URUGUAY: A 13-Hour Respite from Homelessness

By Diana Cariboni Reprint | | Print |

Diana Cariboni

MONTEVIDEO, Jun 15 2005 (IPS) - It’s 7:00 PM and has already been dark for a while. Although the southern hemisphere winter has not yet officially begun, the cold on the streets of the Uruguayan capital attests otherwise.

Some 30 young men are lined up outside of an old house that serves as a winter shelter for the homeless in Montevideo. They are not warmly dressed, and they carry all of their belongings in plastic bags or old knapsacks.

The shelter in downtown Montevideo forms part of a winter emergency programme for the homeless launched by the leftist Broad Front city government in 2000. One of the aims is to completely eliminate the (infrequent) deaths by freezing of people living on the streets of a city where temperatures can dip below zero on the coldest nights.

The shelter provides a warm bed, hot shower, dinner and breakfast.

The doors open at 7:00 PM and no one arrives late, although people are admitted until 10:00 PM. Two police officers guard the doorway. As the men file in, their bags are searched, to keep out drugs or weapons, and their names are written down on a chart by a member of the Anglican Church, which runs the shelter.

One of the men is 36-year-old José, who hails from the northern department (province) of Tacuarembó. “What I want is to work,” he says.

Although José once worked in the construction industry, he has been unemployed for years. He came to the capital of this South American country at age 15, and now spends his days scavenging for metal and other waste products that he can sell for recycling. This is the second winter that he has spent his nights in the shelters.

As he talks to IPS, what stands out is his concern about preserving what little he has left. “I take care of myself, I don’t do drugs, I take care of the few clothes I have, and I try to look neat.”

8:00 PM: All of the night’s guests have arrived. Only one is barred from entering – a young man who shouts at and argues with the other homeless men standing in line and with the police officers, who deal with him patiently.

The people who work in the shelter explain that he is “high” on basic cocaine paste, a cheap drug that is more toxic than crack and has been causing severe damages among young people in the capital for the past few years.

“Yesterday he was in bad shape, and we told him that if he wasn’t calm when he came back today, we wouldn’t let him in,” says one of the social workers standing near the entryway. “When he’s in that state, he causes conflicts, and requires constant attention.”

But in the shelter, everything is calm. The house is freshly painted and the bathrooms are clean. The inside doors have been removed from their hinges, and there is no heating, but many homes in Montevideo lack central heating.

A sudden cold wave made it necessary to free up one of the rooms for additional beds by moving the cafeteria tables into the hallway, and the shelter can now sleep 70 people.

The bunkbeds of unvarnished wood carry brand-new mattresses, some of which still have their plastic wrapping. Each guest is given clean sheets and a blanket, but there is a shortage of bedding materials, as well as warm clothing to hand out to those in need.

8:30 PM: The guests have taken their showers and are sitting around the wooden tables covered with plastic tablecloths. Some chat and laugh among themselves, while others sit quietly on their own.

Dinner – a plate of stew of rice or pasta, vegetables and beef, and a piece of fruit for dessert – is prepared by the army, which brings the food every night in military vehicles run on fuel provided by the state-run oil refinery, Ancap.

“We try to help them recover or strengthen habits of hygiene and coexistence, but it isn’t easy, because life on the streets leads to the deterioration of all of that,” says psychologist Dora Durán of the Anglican Church, one of the three people in charge of running the shelter.

A teenager burps loudly as he walks by, but apologises when he notes our presence.

Another guest comes up to Durán and asks if he can go out to the corner bar, which has a television set, because tonight the movie “Rocky” is showing. “We already discussed that, and no, it’s not possible,” the psychologist answers with a firm voice and a smile.

“You have to put yourself in their shoes to understand what they’re going through, and try to make sure they don’t lose more than they have already lost,” says Durán, summing up the essence of her efforts with homeless people, who she has worked with for three years.

“I try to use this (shelter) to help me get back on my feet,” says Roberto, 33. He hasn’t had a job since 1996, and has been homeless for the past three years. “I’ve done everything, I was even a fire fighter,” he says. Although he once had a family, he found himself on the streets after he broke up with his partner.

