Teresa Bermúdez: "Of all the benefits, only retirement has the capacity to lift people out of poverty"

BarcelonaData on the impoverishment of Catalans worsens statistic after statistic, with women, children, and immigrants falling deepest into the pit of social vulnerability. The latest demonstration that macroeconomic recovery has not reached people's pockets comes from the recent report published by ECAS (Catalan Entities for Social Action), which highlights that the social exclusion rate is worsening and now affects nearly one in four people, far above the European average.

What image does your report offer?

— Disposable income is practically all spent on covering basic needs, rent, and food, leaving people in a precarious situation despite working. Therefore, housing policies are clearly failing; well, the lack of housing policy, which already places a part of the population at risk. Then, labor precariousness, with 42% of working poor. But we must highlight that poverty figures are even higher because there are groups that are not accounted for, such as irregular immigrants and people in severe residential exclusion.

Why, even with dozens of social benefits, is substantial improvement not achieved?

— Basically, only retirement pensions have an effect in getting out of poverty, while the rest is very little and in young people and children it is practically insignificant. There is a high number of people who, despite being entitled to them, do not claim them, either due to excessive bureaucracy or deterrent criteria. It is impossible to know all the benefits, how to access them, the compatibility between them, how the rent subsidy can be with the guaranteed minimum income (RGC), that you cannot apply for the RGC if you have not first applied for the minimum vital income [state benefit]... It is these barriers and this structural violence of the system that also causes many people to be left out. Then we have a fiscal policy that does not help to redistribute wealth fairly.

Is the reform of the RGC that is in Parliament a hope?

— , which you cannot request the RGC if you have not previously

Why are they against these conditions?

— Why does the person become a suspect again. If the criteria of minimum income are met, why does this benefit have to be conditional? If it is a right, it is a right. Another thing is that it is a person's right to have an integration plan, labor support.

It's like a transplanted or smoker person would be constantly monitored to see if they take care of themselves, for example?

— It would be more accurate to withdraw the medication for diabetes because you are not following the diet correctly. It would be comparable to not funding treatments if one does not attend medical check-ups, if blood sugar is not kept under control, if it is not demonstrated that one is truly doing everything necessary to stay well.

What RGC does ECAS propose?

— We have proposed that there be no conditionality in the RGC and that it be fully compatible with earned income and that it can be collected from the age of 18 [it is now from 23]. Also, that 12 months of residence be required and not 24, make a child supplement of 200 euros, and that only the previous two months of income be taken into account. Also, shorten the resolution periods or take into account other elements besides the census registration.

There is another law stalled in Parliament for years, the one on homelessness, while the data continues to grow.

— I am scared by this increase. There have always been small increments, but in the last two years it has practically doubled and we had never seen this before. They are people who lived on the brink of the abyss and have fallen. But little is said about other situations of residential exclusion: how many people now live in rooms where ten years ago they did not live, how many people are in substandard housing where ten years ago they did not live... These are hidden figures, but with these legislative reforms that are not going to combat the problem, but rather to maintain what we have or worsen it, we suspect that the situation in a few years will still be worse than today.

Is the middle class hit and sunk?

— I believe it has not died, despite tending to shrink due to social polarization which places more and more people at the two extremes: that of poverty and exclusion and that of wealth. Nevertheless, the number of people in the middle is surely now greater than those of us at the two extremes.