“Portugal is much more aware”. More than 700 homeless people taken off the streets in 2021
In recent years, it has reinforced the reinforcements in more than 30 projects in more than 30 countries, worth more than European funds, to create and reinforce teams in the municipalities where there is a greater need to accompany these people.
More than 700 people took to the streets last year, totaling almost 1,800 since 2018, the coordinator of the National Strategy for the Integration of Homeless People (ENIPSSA) revealed this Saturday to Lusa.
According to Henrique Joaquim, this situation results from “many more people on the ground signaling these situations”, as well as “an increase in a brutal situation in reception responses, changing the intervention paradigm”.
For the coordinator of ENIPSSA 2017-2023, the removal of almost 1,800 people from the streets in recent years, “in a very adverse social and economic terms”, particularly in 2020 and 2021, years of pandemic context, is an “indicator that gives a lot of strength” and that the strategies being reinforced are designed.
“We started to have results that show more that we are not sure to prevent this situation from happening to people”, stressed Henrique Joaquim in an interview with the Lusa agency. The provisional data for 2021 point to about 9,000 people in a situation of improving homelessness in Portugal, a number that, according to the official, reflects “a in the diagnosis process”.
We have one that we have to say the last ones to apply in recent years and there was no answer to reach all municipalities“, he added.
Regarding the profile of the homeless, Henrique Joaquim said that it did not change significantly. They continue to be men of working age, Portuguese, single, single with few or no low social levels, with a very low level of education, with age concentrated in the metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Porto.
“We are talking about a typical profile because after each situation and each person has to be seen in their identity, in their personality and in their context”, said the coordinator of ENIPSSA, adding that in the “last two, three years” there was no new homelessness situations have appeared.
After the diagnosis has been improved and the causes of the problem are better known, now it is from the point of view of prevention: As long as there is a person in this condition, we have to do everything to make it go away quickly”, he stressed.
Taking stock of the five-year implementation strategy, Henrique Joaquim highlighted the rise in “a very, very significant way” of social awareness of this problem.
“After five years, I think Portugal is much more aware and this was one of the challenges that had to be overcomer”, he stressed.
He also highlighted the “very” increase in housing responses, with more than 1,000 vacancies registered to accommodate these people.
What is intended “above all quickly” is to welcome “people as much as possible, namely in ‘housing first’ or shared accommodation, and in new models that will be created”.
Henrique Joaquim announced, in this regard, that he is opening a notice for the National Urgent and Temporary Housing Grant, which will allow for the rehabilitation of buildings, and that he will open another notice for the creation of insertion communities, with the support of the Recovery Plan and Resilience.
In recent years, projects have been developed in more than 30 projects to accompany millions of euros, to create and reinforce reinforcements in the municipalities where there is a greater need to accompany these people, he said, advancing that they are advancing with the European Commission to maintain and if possible until you extend funding for the next framework.
What is to maintain and consolidate is to continue to give more opportunities to this person, who has as conditions for his freedom of choice, freedom in freedom, human accessibility, the protection of a life and his social freedom. integrated”, signed the coordinator of ENIPSSA.