Introduction

This is a reply to ‘COVID-19 and precarious housing: paying guest accommodation in a metropolitan Indian city’ by Sairama Raju Marella, Krishna Priya and Pooja Vincia D’Souza (2022). Based on empirical research, the chapter provides an evidence-based understanding of how tenants and operators in paying guest accommodation respond to COVID-19 pandemic impacts on their housing situation and management in Bengaluru, India. The chapter is clear in explaining the inadequacy of the paying guest accommodation sector in protecting the health and safety and tenancy rights of occupants, while highlighting the failure of this sector to accommodate its actors (tenants and operators), both physically and financially, as regards their pandemic-induced needs. Nonetheless, the research is limited in articulating detail on how tenants experience living in overcrowded and unhygienic housing situations, and the impact on their physical and mental health.

The COVID-19 pandemic and marginalised households

Tenants living in marginal housing forms, such as paying guest accommodation, are a particularly vulnerable demographic and one of the hardest hit of the COVID-19 pandemic due to their limited employment prospects, low savings and housing precariousness. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the vulnerability of these population groups due to widening social and economic inequalities, putting them at risk of displacement, homelessness and unemployment, both in the Global South and in the Global North. Such unprecedented shocks have prompted urban researchers and thinkers to explore how the COVID-19 pandemic affects tenants in rental housing, including marginal housing forms, and what the implications are for their future housing choices (Baker et al, 2020; Manville et al, 2020; Soaita, 2021).