From Home to Shop: When Shelter Becomes Survival

From Home to Shop: When Shelter Becomes Survival

In the ledger of urban life, there exists a line item no family should ever have to calculate: the downgrade from “home” to “place of business” as a permanent address. This is the reality for families across India’s cities and towns who, locked out of the rental and housing market by prejudice, poverty, or sheer lack of options, are forced to convert a commercial shop into their living quarters. This is not an entrepreneurial choice. It is a dire compromise—a quiet, desperate erosion of dignity in the name of survival.

The Invisible Eviction

The journey from a proper home to a shop-backroom is rarely sudden. It is the culmination of systemic failures:

· A string of rejections from landlords, based on identity, family size, or economic profile.

· The relentless math where income can cover a commercial rent, but not the inflated deposit and “premium” of a residential space.

· The slow, suffocating shrinkage of affordable housing stock in viable locations.

What begins as a “temporary adjustment” hardens into a permanent reality. The family sleeps where customers browsed by day. The kitchen is a hotplate in a corner. Privacy is a myth. Childhood is spent in the echo of a shutter rolling down at night.

A Consequence, Not a Choice

To call this a “choice” is to profoundly misunderstand the crisis. No parent chooses for their children to grow up without a bedroom, a quiet place to study, or the simple safety of a residential neighborhood. No one chooses the psychological toll of living in a space never designed for comfort, rest, or family life—a space where your very existence feels provisional and unauthorized.

This is a direct consequence of systemic exclusion. It is what happens when the housing market, supported by deep-seated social biases and policy gaps, fails to see a family as human beings with a right to dignified shelter, but rather as a risk, a problem, or an afterthought.

The High Cost of a “Roof”

The cost paid is not just in comfort, but in humanity:

· Lost Childhood: Children conflate home with workspace, their play and dreams confined by inventory and steel shutters.

· Compromised Safety: Residential safety norms—fire exits, ventilation, emergency access—are absent in commercial spaces repurposed for living.

· Eroded Well-being: The constant stress of inhabiting an illegitimate space breeds anxiety and a gnawing sense of insecurity.

· Trapped Potential: Energy that should go into thriving is diverted into merely existing, into the daily negotiation of an undignified life.

A Call for Recognized Humanity

A shop is for commerce. A home is for life, for growth, for dignity. Confusing the two is a societal failing. We must stop normalizing this degradation.

We need:

· Policy Recognition: Affordable housing schemes must acknowledge and target those forced into informal and commercial spaces.

· Inclusive Urban Planning: Cities must legally mandate and develop mixed-income, non-discriminatory housing.

· A Shift in Conscience: As a society, we must refuse to accept that a family living in a shop is “making do.” We must see it for what it is: a glaring red flag indicating a broken system.

Shelter is a fundamental right, not a privilege contingent on fitting into a narrow, exclusionary box. No family should have to trade their dignity for a roof. The measure of a just society is not in its malls and high-rises, but in ensuring that every last one of its citizens has a place they can truly call a home.

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