homelessness) Despite the fact that the problem of homelessness is very old, the history of its empirical study does not exceed 10 years. In the 1980s Over 50 scientific studies were carried out. B. As the problem grew, so did the number of studies. In 1988, over 800 articles on the topic of B. were published, compared to only 30 in 1980. Special issues of the Journal of Social Issues and American Psychologist were published devoted to the problem B. B. research is replete with contradictions. There is an acute lack of agreement in them regarding such fundamental questions as: what is B.? what are its causes? How many homeless people are there? what solutions exist for this problem? What is homelessness? B. is more than lack of permanent residence. These are conditions in which a significant and growing proportion of the population in the United States and, probably, the rest of the world finds itself. B. means being cut off from family and social circles. groups and public organizations and loss of a sense of belonging to the community. Psychol. the consequences of B. can be no less disastrous for a person’s self-esteem and well-being than the loss of housing itself. Who are the homeless? Until the 1980s homeless people found temporary shelter in places such as missions, flophouses, and brothels, but they rarely found themselves homeless. These were the preem. older, unmarried, white men with high levels of alcoholism, mental. diseases, poverty and social isolation. They were called quitters, renegades, drunkards and psychos. The “new” homeless are the working poor, women and children. They are relatively young, b. People from national minorities (eg blacks, Hispanics) die, on average, at the age of 50 years. The army of homeless people is quickly growing with unmarried women, teenagers and families with children. OK. 1/3 of homeless people in US cities are married people. Causes Research on the problem of B. appeal to two different types of reasons. Some people condemn the homeless, considering them losers unadapted to life. B., therefore, is considered as a situation created by deviant individuals, who themselves are responsible for the current state of affairs. They are classified primarily. like alcoholics, drug addicts and the mentally ill. Between 30 and 40% of homeless people abuse alcohol and approximately 10 to 15% abuse drugs. About 10% suffer from serious mental illness. diseases, and some by several at once. Statistics do not tell whether these problems occur before, during, or after a person experiences homelessness. Alcohol or drug abuse is not seen as a cause or consequence of B., but rather as a condition that existed before and was aggravated by the loss of housing. Share of mental disorder among new homeless people has not changed compared to old homeless people, even with the spread of deinstitutionalization. On the problem of mental On the health of homeless people, a dozen articles were published, in each of which poverty, unemployment and other economic factors were considered as the causes leading to B. The second area of causes considered by researchers relates to the environment. As the reasons underlying B., in the study. extreme poverty and lack of affordable housing are often cited. In 1989, there were nearly 205 times as many low-income homeowners as homeowners. Of those with permanent residence in 1992, nearly 10 million have incomes so low that they are in danger of becoming homeless. In accordance with the single calamity hypothesis, B. is a consequence of a catastrophe. crisis. Consequently, it seems difficult to predict what individual characteristics, experiences and behaviors lead to illness. One such crisis is a serious illness. Thus, deterioration in health can lead to B. and, at the same time, be its consequence. Dr. A crisis is the loss of a job, followed by a long period of unemployment. Racial discrimination, especially against African-Americans, played an important role in the emergence of the problem of B. and in the fact that it persists. How many people are homeless? In 1992, more Americans were classified as homeless than in KL. other time period, starting with the Great Depression of 1929. The actual number of new homeless people remains unknown, and the figures given are largely determined by the nature of the research being conducted. There are a huge number of people, not mentioned in the reports, who use places such as subway tunnels, empty buildings, airports, parks, prisons, hospitals, clinics, and one-room hotel rooms as temporary shelter, which, according to some researchers, leads to , to the need to increase the officially stated figures by 2 or 3 times. Research using the cross-sectional method are quite limited and are characterized by a simplified approach to the problem being studied. There are not enough longitudinal studies that would trace the path of specific people from the moment they lost their home to their exit from situation B. The number of homeless people continues to increase annually by approximately 25%. Every night during 1992, over 700 thousand homeless people remained on the streets in the United States. According to other estimates, the total number of homeless people reaches 7 million. Consequences B. often leads to stress, mental. disorders and substance abuse; Alcohol abuse is the most common. The incidence of tuberculosis among homeless people is at least 25 times higher than among the general population. Among the homeless there are also many victims of AIDS, who are more than 10 times at risk of such a disease compared to the mountains. the population as a whole. In addition, homeless people generally cannot obtain adequate health care. assistance or access to treatment. Free or discounted medical care. assistance, as well as other social programs. help is often unattainable for homeless people. Children. Children are most susceptible to the harmful effects of Condition B. The number of homeless children is growing faster