The govt of tamil nadu has a better record than many other state governments in providing housing and other basic amenities (toilets, water, electricity, and LPG) to the rural population. In 14983, S Guhan noted that 84% of all houses in palakurichi were thatched huts. In 2019, 40% of the houses were fully pucca and another 38% were semi-pucca (with tiled roofs). Four out of five pucca houses that are owned by SC households today were constructed with aid from govt schemes. Many households, however, had to borrow funds to complete house construction, as allocations from the government were not adequate.

A substantial number of households in the study villages of Palakurichi and Venmani continue to live in poor-quality kutcha houses. The proportion of households with kutch houses was higher among wage workers with income from unskilled and semi-skilled jobs than any other class (32 out of 46 houses of unskilled wage workers in Venmani were kutcha houses).

Almost all the households had access to electricity. Drinking water was available either within the homestead or within 200 meters of the homestead for the large majority of households in Venmani. In Palakurichi, many SC households had to travel upto 1 KM to get drinking water. Nagapattinam district had been declared ‘open defecation free’, but about one-half of the households in our survey lacked access to toilets. Most of these were SC households.

Caste-based residential segregation persists. Cramped conditions of houses in low-lying Dalit settlements means less area (homestead land) available for better housing, for the construction of toilets and more rooms, and for the drainage of water