Beneath The Concrete: The Rising Calamity of Homelessness in Nepal

Beneath The Concrete: The Rising Calamity of Homelessness in Nepal

Over 250,000 people in Nepal live without a permanent home. Homelessness is a hidden crisis, often overlooked, yet it is rapidly escalating across city centers.

Nepal’s homelessness problem is not just a social issue—it is an urgent economic and social crisis affecting the country’s growth and city development. Extreme poverty in rural areas is a serious problem, especially in cities like Kathmandu, where fast, unplanned movement to the city and rising housing prices put pressure on limited services.

The Scale of Vulnerability

Recent data paints a bleak picture:

• 250,000 people are experiencing literal homelessness, sleeping on streets, in temples, or abandoned buildings.
• About 2.8 million people (around 10% of Nepal’s population) live in poor slum areas, often without clean water, toilets, or electricity.

In Kathmandu, slum settlements, or sukumbasi, have emerged along riverbanks and other marginalized areas, rendering thousands of families—including many children—in precarious living conditions along the riverbanks and vacant land, leaving thousands of families, including many young children, living in unsafe and unstable conditions.

Why Homelessness Persists

Homelessness in Nepal is interplayed by socio-economic challenges, systemic factors, and man-made ecological crises:

• Haphazard Urban Expansion: Unplanned city growth leads to overcrowded, unstable, and unsanitary settlements. These areas suffer from poor infrastructure and severe air pollution.
• Mass Rural-to-Urban Migration: A continuous influx of people into major cities overwhelms existing infrastructure and depletes affordable housing options.
• Climate-Induced Displacement: Environmental degradation triggers severe flooding and landslides. These disasters destroy fragile housing, causing permanent displacement for marginalized communities.

1. Migration and Urbanization

According to MDPI Research, the wealth gap has caused rapid rural-to-urban migration in the Kathmandu Valley. This internal migration expands the urban population by 4% annually, triggering unplanned growth that swamps housing and public infrastructure.

2. Poverty and Economic Inequality

High urban housing costs prevent 25% of impoverished Nepalis from securing legal tenancy. To leverage economic mobility, initiatives focus on closing Nepal's gender digital gap and improving educational technology (The Borgen Project, 2025–2026).

4. Social and Personal Factors

Family abandonment, domestic violence, mental illness, and limited education contribute to homelessness, disproportionately burdening children and the elderly.

Impact on Vulnerable Communities

Urban families in plastic-roofed shelters face constant danger from extreme weather and forced evictions. When these marginalized families lose their homes, they often lose their legal identity documents as well. This loss traps them in a perpetuating loop of poverty, child labor, and social exclusion (Nepal Country Inequality Report (CIR 2025) 

Steps Towards Solutions

Rescue and Rehabilitation

Manavsewa Ashram, in partnership with Kathmandu Metropolitan City, rescues, cares for, and reunites street-dependent individuals with families. Over 1,600 people are already housed across the Ashram branches.

Multi-Storied Housing Projects

The Government of Nepal is constructing multi-storied buildings to resettle families from riverbank slums.

Target 2082 BS

Government of Nepal, under the Street Children Special Protection Directive, partners with federal bodies, local municipalities, and the Manavsewa Ashram to eradicate street-dependency and declare the nation free of street-children by the year 2026 AD, steering rescue, rehabilitation, and local ward-level declarations.

Comprehensive Blueprints

Experts recommend long-term solutions:

• Implement affordable housing policies within urban planning.
• Enforce the Right to Housing Act 2018.
• Provide livelihood opportunities and social services for urbanized, poor populations.

Volunteer and Community Action

Manavsewa Ashram plans to train 1,000 full-time campaigners and 100,000 volunteers by 2082 BS, co-creating a more caring society.