than any other segment of the homeless population. Approximately 750 thousand children of primary school age are homeless, and most of them suffer from physical, psychological. and emotional disturbances. Approximately half of the homeless children examined had symptoms requiring psychiatric intervention. They may have a physical delay. development. These children are not provided with adequate care and are susceptible to infections and contagious diseases due to malnutrition, lack of vitamins and minerals, unsanitary and cramped living conditions, and lack of immunization. A variety of behavioral problems were found in homeless children from 3 to 5 years old, including disturbances in sleep, attention, speech, motor coordination, aggressiveness, shyness, dependence and lack of self-care skills. Children over 5 years old often react to their worries. The danger for the future of children is their belief that they are hopelessly “sucked” into poverty. That. poverty and poverty can become self-fulfilling prophecies passed on from generation to generation. The bond between a homeless parent and children is weakened because parents in such a situation cease to play the role of educator and breadwinner. The likelihood of child abuse increases in a situation where frustrations caused by B.'s condition exceed the level of parental self-control. Very many homeless children skip classes, repeat grades, have low grades, read poorly, do not know math and are practically illiterate. Teenagers. Approximately people become homeless each year. 1.5 million children aged 10 to 17 years. These include street children who have run away from home, abandoned children and orphans who have escaped from the state. orphanages and homes. Often these are teenagers from dysfunctional families, in which they were subjected to physical abuse. and sexual violence. Health problems and substance abuse are common, as is promiscuity, which leaves homeless teenagers vulnerable to hepatitis and AIDS. Approximately 60 thousand adolescents are infected with HIV. A lack of adult support and normal family relationships is cited as a key factor associated with homeless teenagers. Many homeless teenagers are at risk of depression and suicide. Psychological trauma. Homeless people may suffer from excessive stress (eg, trauma from losing their home, living in a shelter, or victimization). Symptom psychol. trauma is a social alienation (anomie), severance of relationships with significant others and social. institutions. B. leads to loss of trust in other people and isolation. The second symptom is learned helplessness. Traumatized homeless people come to believe that they are unable to control their own lives and that they must depend on others to meet their basic needs. Homeless people suffering from traumatic victimization include abused women, some of whom report being abused as children. In addition to social alienation and learned helplessness, traumatized women may also exhibit other dysfunctional symptoms, and many are themselves abusive towards their children. Possible solutions Problem B. affects each of us to one degree or another. When there is no shelter and food, people cannot satisfy their needs for personal development and self-actualization. Human. resources that can be used to improve the quality of one’s own life remain unused. Since in our society poverty is a direct consequence of poverty, main. Priorities in helping the homeless include building affordable housing, providing opportunities to increase income, and developing public health services. The significance of this problem is so great that many believe that only the government, which took upon itself the financing and management of such a project, could solve it. Failure to take decisive steps could ultimately prove costly for the society. Temporary housing will become a permanent feature of the American landscape, and the number of homeless people will continue to increase at uncontrollable and unprecedented rates at home and abroad. According to preliminary estimates, by 2000 the number of homeless people in the United States could reach 18 million. About 7 out of 100 people. may find themselves homeless in the future. S. Brown
How to preserve the life and health of a homeless person, how to help him maintain human dignity and return to normal life. How to work with people with addictions. How homelessness and mental health are linked? Russian and foreign experts providing assistance to the homeless were puzzled by these questions at a conference held in St. Petersburg.
“Homelessness as a complex problem” - this topic was discussed for two days in St. Petersburg by representatives of non-profit and government organizations helping the homeless from St. Petersburg, Moscow, other cities of Russia, as well as Finland, Lithuania, and the Netherlands. The conference was organized by the Nochlezhka charity organization and was supported by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the KAF Foundation and the Consulate General of the Netherlands in St. Petersburg.
Shower for homeless people
Grigory Sverdlin, the head of Nochlezhka, always says that when solving the problem of helping homeless people, we must remember not only about preserving life and health, but also about the human dignity of each of these people. That’s why Nochlezhka is so proud that it was able to open the “Cultural Laundry,” where homeless people can wash and dry their clothes. Many said that the project “won’t work” or that old women wanting to wash themselves would come running from all the surrounding houses. But the project took off and was successful. And when elderly St. Petersburg women from nearby houses come several times a month, if they come, it means they need it.
“We never refuse a bowl of hot soup to those who have a home, but who stand in line with the homeless when our Night Bus arrives,” Sverdlin emphasizes. - So, this is how the person’s circumstances developed. Same with the laundry.”
