Last year Cáritas assisted 37,207 homeless people living on the streets in the 420 centers and resources available to the Confederation to alleviate the serious consequences of the violation of the right to decent and adequate housing.
Half of the people accompanied were accommodated in temporary residence apartments (15%); reception centers with full assistance 24 hours a day (13.1%); shelters and emergency residences (10.8%), permanent social inclusion apartments (9.5%) or homes for single women or women with children (5.7%). The rest received attention in other types of programs and street outreach. Overall, the Confederation manages 3,985 places, of which five out of 10 are residential and almost 4 out of ten correspond to day centres.
In the housing resources, the people served received accompaniment, information and guidance, food, administrative attention (procedures), hygiene service, cloakroom, laundry, career guidance, cultural activities, Internet access, etc.
The official INE data for 2012 and the extrapolation of the main nightly counts made in large cities indicate that 33,275 people live on the streets or in temporary accommodation due to lack of housing. However, according to internal data collected by our intervention and accompaniment, in 2021 the Caritas network served 37,207 people in this situation.
policy proposals
In addition to accompanying homeless people, Cáritas has long been working to ensure that the most vulnerable people are not discriminated against in their right to decent housing. In its policy proposals for the II Integrated National Strategy for homeless people 2022-30, our organization insists on the need to address “as soon as possible – by the Administration, also by the State – the non-existence of a building stock popular social/emergency for homeless and homeless people and families in the Spanish State”.
Homelessness is a social problem that does not only affect people living on the street. Therefore, the number of people affected by this reality varies according to the degree of residential exclusion that is taken into consideration. According to the European Typology of Homelessness and Residential Exclusion (ETHOS) there are four categories: homeless, homeless, insecure housing or inadequate housing. The people who are on the street and those who pass from accommodation to accommodation are the best known faces of this phenomenon. However, people living in shacks, caravans, settlements or rented accommodation are the most invisible part of the “homeless”.
According to the “VIII Report on Exclusion and Social Development in Spain”, presented at the beginning of the year, one in five families in our country suffers from residential exclusion, i.e. has serious difficulties in relation to accessing and maintaining lodgings. In the case of families in severe poverty, this percentage rises to 69%.
“We bet that, in the near future, the homeless and families accompanied by Cáritas (on the streets, in urban and rural settlements, in vulnerable neighborhoods and in substandard housing, in plastic shacks and wooden pallets, about to be evicted from their houses, or housed in residential resources) can have access to, enjoy and have their human right to adequate housing guaranteed”, he points out Holy Maryresponsible for the Homeless People program of Cáritas Española.
Out-of-cover campaign.
