About 18,000 people live without a home in Catalonia. They are 80% more than in 2016 and the figure keeps increasing. The entities promoting a law of transitional and urgent measures to face and eradicate homelessness make this estimate, which alone should push Parliament to immediately approve this law. The need to have this legal instrument has the broad support of social entities and yesterday it received the endorsement of seven professional associations.
In an event organized with the Association of Journalists of Catalonia by the promoters of the law (Community of Sant Egidi, Sant Joan de Déu Social Services, Arrels Fundació, Càritas Catalunya and Assís Center d’Acollida), the entities that work in in this area they presented a joint manifesto in which they reiterate to Parliament the demand for a law that should help alleviate a phenomenon that manifests itself in many Catalan municipalities and, especially, in Barcelona.
The aim, the signatories of the manifesto point out, is to “ensure the dignity and humanity” of people who suffer from this chakra and to recognize their rights.
The day “A law for the rights of homeless people”. A law of dignity” was used to present the support of seven professional associations to the claim of the social entities. These are the associations of journalists, lawyers, psychologists, pedagogues, social workers, social educators and doctors.
The professor of Administrative Law at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), Antoni Milian, director of the proposed law, warned of the existence of “a legal gap in the protection of homeless people that must be filled if we want put an end to the suffering and indignity they live with.”
Milian believes that the approval of the law will allow stability in public policies on homelessness and will favor a more orderly and efficient way to address it. In short, it will allow “abandoning welfare to adopt the logic of rights, which is much more guaranteeing”.
Salvador Maneu, director of Sant Joan de Déu Serveis Socials Barcelona and representative of the five entities promoting the legislative initiative, thanked the professional associations for their support. He emphasized the fact that homelessness has worsened and no longer respects anyone: young people, the elderly, women, families, especially single parents, people with work but with insufficient wages to be able to access housing, people with mental illnesses, Catalans and foreigners… “It is a reality – he affirmed – that attacks the dignity of the people who suffer from it and that at the same time consumes the dignity of the society as a whole that tolerates it”.
Social organizations have denounced the presence of structural factors that do not help to solve the problem, such as the prohibitive price of rents or the consolidation of an asymmetric labor market, which generates unqualified jobs and very precarious conditions. A poignant fact is that the life expectancy of homeless people is about 30 years below that of the general population.
The law, which reached Parliament in January 2022, aims to put an end, within a maximum period of two years from its entry into force, to situations in which some people are forced to sleep flat, specify the director of the proposal. For the promoting entities, the key figure in the law is “the provision of decent residential service”, which can be offered in various ways: boarding house, hostel, hotel, residential equipment and insertion housing while there are not enough flats available for accommodate these people. It also includes existing measures, such as registration and access to health and social services and benefits such as guaranteed citizenship income (RGC) and minimum vital income (IMV), and creates new rights and services such as shower, locker and laundry, among others.