Preserving human dignity, a reminder to both the homeless person and those around him that a person comes first, and then a status - with or without a home. “Cultural laundry” is the most important thing, because a person who is trying to find a job, somehow get out, find a room, is far from indifferent to what he looks like, what he doesn’t smell, that there is no dirt under his nails. This is another step towards returning to society, to oneself, and sometimes to previously lost relatives.
Sverdlin has long had a dream to create a public shower in the city so that homeless people can wash themselves. This project requires a lot of approvals. And from the moment when Grigory told me about his dream until he now speaks with confidence about its immediate implementation, three years have passed, no less. There is a shower in the Nochlezhka courtyard, but no more than ten people can wash there every day. In about two months, a large shower will appear in the Kalininsky district. With washing machines. There, up to fifty people will be able to get themselves and their clothes in order and receive hygiene products every day.
Work centers are not an option
What is missing now to further develop assistance to homeless people? Street work. So that social work specialists (and at Nochlezhka they receive homeless people in the organization’s office) do not wait for clients, but can, following the example of their colleagues in Europe and the United States on the streets, establish contacts with homeless people, talk with them, communicate. So that in the end a homeless person is ready to accept help that can change his life.
There is also a lack of so-called “high-threshold assistance.” Approximately half of the people from the Nochlezhka shelter, having restored their documents and found work, rent housing. But when a person gets sick or loses his job, he has nothing to pay for housing. The result is a return to the street. But we do not have such a format of assistance as living in special social housing for a year or a year and a half, until a person becomes stronger in his new status. But the so-called “Rehabilitation centers” are thriving, which are easier to call “work centers”, where people – homeless or in crisis situations – work until exhaustion for food and a bed. There they are not offered any social programs, no restoration of documents. People simply lose their strength and end up back on the street.
At Nochlezhka, 50-60 people a day contact social workers, says Natalya Shavlokhova. The appointment is conducted by two social workers and a lawyer. Each person who comes must be involved in the work as much as possible - so that he himself changes his destiny, and does not passively wait. At Nochlezhka they even asked sympathizers to bring paper diaries - many had accumulated blank and unnecessary ones - so that the homeless person and the social worker could together write a plan of action for the person for the weeks ahead.
What’s new in the Nochlezhka social service is that homeless women can ask to be advised and helped by a woman. You can also get tested for HIV; if necessary, Nochlezhka will help you register with the AIDS center and receive therapy.
"Blind Spots"
One of the topics of the Nochlezhka conference was the topic of helping people not just homeless, but suffering from various types of addictions - alcohol, drugs.
“Addiction does not have a beautiful face,” says Evgenia Kolpakova, who has extensive experience helping those who come to the House of Hope on the Mountain. Now Evgenia works at Caritas, providing free consultations to people in crisis situations, and even those suffering from addictions. Evgeniya draws attention to the so-called “blind spots”, where people end up with a whole “bouquet” of serious problems, and it is almost impossible to help them, and three public organizations of the city and the Community of the Sisters of Mother Teresa, which help those who find themselves at the very bottom of life, Yes, without registration or even without citizenship - overloaded.
Homeless addicted people with cancer, pregnant drug-addicted women with small children, people with mental disorders and addictions – also homeless – come to Caritas for consultations. We have many different comprehensive centers, but it is rarely possible to “comprehensively help” a person with such a complex “bouquet”.
Evgenia Kolpakova also raised the topic of “slave centers,” which not only catch clients for slave labor, but also terrorize relatives if the client, sensing something is wrong, refuses to go where he will be forced to work until exhaustion, and even beaten. Kolpakova advises not to trust “work centers”, which sometimes even have very colorful websites, but on them, for example, there is no specific address, that is, finding out where your relative is being kept and supposedly freeing him from addiction is almost impossible.
Non-judgmental approach
People from different regions of Russia, from Moscow and from abroad - Lithuania, Finland, and the Netherlands came to the conference.
The Moscow experience made the only representative of Smolny at this meeting, Sergei Matskevich, an official of the social policy committee responsible for helping the homeless, “envy with white envy”: Boris Tretyak, head of the State Treasury Institution (GKU) Center for Social Adaptation named after Elizaveta Glinka, named the figure of 400 million rubles, which the capital government sends to the work of the center. And the car fleet was updated - 30 cars, including five slot buses, which are parked at train stations in cold weather to keep people warm. Well, Moscow is a rich city and we can only envy their budget.
