The odyssey to find a roof over the heads of families evicted from Badalona

BarcelonaAs if it were a race against time, social entities set themselves the goal that the Three families evicted in Badalona Three mothers and four children, living in a dilapidated building, were left without a place to stay after the Santa Coloma de Gramanet City Council stopped paying for their Christmas accommodation on Tuesday. The group left the hostel at 11 a.m. on Tuesday with the few belongings they had managed to salvage from their home the day they were evicted from the building on Calderón de la Barca Street in the La Salut neighborhood. At that time, the three women and their children had been told by the municipal government that they could no longer stay at the hostel because the emergency aid was only for three weeks, after which the council would not cover any further expenses. The desperation of the three women, Fatima, Souad, and Lamya Havari, was palpable: "We don't know where we'll spend the night, we need a place to sleep, and we can't be on the street with the children," they lamented.

Until the very last minute, the Sant Roc Som Badalona platform had tried to get Badalona's social services to agree to extend their stay at the hostel for a few more days. It was no use, and in a new meeting, their worst fears were confirmed. The situation "is complicated," said Carles Sagués, an activist with the organization, who, with his mobile phone in hand, was assisting the families from Calderón and keeping an eye on other cases of imminent eviction in Badalona. This month alone, there are about thirty eviction orders for vulnerable families. "Every day we have new cases, and we have to mobilize here and there," explains Sagués, who is known to municipal social services, hospitals, and other organizations and is contacted when they have a client with social problems.

With the social services' refusal, Sagués spent much of Tuesday with his mobile phone in hand, trying to find someone who would listen to him. Finally, she called the Department of Social Rights, which was already aware of the families' precarious situation. Although emergency aid falls under municipal jurisdiction, the department agreed to take action and contact other social service organizations to achieve what was ultimately accomplished: providing shelter for the women and their four children (aged 5 to 17).

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The Roca i Pi Foundation and Cáritas Badalona have agreed to cover the bill for the Santa Coloma hostel for two of the women: one a single woman with 90% visual impairment who requires constant assistance, and a mother with two children. Meanwhile, they will find them more suitable housing to live in as a family. The third woman, a divorced mother of two teenagers, will enter a social program run by the San Juan de Dios Foundation, which, in addition to providing them with shelter, will offer support and social guidance to help them gain independence.

Sagués is clear on this point: "Without the mobilized social organizations, these families would be on the street." The activist laments that the administration of the Popular Party's Xavier García Albiol abandoned the previous municipal government's (PSC, Junts, Comuns, and ERC) project to purchase the Be Dream hostel on Alfonso XIII Avenue in Badalona and convert it into a shelter, thus rendering their apartments uninhabitable for families in the city facing hardship. Everything was almost ready, and only the signature was needed to finalize the sale, but in the end, it was cancelled. "A golden opportunity to change priorities in Badalona and invest in social policies has been lost."