Kyriaki Vagionaki: Homeless people: An invisible population
Another day has begun. I woke up, I made coffee and I run to catch the bus to go to university. After a long and a tiring day I returned home. I opened my bag, found my keys and unlocked the door. I changed my clothes and I relaxed on the sofa. Daily routine of mine, yours and millions of people around the world. However, there are millions “invisible” souls that doesn’t have keys. The only thing they have is the life in streets or in best case under the roof of a devastated building or temporary accommodation in a friend’s house. Homeless people it could be the modern actors at the theatrical play of Beckett “waiting for godot”. Pointlessness of life, loss of hope, the effort to be caught on something which does not really exists or would never given to you. The leading actors, Vladimir and Estragon it could be the heroes of roads in Greece, Czech Republic or anywhere in the world. After the lecture Dynamics of social inclusion/exclusion in public space, I raised awareness and I realized the higher scale of the problem of homeliness in all European countries, and especially in my home country the last years when the economic crisis had started. According to European Commission, homelessness beyond sleeping rough, may include situations of living in temporary, insecure or poor-quality housing. Homelessness levels have risen recently in most parts of Europe and the crisis seems to have aggravated the situation. The profile of the homeless population has been changing and now includes more young people and children, migrants, Roma and other disadvantaged minorities, women and families are increasingly at-risk of homelessness. United Nations latest statistics at 2005, 100 million people worldwide were homeless. The latest statistics of European Commission estimated that 4,1 million people are homeless in Europe.
Feantsa, the European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless, has released its second report on housing exclusion in Europe, in conjunction with French housing charity Fondation Abbé Pierre. The report highlights “alarming evidence of rising homelessness” and calls for EU member states to put eliminating homelessness at the core of their social policy agendas. The report says homelessness is rising in all European countries except Finland, and singles out cities such as London, Paris, Brussels, Dublin, Vienna, Athens, Warsaw and Barcelona as places where the housing system is particularly under strain. In London, the number of families in temporary accommodation has increased by 50% since 2010, and in Copenhagen, youth homelessness has increased by 75% since 2009. Warsaw saw an increase of 37% of people sleeping rough or in emergency shelters since 2013, and one in 70 people in Athens are now homeless, most have become so since 2011.
The last years, economic crisis has significantly contributes in rising homelessness. Job losses and the difficulty to seek a new one have made many people living in streets. In old times the majority of the homeless people were drug addicts, immigrants or people with health disorders who find it difficult to integrate in the rest society, but now there are so many young and educated people who are in danger to be homeless too. Poverty is one of the main push factor that lead to homeliness.
We are working to survive. We throw our food and we don’t spare it while we know that some people are starving and they can’t have a plate with food. Why this inequality? We have become so unhuman, we don’t think about the other people and we are looking for happiness not in our hearts but at money and tangible things. Human being has achieved so many great things in many levels but at the same time created so much distance and inequality between us. We forgot the human which it could be our neighbor, our friend, a stranger that we meet at the street or even ourselves. My consideration is how we can solve this kind of phenomenon which does not respect human kind? No one deserves that life where social constructed circumstances lead to live like this. Human kind is proud for so many things and we always stare at the bright side of life. However, what about the other side? The dark one which many people experienced every single day? We ignore the pain and the sorrow that many people go through and we close our eyes neglected to see the truth; our goals get rich and self promoted.
The night has come again and tonight I will dream the same dream, a world of platonic justice until the sun rises again and wake up to go back to my boring and unholy routine.