Colleagues from Amsterdam and Finland spoke about helping the homeless there. Vlada Petrovskaya has her own experience of homelessness. She currently works for the non-governmental homeless assistance organization Vailla Vakinaista Asuntoa in Finland.
“We help absolutely everyone. For us, a homeless person is, first of all, a person,” says Vlada. – We have a shelter with two dozen apartments intended for people with more than 5 years of vagrancy experience. Most of the people living there are men with very difficult personal histories, most of them suffering from mental or physical health problems. The city buys services from us, roughly speaking, rents housing from us and houses homeless people in it.”
In Finland there are no problems with the restoration of documents, the entire emphasis of the work is aimed at helping the person, at his rehabilitation, and there are no ultimatums - “you stop drinking alcohol and drugs, here you are for six months - during this time become a normal person and get a job.” Vlada says that the main task is for a person not to be homeless, so that he remembers how normal it is to go to the store, buy groceries, wash, cook, pay bills, etc.
Arkady Radolov from Amsterdam works for the public organization De Regenborg Group. Here they help those who find themselves in the Netherlands without EU citizenship, without money, housing, but, for example, with drug addiction, without health insurance, without substitution therapy. There is a day center and a night shelter, employees speak 12 languages, and up to a hundred people from three dozen countries contact the public organization every day.
“We work with people who do not have the rights of EU citizens,” Arkady notes. “Our main question is the question of the rights of these people to social assistance.” Arkady was asked to tell in more detail how the “use room” functions - the structure of the shelter also includes something for a drug addict to take his drugs under normal conditions, under the supervision of a social worker. There were no murders, brawls or overdose-related deaths at the shelter, if that. “It is important to have such a basic basis as a non-judgmental approach to these people,” says Arkady. “Believe me, I don’t have to motivate people not to sleep under a bridge on the street, usually they don’t want to do this themselves, and in Amsterdam this is not allowed - the fine is 80 euros.”
Homelessness is getting younger – Nochlezhka social workers have noticed this. Recently, several young guys about 25 years old helped set up a heating tent. They came from the Far East, their studies and work didn’t work out, and their documents were stolen. They are quite adequate young people, but their parents at home know nothing about their situation, and apparently they cannot help. And another man, who is 33 years old, is a former officer; what happened to him, why he ended up outside the army, outside his family is unknown. Having become a civilian, he came to St. Petersburg to look for work; his documents along with his belongings were stolen at the station. He came to one of the state regional social assistance centers. Now everything has worked out for him - his documents were restored, he got a job. But for him, these months of homeless life were incredibly difficult. And not even physically, but psychologically. For example, he did not want to go to the heating tents. I sat at night in Bukvoed on Vosstaniya with one single cup of coffee until I could find money for this cup.
Galina Artemenko, Fontanka.ru
People may say they want to help the homeless, but their behavior says something else.
Several years ago, while David Sleppy was walking through downtown Toronto, he noticed a young homeless man who reminded him vividly of his own son. The man was sleeping on the sidewalk.
“Whose son is this?” - he thought.
Slappy took a photograph of the man, and this became the beginning of his photo book, which aims to show the invisible lives of homeless people. The book is called “No One Sees Me.” The name arose from a meeting during his trip.
“What’s the worst thing for a homeless person?” - Slappy asked one such person on the street.
“Nobody sees me,” he heard in response.
Why can't we see
Homeless people are invisible every day and every hour because passers-by do not notice them on sidewalks, in parks, in subway stations. But perhaps the most striking moment of such indifference is when homeless people ask people for help. Such requests as “Will you have some change?”, “Can you give me a dollar?” and “Help, please” usually go unheard and unnoticed.
“Begging is terrible. It's just very difficult. You're constantly faced with rejection and rejection,” says Paul Boden, who was homeless for several years and now works as managing director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project. The goal of this project is to identify and eradicate the underlying causes of poverty and homelessness.
“The vast majority of people who walk past beggars ignore them, say rude things or look at them as if they are some kind of scum and scum. But there are those few who show sympathy and help. And there are other people who will at least look such a person in the eyes and say: “Sorry, guy, I can’t do it today.”
One of the most obvious reasons why people react so differently to beggars is the difference in their ideas about homeless people.
“People have this attitude towards them - that they are lazy, that they deserve what they got, that they don’t want to work, but are just waiting for handouts. These people have no compassion,” says Wayne State University psychology professor Paul Toro, who studies public perceptions of poverty and homelessness.
