EL PAÍS openly offers the América Futura section for its daily and global information contribution to sustainable development. If you would like to support our journalism, subscribe here.
According to the Observatório Polos de Cidadania of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), an institution, São Paulo is suffering from the largest housing crisis in its history. Since 2015, the number of homeless people has continued to rise, reaching 53,400 in June this year. Reference, which has been studying the human rights of vulnerable populations since 1995. The data is extracted directly from the Cadastro Único (CadÚnico) system, a registry created by the federal government that allows obtaining information on how low-income families live in Brazil. The figures from the São Paulo city council are somewhat more moderate. According to the latest municipal street count, there were 31,884 homeless people at the end of 2021, 7,540 more than just before the pandemic, an increase of 31% in two years. What is striking is the 111% increase in the number of families.
On the streets of the 12 million-inhabitant metropolis, especially in the central region, you can increasingly see tents and people wrapped in gray blankets. Homeless people use every corner of public space to rest; They stand in endless lines to receive food or wander around with their few belongings. Some people use drugs like crack or alcohol to cope with the harshness of the streets and not to feel cold or hungry. “There is a lot of hypocrisy. We want equality and respect to get out of this situation,” complains Anelle, holding a plastic bottle of cachaça. He is over forty years old and says that he has been living on the streets for about four years with the three children who are by his side. He would rather sleep in the tent he set up in front of the town hall than in one of the accommodations offered to him. “Here we get more money and food, we want jobs and a decent house,” he says.
A homeless person under a bridge in São Paulo. Paula Lopez Barba
The Housing First strategy
The solution proposed by the City Council under the current term of Ricardo Nunes (MDB) to stop the serious increase in homeless families in São Paulo is to create 18 square meter micro-apartments for temporary stays. Anyone who lives on the street has access less than two years ago – a period in which the authorities consider that the situation has not yet become chronic – and a maximum of 24 months will pass, with the possibility of extending the stay following an assessment by the technical team. “Our goal is autonomy, so that these people have permanent housing in 18 months,” explains the person in charge of the Reencontro project, Carlos Bezerra Júnior (PSDB), municipal secretary for social assistance and development of São Paulo, as well as a doctor and Protestant priest. . “It is a pilot project, if it works well we will expand it. We use the so-called “Housing First” strategy to immediately get the person off the streets and regain their dignity. You will receive training and a monthly salary. The focus is on families with children,” he says between the two rows of prefabricated huts in the Vila Reencontro appendabaú, in the center of the city. It is the second villa they have built as part of the Reencontro program he led. It was inaugurated in February this year and currently 38 of the 40 houses are occupied by families with up to four members, accommodating a total of 106 people.
In the town of Appendixabaú there is a playground, a communal garden, a games room and 40 furnished one-room studios with insulated walls, a fan, an equipped kitchen and a private bathroom. “An important detail is that every house has a number,” says Bezerra in front of one of the temporary accommodations. Something as simple as an address makes job hunting easier and allows receiving correspondence and orders. “Given the overall situation, we brought forward the count of homeless people by two years and stratified the profiles and solutions. Traditionally, politicians have viewed them as a homogeneous bloc: male, adult, unemployed, drug addicts or with mental health problems, but there is great diversity. We have to give concrete answers to concrete requirements,” he explains.
Four kilometers away is the Vila Reencontro Cruzeiro do Sul, in Canindé, which was inaugurated in December 2022 and also houses a maximum of 160 residents. According to the Municipal Secretary of Assistance and Social Development (SMADS), 39 families now live there and the village is to be expanded to 270 houses in which up to 1,080 people can live. The delivery of Vila Reencontro Pari in the eastern area with 100 modular houses is scheduled for September.
Carlos Bezerra Júnior shows a model of the micro-housing units. Paula Lopez Barba
“I think that the Vila Reencontro project can be an alternative to “Housing First”, the public policy of providing housing first applied in several countries, but it could also be a pure marketing strategy,” thinks Alexandre Benoit, architect and professor the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning Escola da Cidade in São Paulo. “We have to be critical because at the moment it is a very small action, but it is widely reported. A lot of photos are taken and statements from fragile people are collected,” he adds.
Like other urban planners, he believes that increasing the size of shelter villages would not be an appropriate solution because it could create ghettos that increase the stigmatization of homeless people. He claims that the key to solving the problem of lack of access to housing in São Paulo is to release some of the disused properties and make them available to different socio-economic classes. “We have the largest reserve of unused buildings in Brazil, perhaps in Latin America, that are deteriorating and that is very serious. It seems contradictory to me to create separate spaces in the city and allow the existing structure not to perform the social function of property. “The city council should accelerate the redevelopment of these buildings, just as it has made enormous efforts to hastily adopt a new master plan for the city that advocates a predatory approach to the real estate market.” To achieve this, she proposes an agreement with Universities and colleges of architecture and urban planning to temporarily open closed buildings and thus ensure a minimum level of infrastructure. “Innovative formulas could be devised during gradual renovations of existing buildings, that would be more revolutionary,” he concludes.
Mental health of homeless people and those who care for them
Jorge Broide has been working with homeless people for 47 years. He has a doctorate in social psychology and has been a professor at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP) for 15 years. He has never seen so many people on the streets and believes that this is currently the biggest problem in São Paulo. “It’s the city’s wound and I don’t see any serious, orderly discussion without demagoguery. There is a lack of consistent public policy.” A year and a half ago, together with the Center for Special Studies (CEDEP), he founded a university project PUC-SP to work with homeless people on the streets. “We need to articulate the state, university and private initiative,” he says.
Broide believes that the idea of Vilas Reencontro could be good if there was personalized care, but that São Paulo generally lacks trained, valued and well-paid professionals to help people leaving the country integrate back into society. Society. “Social workers are destroyed, intoxicated by misery and violence. In the Housing First model, monitoring is essential. When a person lives on the street, very important psychological processes take place. It is a process so powerful that it changes the idea of space and time. Homeless people have suffered a series of losses and need support to restore social, emotional and economic bonds.” And he points to the situation of the Brazilian prison system as one of the causes of homelessness. “Half of the homeless population comes from the prison system. Since 2019, upon release from prison, one has to pay a fine to have the sentence canceled and political rights restored. This fine is a state crime as if it were a life sentence,” he concludes. With the tightening of Brazil’s criminal laws in 2019 by former Justice Minister Sérgio Moro, the person remains indebted to the state after their release from prison and some political and civil rights are suspended, making their reintegration into society more difficult.
The interior of one of the houses. Paula Lopez Barba
One of the problems that worries professionals like Broide or Benoit is the lack of continuity of official programs. When the government changes, they are upset and believe that it is very important that there are solid programs that address the housing problem of the city with the highest GDP in Latin America, where thousands of people are forced to live on the streets Have access to adequate and permanent housing.