image Source)

History

Despite being surrounded by untouched green hills, Hong Kong remains one of the most densely populated areas on Earth. Since its spectacular boom in the late 20th century, its housing policy has failed to account for an influx in its migrant labor force. Rooftop housing, common in districts like Kowloon, represents an extra-legal stopgap solution for those awaiting formal housing assignments. These structures, first seen in the 1950s, persist into the modern day.

Advantages

While the accommodations offer a roof and basic plumbing, their construction is ad hoc, unsafe, and lacks cooling and heating for seasonal temperature fluctuations. However, their flimsy materials make them versatile, allowing residents to easily make adjustments to the structures to suit their dynamic needs.

Hong Kong

Limitations

The legal status of these dwellings is still tenuous, and residents are often served eviction notices without any feasible, government-issued alternative. Despite the cramped space and substandard conditions, tenants still prefer living there as opposed to moving back to their hometowns.

Aspiring to meet the demand for transit housing, rooftop housing offers Mexican migrants in Tijuana a degree of security (Image Source)

History

While Tijuana has been a destination for migrants wishing to pursue a life in the US for decades, rooftop housing has emerged in more recent years in response to a swell in migrant flows. Relative to past years, a higher proportion of the 10,000 or so migrants in Tijuana are now families seeking asylum. The rooftop housing solution emerged as the city could no longer house migrant populations adequately.

Advantages

Tijuana has seen a disturbing rise in cartel violence against the city’s migrant shelters in recent months. As shelters have swollen to capacity in anticipation of the US Supreme Court’s Title 42 decision, rooftop housing offers both Mexican and non-Mexican migrant populations safe haven from street-level violence.

Limitations

More a factor of the political and criminal atmosphere of the city itself, rooftop housing in Tijuana is firmly a form of transit housing.

Tijuana

Rooftop rooms appeal to students or young couples who are completing their studies or saving up to buy their first home (Image Source)

History

Originally built for attic storage space, Seoul’s rooftop rooms - or ​​oktapbangs - have been renovated as incremental housing structures. Popularized through Korean dramas and movies, oktapbangs attract young couples due to their privacy, connectedness to the city’s amenities, and cost-savings.

Advantages

Cost savings and privacy are the major draws. Alongside a room and bathroom (attached or detached), the rooftops offer space for gardening, laundry, or additional living space.

Limitations

The rooms themselves are often very basic, and in terms of status, considered among the lowest forms of housing in Korea. That said, some couples approach the living arrangement as a way to foster intimacy and utilize savings to enjoy life in other ways.

Due to South Korea’s climate, winters can be very cold and summers blisteringly hot on a rooftop in Seoul. The quality of the dwelling is determined by the degree of construction undertaken by the building owner.

Seoul

Application in the Global North

Ukrainian refugees found temporary shelter in converted gyms or public buildings like this one in neighboring Poland (Image Source)

If rooftop housing is an imperfect form of housing for asylees awaiting migration, the solution offers greater return for receiving nations who lack adequate infrastructure to housing incoming refugee and/or asylee populations.

In European countries, recent influxes of large numbers of refugees are provided temporary housing in “gyms, abandoned buildings, and container villages, which segregate and contain mass numbers of asylum-seekers in over-scaled, oppressive environments” (source). This emergency response approach is temporary, yet requires substantial investment in material and human resources.

Refugees are placed more permanently wherever there is available space - most commonly, an unoccupied room in a family home or apartment. By investing in rapidly deployable rooftop housing solutions as part of a partnership with individual homeowners, cities and municipalities would bolster their capacity to respond to similar needs in the future. These units might also be put to use as government-subsidized low-income housing units.

Refugees and Asylum Seekers

Unlike residential neighborhoods, rooftops in industrial areas are flat (Image Source)

In the US, homeless camps often spring up near railway tracks. Despite the dangers associated with living on the periphery of locomotive traffic, these no-man’s-land areas offer a means to escape police contact in parks or city streets. Due to the noise of the trains and historic zoning laws, these areas are also commonly used for industrial buildings - many of which feature broad, flat roofs.

Rooftop housing for the homeless in these industrial neighborhoods would require minimal relocation while offering the homeless ample shelter space away from moving trains. Existing plumbing and heating systems could be modified to allow for livability on a semi-permanent basis through participation in social service programs.

Homelessness

The prefab Kasita micro home is outfitted with modern design features including advanced IoT applications (Image Source)

Kasita made waves in the US housing industry circa 2017 but failed for several reasons, including mismanagement, high-fidelity construction, and inability to scale manufacturing to meet demand. While it featured elegant design and impressive technological integrations, the Kasita failed because it assumed people would transport the entire unit with them when they moved locations - from one stacked housing lot to another elsewhere in the country.

The Kasita’s USP was its advanced UX design and attractive array of features. While it needed both to disrupt a stagnant industry, its high-fidelity design without a realistic market roll-out strategy led to its demise. Nonetheless, like other examples of rooftop housing - the Kasita’s founders realized the potential of the small-footprint solution to address a growing housing crisis.

Rather than offering a made-to-order product that requires significant time and resources to complete, Kasita may have found traction through an incremental approach - allowing homeowners and businesses to order modular shells as a starting point, rounding out the interior finishes using local labor and materials.

Municipal policymakers might consider how public-private partnerships at the homeowner level might advance access to affordable housing in first-world cities. Aside from rethinking zoning laws to avail a greater spread of space resources, cities must also invest in low-footprint housing technology that homeowners may deploy rapidly and upgrade incrementally to meet market demand.

Short-Term Rentals