Through his research, Thoreau found that people from countries such as the United States and Britain, which have more capitalist economies and fewer social services, are more likely to believe that the main cause of homelessness is personal weaknesses and shortcomings. Compared to citizens of other countries, they have less compassion for the homeless. Meanwhile, there are more homeless people in the US and Britain than in, say, Germany, where there is a guaranteed minimum income, more generous unemployment benefits, and more rights for tenants.
Still, Thoreau says, most people in the United States are sympathetic to the homeless.
“There is no compassion fatigue now, as there was in the media for a while,” he notes. “Such compassion fatigue appeared in the media in the early 90s, then their interest in the homeless somehow leveled off, but society did not.”
Thoreau also found in his research that the majority of people (60%) say they would be willing to pay higher taxes to help the homeless.
But while there is support for abstract ideas about helping homeless people, actually meeting a person asking for help often generates hostility.
“The closer such poverty is to a wealthy person, the more disgusting it seems,” says Bowden. “And the biggest problem is that the beggar himself is disgusting, and not abstract poverty.” He's unpleasant. He smells bad."
As a result, Bowden says, people want privacy and privacy in public places—and the degree of that privacy depends on who is asking for help.
“It seems to me that the poorer and dirtier a person is, the darker his skin, the larger the bubble of private space that strolling Americans like to surround themselves with,” Bowden says. This privacy bubble, he believes, prevents people from showing solidarity with the homeless.
“For the last 30 years, we have been presenting the homeless in such a satanic guise that passers-by are simply unable to believe that they too could end up on the street - after all, they are not crazy, not drug addicts, not alcoholics and not fools.”
However, Robert Prasch does not agree with this - in his opinion, passers-by still think about the fact that they may end up on the street. Professor Prash, who teaches economics at Middlebury College, says that on a subconscious level, some people know that if not for their circumstances, they too might end up on the street.
“Psychologically it’s easier to say to yourself: ‘No, I would never become like that, because this person is different from me,’” he explains. “So I think people are still thinking about it.” They think almost instinctively. … Or maybe it’s a survivor’s guilt complex. People at such a moment simply cannot look at their luck. It's starting to get scary. We have to seriously think about what would happen if they found themselves in the place of the homeless.”
In fact, nearly 40% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, meaning they could become homeless within months if they get laid off. However, as Prash notes, many people, especially progressives, often believe that they can change these attitudes with better information. He says we need to explore people's emotional beliefs, which begin at a young age and become ingrained in a person's mind.
Prash continues: “People have certain emotional beliefs that go beyond information issues. Well, for example, “America is an exceptional country,” “America is a place where you succeed if you work hard,” or “I succeeded because I worked hard and because I am an exceptional person.” If a person sees a lot of homeless people on the street, then this begins to contradict his emotional beliefs. Then, it seems to me, people begin to become rude from within. It's like a 'I need to defend my beliefs' type of statement."
David Levine, who serves as associate dean for academic affairs in the Faculty of International Studies. Joseph Korbel of the University of Denver, says the issue is much broader than emotional beliefs when it comes to work or success. He says a lack of knowledge about homelessness gives people a space to vent their fears - and then run from them.
“We grow up with a deficit of self-esteem. We grow up deeply questioning our own worth. … And when we meet a person who culturally represents a picture of shame or failure, then by definition we activate our own deficits in the area of self-esteem. So the moment we encounter a homeless person, all our inner feelings are awakened, and we have the question: “What should I do with these feelings?” With the help of this person we hold them back. It's the same with greed. Capitalists are greedy. But we can also use them to curb our greed. We say: “I’m not greedy, it’s the capitalists who are greedy.” This happens very often... it’s copying mechanisms.”
Levine notes that begging is often associated with shame, and people react to it in different ways (although everyone tries to hide this feeling). Some, he says, try to run away from their own shame, and begin to openly shame the homeless person (by urging him to find a job, etc.). Others may give money because they feel they are to blame for shaming the homeless person. They exaggerate their guilt in an attempt to repair the damage. There are even people, Levine says, who give frequently to transfer their shame onto others rather than to feel it themselves.
“What this all suggests is that there is a fairly strong, if temporary, identification with the homeless person...who represents the outer form of our inner, shameful, needy, incompetent and unsuccessful self,” he continues. “Encountering a homeless person can make us feel the shame of another person, which through such identification becomes our own shame.”
According to Levine, since shame is taboo in our society, people often find solace in such encounters. Probably, if people thought about their discomfort, they would begin to understand their actions better.
“I think understanding our motivations puts us in a better position in these encounters with other people,” Levine says. “We offend them less and less often when we know why we do what we do.”
