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URUGUAY:
A 13-Hour Respite
from Homelessness
Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, (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, 28
percent of Uruguay's population
of 3.2 million - some 900,000
people - live in poverty, and
two percent - or 64,000 - 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
2015.
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.
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