Hasiru Mane

Hasiru Dala witnessed the flooding in slums of Bangalore during monsoons in 2017 gave wastepickers and their families many sleepless nights. The houses they live in range from shanties, tin sheds, mud or brick to poorly constructed structures that get very hot in summer, leak during the monsoons and lack ventilation. Some of the houses built with mud walls collapsed during floods. Houses built on the land given by the state-sponsored public housing program were below the road level leading to increased damage.

Hasiru Mane is an effort of Hasiru Dala to construct or upgrade existing wastepicker houses, through effective reuse of Construction & Demolition waste, thus making it adequate and affordable. This involves sourcing, repair and distribution of discarded construction material from donors who are rebuilding or demolishing existing properties. In addition, the project will also map the available markets of second-hand and recycled construction material in Bangalore with an aim to promote informal recycling markets and use of sustainable architectural/civil design practices by citizens. This project will generate livelihood in local construction industry and informal recycling trade.

A pilot is underway in collaboration with SELCO Foundation (our partner for technical and design support) in which two houses of wastepickers are being renovated. A call for donation

was sent out on social media and a local newspaper covered the efforts of Hasiru Dala. We were inundated with calls offering to donate materials. The donated materials included doors, windows, roofing and bathroom tiles, kitchen counters and wooden interiors of very good quality to name a few. These can be resized and used without much effort. While both the existing houses of the pilot had to be demolished, we expect the next set of houses would not need demolition.

Key aspects of Hasiru Mane project: The Hasiru Mane project has three aspects to it:

1. Consulting on design and structure 2. Collection of donated materials and its management 3. Actual Construction 4. Financial Assistance

The consulting aspect is the back and forth between all stakeholders to understand the needs of the owner, their expectations from the home and us as a service provider, and the ways we can best design a healthy living space for them to use.

The construction also requires a lot of handholding between the contractors and vendors, and all stakeholder. Our biggest takeaway here is that the homeowners relate better to the advise of these vendors than they do to an architect or any trained technician, simply because they have seen them work in their area and relate to their settings better But the gap is relatively easy to bridge through workshops, and other forms of training, to impress upon them the need for quality and more sustainable materials and the value reusing things adds to the project. To this end we are working on building a training system for the vendors to go through and then use them across various projects we do.

Financial Support: There are two aspects to this:

1. Subsidising costs via donors. 2. Low-interest loans.

Hasiru Dala’s biggest challenge has been securing finance for this project. Traditional financing institutions do not have experience in dealing with the people working in the informal recycling industry or do not have concrete evidence of their earning potential and the wastepickers do not have necessary income documents to comply with the regulatory requirements of these institutions to qualify for a normal loan. A loan from the state government was available only to construction projects that used standard rates of traditional materials as a basis for estimation.

Since these projects needed estimation based on standard rate of recycled materials which is not available, we could not procure a loan. The learnings from the pilot has made us realize the need for setting up a rotating fund to provide loans at affordable rates to wastepickers for reconstruction of their homes. We are in talks with organizations like Rang De (https://www.rangde.org/) on managing the rotating fund. We have an in-principle approval to build 16 houses from the Slum Development Board of Karnataka (https://www.karnataka.gov.in/ksdb/Pages/Home.aspx) at one of their slum rehabilitation projects.

Case Study : Jayabai’s Home

Jayabai is wastepickers who has an occupational Id card and is someone who has had a long association with Hasiru Dala. Her husband Devraj, has also been a small scrap dealer for years and is also a priest in the temple next to his home.

When we started working on their home, they had been living in a single room house for over 30 years. With his entire family (6-8 people depending on the year). In 2017, the floods had damaged the roof entirely, and the walls at the back of the house had been damaged in the rain.

Along with the students of the University of Washington (GCIL Program), we started exploring the possibility of helping them renovate their existing structure. In our monthly meetings, we spoke to them about how they want their home, their needs and aspirations for it. A few key points emerged.

