February 29, 2004

Homeless

fpi_glasses.jpg The warm weather has brought out the beggars and the homeless people.

The beggars never did quite disappear. Even in the coldest days of January, there were always a few of them around: the old ladies in front of the NIC supermarket, the man with the deformed leg by the church entrance, the lame man who limps from car to car at the stoplight on Callea Dorobant'. But suddenly there are more of them: gypsies, kids, gypsy kids, a kneeling man with religious medals in front of him (I remember him from last autumn), a barefoot teenage boy in pajamas who wanders among the cars when they stop to cross Iancu de Hunedoara.

And the homeless people have come back from wherever they went. On the way back from the playground, we pass a vacant lot on Strada Washington. (There aren't many vacant lots in our neighborhood. This one looks like a house once stood there, and was demolished for some reason.) A homeless man was sleeping there. Bearded and ragged, he had flattened some cardboard boxes to make a sort of mattress, and he was stretched out to soak up the sunlight. Alan glanced at him curiously as I pushed the stroller on past.

I'm told that under Communism, there were very few beggars and no homeless people. That's hard to believe. In Serbia, at least, a lot of the problems that "appeared" after 1990 were problems that had always been there, but that had been concealed or not acknowledged. On the other hand, everyone agrees that, whether there were homeless people around back then or not, there seem to be more around now. A lot more.

I don't even know what provisions Bucharest makes for its homeless. Are there shelters? Soup kitchens? Does the Church do anything for them? Does the press mention them, does the government acknowledge they exist?

All American cities have homeless people; some have more, some less. But there I'd have some idea of the answers to these questions, or at least some idea of where to find the answers. Here... googling around a bit, I find lots of information on homeless children in Bucharest, and a couple of pages on homeless dogs. Not much about homeless adult humans, though.

Any information is welcome.

Posted by douglas at February 29, 2004 10:54 PM
Comments

Some homeless people live in the hospitals during the winter: http://www.evenimentul.ro/local/article/49486,14,baseArticle.html

There are some shelters in Bucharest (I do not know exactly where) but I found also some sponsorship programs for those: http://www.euroconsulting.ro/program_detalii.php?program_id=106
For people with financial problems there are places where they can eat a hot meal per day (FREE).

Even if it is hard to belive, before '89 there were no homeless people.

Posted by: Anca & Misha at March 1, 2004 03:48 AM

In the US, many urban homeless people migrate with the seasons. A Chicago winter's night can kill you if you have to sleep on the street. Solution: don't be in Chicago in the winter.

I can't see this as being an option in Romania, or anywhere else in the region for that matter.

I'm gonna assume that these are people with no regular shelter at all? Not like the US, where many homeless people are living out of their cars (which is still a pretty wretched thing).

Posted by: Carlos at March 1, 2004 07:47 AM