Most private hostels and paying-guest facilities bring cramped spaces, where one may be playing music or talking on the phone, while another is trying to study. Photo: iStock
Earlier this month, a five-storey building operating as a boys' paying-guest accommodation in Delhi's Satya Niketan collapsed, leading to the death of five Delhi University students. With most educational institutions across cities having limited hostel facilities, for both students and young professionals, the road to success often passes through 'poorly maintained' private hostels and paying-guest accommodations with cramped spaces and shared toilets that still burn a hole in the pocket.
It was a day in July last year. A 20-year-old stood outside a paying guest (PG) accommodation in Alandur, Chennai, at 10.30 in the morning. Having recently completed her graduation in Coimbatore, she had moved to the Tamil Nadu capital with her first job offer, bright-eyed and ready to conquer the world. The first battle, however, was to find accommodation. The company she was set to join as a trainee journalist promised her a starting salary of Rs 20,000 per month. She hoped to get a PG accommodation for Rs 8000.
And so, the first stop, at Alandur. But while Google Maps told her she had arrived at her location, she couldn’t find any signboard, nothing to announce that this was what she was looking for. Finally, after calling the number she had been given for the PG, she saw a woman coming out of what looked like a “filthy two-storey structure” to let her in.
She was led down a narrow corridor, past a ‘common bathroom’ that was expected to be shared with other boarders, to a roughly partitioned room, where a roughly five-feet scrap of floor space with an iron bed and wardrobe awaited her. She left.
She had to stumble her way through two more such disappointments — a ladies’ hostel in Chennai’s Ekkatuthangal area and another PG accommodation run by an ‘overfriendly older man whose current tenants appeared to be visibly uncomfortable around him’. The accommodation itself had six people cramped into one shared space, for which the landlord demanded Rs 12,000 a month.
The 20-year-old eventually settled for a place in Anna Nagar. The rent, at Rs 10,000 a month, was 2,000 more than what she had been willing to pay and half her salary, and also required her to travel quite a distance to her office, but it was still by far the most decent place she had seen on her search.
Across Indian cities, for many young men and women in their early 20s, the struggle for accommodation becomes the first step towards adulting. As colleges, universities or that first job offer draw the youth from their homes in tier-two and tier-three towns or villages to ‘independent’ living in the metros, what they often lose is not just the comfort of home-cooked food and having family around them, but that space which had defined protection and shelter from the world.
With most educational institutions having limited hostel facilities, private hostels and PG accommodations fill in — cramped spaces, shared toilets, poor maintenance are things they learn to live with as they chase their dreams of success. For women, the hazards may include a lack of security.
Over the years, most move on, first to sharing an apartment with a friend or two, as disposable income improves, to then renting or buying their own space in the city.
But sometimes disaster strikes before one manages to find that house of one’s own.
As it did in Delhi’s Satya Niketan earlier this month.
On the afternoon of September 6, a five-storey building operating as a boys' PG accommodation collapsed in Satya Niketan, a locality that backs directly onto Delhi University's South Campus. Rescue teams worked for nearly 27 hours through the debris. Seven people were killed, five of them Delhi University students.
According to reports, the FIR registered against the owner mentions the addition of an unauthorised floor to the building, with construction ongoing even at the time of collapse.
The site of the Satya Niketan building collapse in Delhi. File photo
It is believed it was the combined load of those illegal floors and the ongoing work at the ‘old’ structure, which led to its collapse. While the accused have since been sent to judicial custody and a high-level inquiry ordered into the incident, the Satya Niketan collapse highlights yet again the urban housing crisis facing India, especially for those starting out in life and with little means to secure better accommodation for themselves.
What bothers 23-year-old Sakthivel (identified by first name only) is that no one prepares the youth for the gap in living conditions back home and life in a new city, nor is anyone held accountable for the poor living conditions in most PG accommodations, at least, not till something in the scale of Satya Niketan happens. "Nobody expects the best comfort," he says. "But can't we at least expect the bare minimum?", says Sakthivel, who moved to Hyderabad from Kumbakonam last year. The system engineer pays 30 per cent of his monthly salary as rent.
For 34-year-old Nikitha (identified by first name only), who has been living in a PG accommodation in Chennai’s Anna Nagar for about a year now, the primary concern is health. "I don't get enough nutrition; I end up relying on junk food because what the PG serves is questionable." She adds with disturbing resignation, “I wouldn’t be surprised if I fell sick.”
Nikitha says she took the room as a “stopgap, because it was close to the fertility clinic” where she works as an embryologist. But a year on, she is still in the two-person room so packed with the residents' belongings that “there is barely space to move”. “The bath water has had worms for months, despite repeated complaints to the landlord. But they only care about money,” she says.
