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"I can't sleep. You don't have walls, you don't have doors, you don't have keys; whoever tells me they slept well the first night, I don't believe it. You're waiting everything, every noise, with a knife under the pillow just in case... and being a woman even more".
This testimony of a woman who lives on the streets of Alicante -where the City Council estimates that there are some 190 people in a similar situation- is one of those collected by the Cometas y Sonrisas association to commemorate that today Tuesday is the Day European Union for the Homeless.
This is an anniversary that, due to the whims of fate, arrives two days before the plenary session of the capital city council is going to carry out its controversial Civic Coexistence ordinance that penalizes, with fines of 3,000 euros, people who they live on the street.
And, as if that were not enough, Alicante looks towards homelessness just one year after Isabel was found dead in her shop, in front of the CAI shelter. A 35-year-old girl who had ended up living on the street and who, on the morning of November 21, 2020, no longer woke up; had died a natural death.
"We are people"
In the video prepared by the small association Cometas y Sonrisas, there are testimonials from people with whom they work to improve their situation. "I have felt compelled to be here because I have accumulated a debt," says the first beggar. "When I was left on the street at 14 years old, it's another feeling," he advances again, "that it wasn't my fault."
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— Sourabh सौरभ Sat Mar 15 03:56:59 +0000 2014
Homeless people in an image courtesy of Cometas y Sonrisas.
The video, which is part of the 'We are people' project, includes different profiles of homeless people. Like the one who seeks to reintegrate, without success: "They don't give me a job due to moral prejudices and cleaning up on the street is not usual" or ex-convicts: "the feeling that hurt me the most is when I got out of prison and no one came." In the end, the NGO concludes with one of its well-known phrases, turned into a motto: "We are not beggars, we are people."
Because begging is often synonymous with mental illness, says its president Paqui Moya. Jose is one of the last people who have helped get off the street, along with Jesus. The first one worked in a restaurant and Jesús was a janitor. But their lives were twisted and they have spent 18 months and two and a half years, respectively, without raising their heads... until this summer, when they have managed to find work and each one has been able to rent their own private room.
The shelter
Moya recalls that they, like others, had problems with the CAI or municipal shelter. "When they needed it, they were denied entry." This woman has presented more than 30 letters to the consistory referring to 30 people so that the Department of Social Action attends to them in order to achieve the Minimum Vital Income or the Valencian Income and that, since they do not have a register, she explains, "they are left without help".
He also denounces that the street teams are not leaving the shelter to attend to the homeless, in addition to placing restrictions on the space that is not contemplated in the agreement, which, he points out, is also being breached due to the lack of reintegration courses, as indicated in the text.
However, all these accusations are rejected by Acción Social. According to councilor Julia Llopis, the terms are being met. These go through the provision of two street teams, one entrusted to the Red Cross and the other to the CAI, with the coordination of the Reapsha network of entities, which are in charge of the bureaucratic procedures to request aid.
In total, a "maximum" 69 people fit in said shelter, a space whose "annual cost" amounts to almost one and a half million euros, recalls the PP mayor. "We cannot talk about expanding it", as if she said a few months ago, "but about keeping it waiting for the Ministry". He refers to the "transitional housing" service for which temporary accommodation is offered within the CAI, "depends on the Valencian government and we are assuming the cost," he laments.
The ordinance
Paqui Moya criticizes that, given the arrival of the anti-begging ordinance, which has been in the spotlight for a year "they have had time to give people opportunities to get off the street, but they have not they have done".
Criticism of this rule comes from the three left-wing groups in the consistory (PSPV-PSOE, Compromís and Unidas Podemos) and a good part of the city's social entities. "It is not an ordinance on coexistence, it is the ordinance of shame that seeks to penalize and prosecute situations of poverty and exclusion from the city", has pointed out the Platform Against Poverty of Alicante.