Why homeless prefer to sleep on roads than in night shelters

Despite the Delhi government's constant efforts to bring the homeless into the night shelters, people still prefer to sleep on roads as they feel shelters lack the space, their belongings and money get stolen, and constant brawls take place and some are unhygienic too.

The city's homeless people can be found sleeping on footpaths, bridges, flyovers and dividers in the chilling cold at night. When DNA visited several night shelters, we found many people sleeping on the roadside, within just 50 meters radius of the shelters.

"I like sleeping here because I used to go to the shelters and often found that my hard earned daily money was stolen. Despite several complaints to the caretaker, they turned a deaf ear to my complaints. So, it is better now as I find a place easily and sleep," said Sunil Gupta, a rickshaw puller from Sajjan Pur, Uttar Pradesh, who sleeps on the footpath outside the Kashmere Gate night shelter.

The Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB) claims it accommodates more than 21,000 people in 261 night shelters.

On being asked why the homeless choose to face the chilly winds instead of the shelters, the DUSIB officials also talked about the regular brawls as the main reason.

"Working as a labour, all you need is peaceful sleep at night. But in the shelters, you can often see fights; drunk people creating a ruckus, bullying other inmates. Hygiene is also an issue in the shelters. We can get infected from other people. Therefore, I feel better and safer outside," says Badal Sau, who works as a daily wage labourer near Jama Masjid.

According to a survey, the Delhi government has been informed that roughly around 1,167 people scattered across the city have rejected repeated attempts by rescue teams to place them in night shelters.

Recently, the DUSIB, which deploys the rescue teams, wrote to the city government's revenue department apprising it of the situation.

"It has been reported by the rescue teams that about 1,167 persons found in different parts of Delhi during rescue operations were reluctant or refused to shift to the nearby night shelters," DUSIB member (engineering), M K Tyagi wrote in a letter to the revenue secretary last month.

The largest concentration of such homeless people, not willing to move to shelters, are in areas such as the Kashmere Gate ISBT, Jama Masjid and Nigam Bodh Ghat.