"I never go to shelters, I prefer the streets."
The Arrels Foundation asks nearly 700 homeless people about their problems accessing basic services.
BarcelonaWhile speaking, she is talking, despite having one of the fans strategically placed near the Arrels Foundation hall in Barcelona's Raval district, trying to cool down the heatwave. Luana Monteiro answers the survey questions that the leading homeless organization has prepared to understand the problems faced by the thousand or so people who survive on the city's streets. Like the majority of this group, (six out of ten)Monteiro didn't know what it was like to be left out in the cold until she arrived from Lisbon to Barcelona. She says she was fleeing a society's incomprehension of people like her who were different. As soon as she could, Monteiro changed the word to a song, like the one she composed in memory of her. Sonia Rescalvo, a trans woman like her, murdered in Ciutadella Park three decades ago.I never go to shelters, I prefer the street because I was raped there and they don't let me in with my dogs either," he says.
The survey should serve to have a "real vision" of the services that the city offers to the homeless, as well as to understand the needs of the group and know where the difficulties in accessing it lie. Giorgio Ossola, an Arrels worker who speaks with knowledge of the facts because until four years ago he had been on the other side.
What did those surveyed complain about? Ossola answers: the need to make appointments to get a shower and, due to high demand, only two days a week of complete hygiene are guaranteed, for example. Monteiro also adds that the police often treat homeless people with little empathy because—he says— "They don't like poor people", and so they throw their belongings at them and harass their dogs. This woman, who lives "in a quiet place" in Can Tunis, denounces the lack of centers for recovering after a hospital stay, as happened to one of her partners who from the hospital bed he went straight to the open air, even though he still had a job. "Do you know what they offered him? An ibuprofen," he says.
In the 676 surveys conducted over three days in June, users reported a lack of a support network during difficult times, such as the death of a loved one, but they also reported the impossibility of finding a job or a place to live once they are already in an institution and want to live on their own.