“I have two kids, the youngest must already be a year old, but I never see them. I think they’re in Montevideo, but I don’t know where,” he adds.

His only source of cash is an informal “job” at a taxi stand, which he shares with another unemployed man. “We don’t earn a lot, 50 pesos a day (two dollars) would be about tops,” says Roberto.

10:00 PM: It’s bed-time, when the lack of privacy in the crowded rooms becomes most intense.

The city government’s Plan Invierno (Winter Plan) opened this year on May 15, with 330 beds in 13 shelters in the capital run by non-governmental organisations. The aim is to expand coverage to 700 people before the winter is over.

The number of homeless people in Montevideo, a city of 1.45 million, cannot be reliably estimated because the total fluctuates constantly: one day a homeless person may be staying in a cheap pension, the next day in the home of a relative or neighbour, and the following day on the streets.

“When we go around the city, we only see the homelessness that is visible. How can you find the homeless people sleeping behind a wall or those who happened to find a place to stay for a night?” asks Nicolás Minetti at the Ministry of Social Development.

There are no studies on the number of street persons in Uruguay, although some estimates put the total between 6,000 and 8,000 nationwide, he adds.

He notes the wide variety of people who find themselves homeless. “This year we’ve seen a lot of families with children, and many young men who have problems because of basic cocaine paste,” Minetti tells IPS.

There are also those who have spent years or decades on the streets, and have made it their way of life – and who often refuse to give it up even when given a chance.

“I don’t like to go to the shelters. I went last year, but you catch lice and scabies. Some people don’t like to bathe,” says an elderly woman settling down for the night under the overhang of a building in the Old City.

Moving closer in order to hear her better, I come up against body odour that hits like a brick wall.

Her partner is arranging a small mattress and a few blankets on the ground, while she says “I’m waiting for my pastor. They’re building us a house, and it’ll be ready before the worst of the winter hits.”

Some teams of volunteers follow the same routes every night, providing people sleeping on the streets with a sandwich or hot beverage, and trying to convince them to go to shelters with more flexible rules.

When springtime arrives, in late September, everything changes. The shelters close their doors, but “through our follow-up efforts, we try to give them a hand until November or December,” when the weather starts getting hot, says Durán.

Summertime brings an interruption in the ties that were created. Some homeless people find a job, and even rent a room. But in many cases, “there is a huge deterioration,” she says.

The new leftist Broad Front national government, in office since March, is aiming for shelters that are open year-round, as well as day-time drop-in centres and state-run homes for the elderly, the mentally ill, addicts, and families with children.

The recently created Ministry of Social Development is making the winter shelter initiative part of the National Emergency Assistance Plan, a comprehensive programme aimed at pulling 200,000 to 300,000 people out of extreme poverty nationwide.

Various government agencies and non-government organisations gradually became involved in the Winter Plan, coordinating and expanding existing efforts.

The shelters themselves are run by the Anglican Church, the Franciscan Ecological Pastoral Research Centre, and the Centre for the Promotion of Human Dignity.

According to the latest official statistics, from last April, 31.6 percent of Uruguay’s population of 3.2 million – some 900,000 people – live in poverty, and four percent – or 120,000 – in extreme poverty.

These figures, however, are based on a survey of households carried out in towns of at least 5,000 people, and the Ministry of Social Development says it found many more people living in extreme poverty when its functionaries began to carry out door-to-door surveys in smaller towns.

In any case, the statistics reflect what is seen on the streets: the persistent and often degrading poverty that has expanded and deepened over the past decade in this small country that was once known as the “Switzerland of South America”.

United Nations agencies estimate the total number of slumdwellers worldwide at nearly one billion, including 128 million in Latin America. One of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 2000 is to bring about significant improvements in the living conditions of 100 million slumdwellers around the world by 2020.

But the MDGs do not mention those who do not even have a precarious roof over their heads in a slum or shantytown.

7:00 AM: The new day has arrived, and it’s time to get up. The social workers wake up the guests, who have time to visit the bathroom and eat breakfast, which consists of bread and hot milk. “We can drink up to three mugs,” says Roberto. It seems like a good idea to do so.

8:00 AM: The doors open, and the men head out to another day on the streets.