Half a thousand still live on the street in Lisbon. Situation continues ″with no end in sight″
The homeless situation in Lisbon remains a “no end in sight” problem, having even worsened during the pandemic. According to data from the municipality, there are currently 3780 people in this situation, of which 500 live on the street.
It is the tents that are or are, or go, the people who agree with the best answers.“, indicates the councilor for Human and Social Rights, Laurinda Alves.
Speaking to the Lusa agency, the councilor recalls that in the early 2000s there was a change in the national strategy in relation to mental health, which “threw many people onto the street”: the homeless situation “changed a lot, for the worse the street” “.
“This, which was already a very dramatic situation, has now brutally worsened with the pandemic. The problem is that even other people don’t know”, Laurinda Alves, referring to Lisbon, records “a flow, there are more situations and situations too are more dramatic”, with people who come from neighboring municipalities, from other parts of the country and abroad.
According to data from the Homeless Planning and Intervention Center (NPISA), a structure that is coordinated by the Lisbon City Council, in 2018 there were 2473 people in this situation, of which 361 did not have a roof. The following year, this number increased to 3178 people, with 465 living on the street. In 2020, 3811 people were reported to be homeless, with 447 not having a home.
“There are many people who are still on the street, who sleep in tents. There are also 20 people and families who sleep in cars”, says Laurinda Alves.
The majority of the homeless population in Lisbon is male and with an average age of 40 years, although there are also younger and older people, adds the councilor, assuring that “there are no children on the street”. The few are few, as she explains, “a priority corridor for women has also for services”.
Laurinda Alves explains that people in this condition “don’t have a problem, they have a sum of problems”, from mental health issues, drug addiction or financial issues: “Someone who stays on the street because they lost their job, because they are in debt, because suffered a lien”. Cares that can be suffered also include the unaffordable housing values ”there is a weight structure of the suffering population” there is a weight structure of the population that is fueling life”.
For the councilor for Human and Social Rights, it is important to do the exercise of putting on someone else’s shoes: “When ‘it could be me’ and ‘it could be me’ and people like us’, we have a look ‘look at them already differently.”
Asked about the time needed to eradicate the problem in the county, Laurinda Alves relied on the words of the President of the Republic of the past, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who at Christmas said that the covid-19 pandemic has become impossible time targets to remove these street people. “In this, something so momentary that is so overwhelming, not everything that is so important here, but with so much reality, to make this reality, to make this atlas, to understand who is who, the realities, to fix even what is best it was done and very well done so far. We still have the possibility of fine-tuning strategies”, he assumes.
“Humanize, prevent, fix”
A strategy of the current municipal executive of Lisbon for the integration of homeless people is to “humanize, prevent and fix”, defining a post-pandemic intervention program, with the increase of “Housing First” apartments from 340 to 400 . “Our strategy will certainly go through humanization and greater articulation between services”, says the councilor. In this “Housing First” regime, users are divided. In total, 340 people are housed in this temporary arrangement, according to data released by the municipality.
After three months, they took on the role of Human and Social Rights that were authorized by the support to people in a situation of gratitude, since the beginning of the work and for all the months that allowed support to people in a situation of shelter, including during the Covid-19 pandemic, noting that “it is very impressive” the resources that are put at the service of this “humanitarian rescue mission”.
In his opinion, it would be “frivolous and completely useless and futile” to be much more with his deadlines to resolve the situation. And even ensuring that this is a question that has to “disquiet” the executive at the end of the term.
“At the end of the day, at the end of the mandate, at the limit at the end of our lives, this will be what counts, what we transform, what we make possible, what remains of us in the good part of the lives of others”, Mayor conclude, referring to the importance of keeping this work active: “It is only impossible what we can never give up. We cannot give up on anyone”.