A family of four members, one of them “100% dependent and connected to machines”, has been evicted in the Sant Mori de Llefià neighborhood of Badalona (Barcelonès Nord). The eviction had been stopped on three previous occasions but was finally carried out this Monday with a large police presence and the peaceful support of the Sant Roc Som Badalona platform.
The man with physical and mental disabilities was initially transferred to the Can Ruti Hospital but “once he is discharged he will remain on the street” with the rest of the family members, explains Carles Sagués, secretary of the platform. Sagués has criticized “the poor management” of the city council and has called it “a scandal” that the administration does not have “resources to care for the most vulnerable people.”
Thirty minutes before the scheduled time for the eviction, members of the Sant Roc Som Badalona platform gathered to show their support in front of the premises where until this Monday a family lived with two people with reduced mobility, one of them “totally dependent and connected to machines to survive.”
At 10 o’clock sharp, two vans from the Mossos d’Esquadra arrived to begin the procedure. The members of the platform did not resist and allowed the police and health personnel to remove the family members from the premises one by one. Two of them left on their own, while the other two had to be transported in a wheelchair and, most seriously, on a stretcher to be transferred to the Can Ruti Hospital.
From the Sant Roc Som Badalona platform, Carles Sagués has attacked the City Council for “not caring for someone who is 100% dependent.” He believes that “it is unjustifiable that a vulnerable person who needs a machine to live is left on the street.” He adds that “despite the efforts that social workers have made with the evicted family, Social Services does not have sufficient resources to solve the situation.”
The evicted family spent a month and a half living without electricity and “they had to recharge the machines that man needs to breathe in establishments on the same street.” However, a few days ago, the Sant Roc Som Badalona platform had hired an accountant for the occupied premises and recently they had electricity again.
Sagués explains that the entity is “continuously calling for” social meters “especially now that the cold is coming and it is expected that many families will have problems paying for electricity or gas.” The secretary of the platform believes that “the administration is not addressing the social, economic and entrenched poverty problems that the city suffers.”
Of the 53 eviction processes that have come to them since November, explains Sagués, “all have been stopped, except for the one this Monday on the Santa Coloma highway and that of the eight families on Calderón de la Barca street last Friday.” .
From Sant Roc Som Badalona they point out that the person with total dependence has been transferred to the Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital – Can Ruti – as a measure already planned within the framework of the judicial operation “because he is a man who needs care and cannot literally stay in the street”. Sagués warns that “in a maximum of two days” the center will probably discharge him. “We hope that the City Council gets involved and finds a place for him in at least one social health center,” he adds.
The council, in turn, explains that a part of the people who lived in the vacated premises left for Sabadell a few days ago. The forecast, according to the sources consulted, is that the mother of the dependent man can also settle. Regarding the future of the man with total dependence once he is discharged from Can Ruti, the City Council has not yet made a statement.
