A year ago, a group of homeless people from Zaragoza began spending the night in the emergency room of the Miguel Servet Hospital in Zaragoza. This space is open to everyone and, therefore, people who lack a housing resource could spend there the night.
The Bokatas association is responsible for accompanying and distributing food and drinks to homeless people who spend the night in the streets of several Spanish cities, including Zaragoza. The volunteers of this association explain that, when they knew that there was a group of “between ten and twenty people” sleeping there, they included it in one of their cast routes, which is bike: “We did not enter into the emergency room so as not The volunteers of this route.
However, on February 20 the hospital prevented the entrance of these people, considering that it was not the place where they had to spend the night, according to the Aragon newspaper. Jesus explains that when they arrived the day that the homeless people did not let them enter “they were in shock because they had not notified them before.” Javier, Bokatas coordinator in Zaragoza, adds that many of them spent that night “at the door or surroundings.” Juan is also part of this route, La Cuatro, and explains that they had “to sleep dresses and shoes, all day with shoes, which caused them ailments on the feet and even cardinals to sleep in a plastic chair.”
Absence of resources
This NGO does not travel the entire city, they explain, they cover more or less half of the urban territory. In this space, they see about 170 people every night. The housing resources that are available in Zaragoza do not reach that number and are already occupied on many occasions. The municipal shelter of Zaragoza has 60 rooms for men and 12 for women, and the ordinary stay is six days every three months. It is intended for homeless people who have been living in the street for a long time and suffering a serious process of physical and other deterioration, which make an insertion process unfeasible. In the shelter, there are 56 places for men and six women.
This is, according to Bokatas members, one of the problems in the city, since they consider that there are few housing resources for homeless. “We cannot generalize regarding the reasons, we are seeing more than 170 people, there are people who want to enter the shelter and they cannot due to lack of places, but each one has their preferences, maybe for security to be inside the hospital who know that nothing will happen there.” Javier adds that “there are no places”: “There is the shelter and the shelter, where they do what they can, but they do not find options, many of them say that the solutions they find are to survive but not to live. With the minimum vital income they give them to eat or sleep, the two things do not.”
On the same line, Jesus points out, who says that “there are not so many places, the shelters are full of people, emergencies gave them the flexibility of entering, but it is not a comfortable place.” He explains that, after being expelled from the hospital, the group “has dispersed a lot, are at the station, in ATMs, there are people who may have gone to other hospital units …”. As for the advantages that these people could find in the Emergencies, it stands out that it is a place “with bathroom where they were with a group of people who knew and felt surrounded. The solution would be that there were more sites enabled to sleep with some comfort.”
He states that, according to his point of view, the best solution would be the “housing solutions as shared floors, but there are very few, social workers do what they can, are people with whom coexistence is not always easy.” Juan also refutes this idea, says that homeless people saw emergencies “as a safe environment, there are cameras. These people suffer violence and robberies when they are on the street, there is not a week in which they do not tell us any that have stolen or removed things. In addition, we have had a very rainy winter, which has forced them to look for shelter. We wonder how they sleep, but they are protected from the weather.
He also considers that there are few housing resources: “The ideal would be for everyone to have a place to sleep every night, but we see it quite distant.” He also ensures that now, facing the good weather, there will be so much demand for closed sleeping sites, “but when the bad weather returns, these people have the need to sleep on a roof and many of them ask for bags because they go cold. When the winter returns they will look for places again.”
From the Department of Health they explain that, given the situation that was being lived in the hospital, the homeless people were informed that they were spending there that “those facilities are not intended for that use and should not go there to spend the night. Other resources were announced to those who could help to alleviate their situation. In addition, signage was placed in the affected areas to publicize this same information”. They also explain that a security person to the emergency environment at night to prevent them from sleeping there was destined.
Fight against stereotypes
Javi says that his work as volunteers goes beyond giving a snack: “The work of Bokatas is accompaniment, what they suffer most is the invisibility before society, that society does not treat them or not make them feel like people. The problem is physical, hunger, heat, cold and what is most aggravated is mental health.”
Regarding the stereotypes about these people, they say that “until a few years ago they had a normal life and due to circumstances they have ended in the street. We see graduates, it is not only people that the system has expelled them, they are people who at a certain time life leads you, on the other hand, it is something that it can all happen to us”.
Juan also explains that there are very diverse profiles in the people who visit every Tuesday and Thursday: “People see a person with some type of addiction and generalize, but a fact that we give is that there is a very high number of addictions that are consequence instead of cause, that they have not stayed on the street for addiction, but once in the street they have fallen into addiction. We are seeing a lot of people and each one is different.”
