Homelessness and housing insecurity take many forms. It does not have a single shape, or a single cause. In asking why we should care about homelessness, it is useful to broaden our understanding of how it can look.
Homelessness does not always mean not having a roof, or not paying rent, it is not exclusive to unemployed people struggling with drug addiction. If we are being asked to care about housing insecurity, we can not ask to care only about the forms where a stereotype holds true.
All of Beijing is dense, but underground in retrofitted bomb shelters and building code-required basements are especially tight, sometimes just big enough for a bed. Approximately 1 million people live under the city in these claustrophobic rooms without sunlight. Who are these people? As difficult as it is to speak about any collection of a million people, in general they are young working professionals in the service industry who migrated from elsewhere in China, they pay rent and they go to work and they live underneath high rises and dense industry alike.
But all of this underground housing is technically illegal to rent or reside in. With all of the complications that presents. These retrofitted fallout shelters are not safe or intended for continual residence, but they’re cheap, near work and they’re somewhere.
You can find out more from Chi Yin Sim’s photography project and NPR
