Parking Lot Becomes Home For Thousands in India

While a few of these people hold regular jobs, the others are day laborers, professional beggars and itinerant peddlers who sell various items. These are rural dreamers looking for better lives, illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and small-town boys who fled their homes after falling in love with the wrong girls.

A few people choose to live in these parking lots, particularly with their families. Since, parents have to take their young children with them to work, often leaving them to play on construction sites or in alleyways and if there is no money for school, children are often sent to work before they even reach adolescence.

With India's surging economy drawing more and more rural residents to its cities, the country's housing shortage has become critical. A 2010 study by the McKinsey Global Institute revealed that India then faced a shortage of 25 million urban households, a number that could leap to 38 million by 2030. More than 8 million people are believed to live in slums.

Ajit Mohan, one of the AP report's authors said "There isn't a mechanism to house the people who are coming." He added that "You have to plan for something like this five, 10 or 15 years in advance, and that's not going on." He was also of the opinion that government officials “haven't embraced affordable housing as something they have to deliver."

Hence places like the parking lots spring up to feed the demand of the rural population that move into cities.