Across states, 22-year-old Gayatri Priya, who boards at a co-living space in Bengaluru, says she would like to cook for herself, but that the kitchen “isn't maintained properly”. "There's mould and pests everywhere, even though someone is technically assigned to clean it." She has stopped letting it bother her, says Gayatri, who works in software testing, even though she knows it's taking a toll on her health. For now, she relies on food from outside.
According to reports, India's annual urban migrant population in the 20-to-34 age group stands at roughly 50 million, with organised demand for co-living and PG-style accommodation in 2025 estimated at 6.6 million, against a supply of barely 0.3 million. The gap between the two numbers is filled almost entirely by the unregulated, individually-owned PG: a spare floor, an old house, a hastily partitioned flat, often allegedly run without licence, fire safety clearance or even structural audits.
Rent is decided by proximity to college/university campuses or office hubs. Most boarders pay a security deposit (which is supposed to be returned on exit after deductions for pending payments or damages, if any) and ‘maintenance’ charges that boarders say often don't really bring any visible maintenance.
Twenty-one-year-old Aman Shah (name changed on request) says he pays 35,000 rupees a month for a single room in a non-frills apartment. Search for anything cheaper meant “a single bed in a cramped shared room for Rs 25000”, says Shah, a salesforce developer.
Students vacate paying-guest accommodations in buildings adjacent to the one that collapsed in Satya Niketan. File photo
Most PG boarders The Federal spoke to talked about the irony of living in such fraught conditions at a time in life when they are supposed to be studying for an exam, preparing for an interview, or learning to find their footing in the professional world. But instead of conditions conducive to study or work, what most unregulated PG accommodations bring are cramped rooms with no personal space to think or work or even just be and unwind, walls too thin to keep out noise…Sleep is broken. Concentration drops. And one of these shows up on a marksheet or performance report, or even on a rent receipt. No landlord treats it as their problem.
For owners, every additional bed crammed into a room and every additional floor added to a building means more monthly income, in a city where the paucity of space ensures that there will always be takers, even if less than the bare minimum facilities are provided. According to reports, the average rise in cost of residential spaces across the top ten cities has been close to 88 per cent since 2019. Rent for an average two-bedroom apartment has reportedly increased by 64 per cent in the past five years. For a 22-year-old on a first salary or a student on a scholarship or a tight parental allowance, the numbers translate to fewer choices, smaller spaces and little power to push back.
Lakshmi (name changed to protect identity), who runs a women's PG in Chennai, put it plainly. "How can we even think of reducing rent for the tenants when our own building rent only keeps going up?" she asks. "When the neighbours see our girls entering the building late, it immediately creates a bad image; that's the kind of society we live in.”
Indeed, for a young woman living in a PG accommodation, the battle worsens. While security is a major concern for many while choosing accommodation — a building entry log that is not maintained, neighbourhood streets without proper lighting, bathroom doors that don’t lock properly are all red flags… but ones that sometimes young women are forced to ignore. Landlords often impose curfew hours for women, but the contention is not the boarder’s safety but what neighbours will say if they see the girls returning late.
“I've installed CCTVs in and out of the premises for maximum safety. I don't put up a curfew, unlike many other places, because the girls who come here are above eighteen and I have to respect their decisions. But some tenants are reckless and don't understand our struggles [the irony!],” complains Lakshmi. “We have a notice period system to protect our slots. If I leave a bed empty, how will I myself pay the rent? We do care for our girls, truly. But in the end, this is also a business, and profit is the backbone.”
If women have it tougher, those from religious minorities can often struggle more in finding accommodation. Many landlords also impose dietary restrictions (read ban on non-vegetarian food), said those The Federal spoke to.
A lucky few manage to find better accommodations.
Parvati Priyadarshan (name changed on request), who was till recently living in PG accommodations in Delhi while pursuing her undergraduate studies, recalls, "They all look terrible from outside, cramped and almost dystopian, especially in the hotter, denser parts of the city.” Back home in Madurai now as she prepares for the UPSC entrance examinations, she narrates an experience better than many, when she says she found accommodations “surprisingly livable, with facilities that could be adjusted to a tenant's needs”.
For most young men and women, the search for that ‘livable’ space may take years to accomplish.
The 20-year-old Chennai resident lived in the Anna Nagar PG accommodation for six months. Then, as her health took a toll, she traded comfort for independence — and ease of commute — to move in with relatives who live quite a distance from her workplace. “The facilities at the PG place kept deteriorating and there were no improvements being made,” she recalls. A year older now, she is more familiar with Chennai. She has quit that first job. The search for both the next step in her career and a space to call her own in the city continues.