1. Water storage. Jayabai used to carry and store water in plastic and metal bins all inside the house. Even within the small space, a substantial chunk of floor space was used for storing water,they would get water once in three days and she spent around 2 hour to fetch and fill the water in drums nothing to say of the energy spent carrying and managing it.

2. Cooking methods. Jayabai had been cooking over a wood fired stove, set on the floor.

3. Safety. The floods of 2017 had caused a lot of damage to their home and to quite a few homes in the surroundings. Every decision on the structure had to have rainfall as a consideration.

4. Space for extended family. Her brother-in-law and his family will also be living with them. They also have people visiting from villages and staying with them for extended periods as is prevalent in the community.

5. Some space to work from the home itself. (Devraj’s temple work needs storage that is currently done from a room next to the temple, he wanted some of it shifted indoors)

One of the key things they spent money on, was the water storage tank below. The got the largest tank we could build, it helped reduce the physical task of collecting water and freed up space within the house previously used in storage. The ground floor now has a kitchen platform so Jayabai can work comfortably. The first floor has a wood fired chulha, but also has a platform, so the cooking can happen in both ways. She was very proud of the fact that she didn’t have to sit on the floor and work the stove, but also that she had forseen an eventuality whoever further occupies the home will be using it.

As construction progressed, we also realized storage space within the house is deemed crucial, they wanted lofts in almost all the rooms.

The solar Lights and water provided through the loan, via the SELCO Foundation, has helped him keep costs low and manage power in an area where continuous supply is suspect.

Cost subsidising though donated and collected materials. Through the call that Hasiru Dala put for donor materials, and also through the network that devraj has in the scrap dealing community, he managed to collect a lot of his construction materials over time for a relatively cheap price. The items he got from donors ranged from:

1. Doors & Door frames. 2. Windows 3. Tiles for roofs (used as decorative chajja covering) 4. Kitchen Sink 5. Bathroom Tiles. 6. Furniture.

Items he picked up from his networks at a lower cost (or for free) over the years. 1. Foundation stones 2. Reinforcement rods 3. Plumbing and Electrical fittings (Collars, pipes, sanitaryware) 4. Stones.

Other areas where costs were cut: 1. A lot of our labour costs are managed because Jayabai and Devraj’s extended family

works in construction. His relatives worked as masons, his brother supervised the work and to some extent helped maintain records.

2. Solar lights and heated water, will help reduce the cost in the long term. (SELCO provides them at a slightly cheaper costs as well.)

The overall savings on the cost would be about 2,50,000 or 30% of the estimated project cost. Though the cost of the home has exceeded the estimate, mainly due to change in the expectations of the homeowners.

Learnings:

Community dynamics and aspirations. As devraj is a priest, and also his father was one of the first settlers in the area, everyone in the neighborhood was invested in seeing how his house is being built. Almost all site meeting had people from the community come over and try to influence how the house was built, shift the toilets, dont add walls, make windows bigger/smaller, make the walls bigger/smaller, all of it was debated by a group of people before consensus was arrived upon.

Function over comfort. They blocked all windows on the side of the house where rain could enter the house.regardless of how dark the house could have gotten and how necessary it was for cross ventilation, they blocked the window. The toilet according to our plans, had been single suite with both the wash area and the WC in the same room, helping us save on space and plumbing. After a lot of back and forth, jayabai got the team to split it into two rooms, with the wash area opening into the kitchen, and the toilet actually opening outside. This way, she does not have to deal with the smells of the WC in the kitchen, and can use the wash area as an extension to the kitchen whenever she needed it.

Aspirations Even though constructing the home has put a very serious strain on the family, they have managed to accommodate all their aspirations in the house. From painting it the way they wanted to decor. The balcony extensions were added in later as work progressed, the second floor room came in later. The costs are still managed by using either donor given materials, or items picked up for less through his scrap dealer network.

Labour Issues The availability of quality workmanship in these neighborhood is always an issue. Devraj managed to keep the costs low because a lot of his family helped subsidise the cost.

The ground floor home is where devraj and his family will live. The first floor will have jayabai’s brother and his family living in it. The roof has a room which will be used either as a guest room or for storage.