Face to face with poverty
Although billions of people live in poverty and many people want to help those in need, year after year passes without much change. And the response to poor people's requests for money can show why this is so. A meeting with a beggar is a rare and difficult moment when one of them has the opportunity to respond to the other’s request for help, or at least somehow respond to it. But most people ignore beggars and the discomfort of such an encounter - just as society as a whole in a global context ignores poverty.
Perhaps the first step to solving problems of poverty is to take stock of ourselves and our responses to poverty. As we begin to question our motives, Bowden encourages us to criticize the structures that cause global poverty.
“Begging is a manifestation of racism, classism, housing shortages,” he says. “So let’s not just give money and say to ourselves: “Oh, how good this makes me feel.” Giving people money when they beg is not a solution to poverty. We're just helping a fellow human being, and that's great."
This is probably a good start. But just the beginning, nothing more.
But if we can help the people we meet, if we acknowledge them, then perhaps we can begin to solve one of the biggest problems behind poverty.
Constant meetings with homeless people while preparing the book helped David Slappy see himself in them. “Don’t we see part of ourselves in this person?” - he asks a question in his book.
Sleppy says his project aims to create awareness that homeless people are like everyone else and therefore require recognition. He emphasizes: “Now I always try to look people in the eyes and smile towards them. This means that you see them on the street, recognize them and acknowledge them.”
InoSMI materials contain assessments exclusively of foreign media and do not reflect the position of the InoSMI editorial staff.
Photo: “Friends on the street”
In November, volunteers of the Friends on the Street movement, with the support of the Predaniye.ru portal and the Presidential Grants Foundation, opened a lecture hall dedicated to the topic of homelessness. At the first lecture, movement coordinator Natalya Markova spoke about the problems faced by people who want to help the homeless, and about how to properly help the homeless. Such Things publishes the main points of her lecture.
How to help the homeless?
How to help if a person sleeps on the ground during daylight hours in the summer?You don’t have to wake him up, because he might not sleep at night. Sleeping at night for homeless people is often fraught with danger.
If a homeless person sleeps on the street in winter– this is different. Sometimes sleeping in winter can lead to freezing. If it’s closer to night, it makes sense to wake the person up, offer him tea, and remind him to find somewhere to sleep for the night.
If a homeless person does not ask for anything, this does not mean that he does not need anything.You can ask the person if they need help. You can ask the person’s name and introduce yourself. We hear our name several times a day, and people who find themselves on the street are often deprived of this luxury. And nicknames arise, or simply “woman” or “man,” and along with the name they lose themselves.
If a person asks for a return ticket,then it could just be a hidden request for money. Try to understand what he really needs. You can buy a ticket with a card so that you can get your money back. If a person refuses, it means he has other needs.
If you often see the same homeless person,then get to know him. You will have the opportunity to help him sometimes.
If a person on the street is intoxicated– call the police, or better yet, social patrol. During the cold season, social patrol works in emergency mode and will definitely take a person to a heating point. This way the person will remain alive. At many stations there are social patrol buses - they also accept people intoxicated.
How do homeless people feel?
Many homeless people are lonely. Homeless people are used to the fact that most of the time they are not noticed. They try to be invisible because they often face aggression. They are ready to be kicked or scolded at any moment. There is a huge gap between the warm world of people who live at home and the world of homeless people. Homelessness takes a person out of the so-called “normal life” and leaves completely different people, with different destinies and stories, in complete isolation, on an island that no one cares about.
Homeless people destabilize those who listen to them. The interlocutor may begin to feel a loss of self-control, helplessness - it can be scary to shut up and listen to a homeless person. Volunteers of the Friends on the Street movement prefer to ask short questions in order to quickly understand everything and act first.
Under the guise of a homeless person, there is first and foremost a person. The portrait of a person without a home is not at all clear. We cannot say with certainty about education, profession, or marital status. Only that this person does not have housing by right of ownership or rent, that is, he is in a situation that forces him to live and spend the night away from home. An elderly man who wanted to provide for his old age and was deceived in a transaction. A man released from prison. A former orphanage boy awaiting housing. A family that has taken out a mortgage and is no longer able to pay it off.
Any initiatives and measures taken that are based on a generalized portrait of a homeless person and work with the category are doomed to low effectiveness. The complexity and heterogeneity of the world of homelessness makes it difficult to understand and intervene. But it is precisely this diversity that can be a valuable resource for society. A person living on the street reminds us that the opportunity to personally meet another world, so different from ours, is precious.