On July 30, a branch of the St. Petersburg charitable organization Nochlezhka opened in Moscow, which has been rehabilitating homeless people for 30 years. In the coming days, a full-time consultation service will start operating in the capital: employees will help the homeless recover documents, get a job, and receive medical assistance. During this month, a rehabilitation shelter for people who want to leave the streets and return to normal life will open.
Since mid-July, Nochlezhka has already launched the Night Bus project in the capital: every weekday, volunteers distribute hot food, water, hygiene products and clothing to the homeless, and volunteer doctors provide medical assistance.
"It will be human here"
The small two-storey building of the Moscow Nochlezhka is located in the industrial zone of the Begovoy residential area, one and a half kilometers from the Belorussky railway station. The Foundation's employees searched about 80 industrial zones in Moscow to find suitable premises.
- © Semyon Khorunzhiy
“We chose a place far from residential buildings,” Nikolai Rubanovsky, Nochlezhka project coordinator, tells RT. “We are not required by law to do this, but we understand that organizing a homeless shelter can cause fear in some local residents. At the same time, it is important to make it easy to get to the shelter, because homeless people often experience difficulties with moving around the city - they may not be allowed into transport, they have no money for travel.
The building, which looks inconspicuous and modest from the outside, resembles a fashionable coworking space inside.
On the ground floor there is a reception area where lawyers and social workers will provide counseling for the homeless. In the waiting room, equipped with a ramp, there is a cooler and a coffee machine, books are on the shelves, there is a device for issuing tickets to the electronic queue. If the wait drags on, visitors will be able to go out to the small patio to get some air.
“It is not yet fully equipped, we are planning to make benches and flowers here. It is important that this building is comfortable, humanly, ”says director of the organization Grigory Sverdlin.
Nochlezhka's consulting service will receive 20-30 people every day. Homeless people will be helped to restore their documents, get a job, find relatives and return home, receive the necessary treatment and government payments, apply for a disability, get a job in boarding schools, if necessary.
On the second floor there is a shelter for the permanent residence of the homeless, whom the organization takes for long-term support. Nikolai Rubanovsky emphasizes that only a person who is determined to change his life and wants to leave the street can get into the shelter.
- © Semyon Khorunzhiy
“This is not a hostel for the homeless, but a rehabilitation center. We do not try to do good by force, it is important that the person himself wants to accept help. It's hard to imagine, but people who live on the street for a long time often lose faith that someone can help them, ”says a Nochlezhka employee.
Before a homeless person is admitted to a shelter, a social worker helps him develop a plan of action for several months in advance. Usually it includes the restoration of documents, employment, and the search for their own housing. There is no maximum or minimum period for which a person can live in the shelter. It is important that during this time he qualitatively changes his life.
According to Nochlezhka's statistics, about 55% of the children she helps have returned to normal life.
“We know less about our successes than about our failures. Some former homeless people who managed to get off the street prefer to forget about the past. They change their phone number and even their names, and we, unfortunately, lose contact with them, although we try to call them after graduating from the orphanage and ask how they are doing, ”Daria Baibakova, director of the Moscow branch of Nochlezhka, tells RT.
About 45% of people who applied to Nochlezhka still remain on the street, but they also manage to help: for example, to restore their documents so that they have a chance of employment.
- © Semyon Khorunzhiy
Homelessness is not a choice
The shelter is designed for 24 people: eight in each room. Two of them are male, one is female. According to the statistics maintained by Nochlezhka, 81% of the homeless are men, since they are the ones who most often become labor migrants.
At the same time, almost 90% of those who live on the streets are Russian citizens.
“We have been studying the causes of homelessness for many years, about 40% of people end up on the street as labor migrants. People leave to work, and then something goes wrong: someone is cheated or fired by the employer, someone gets sick or gets injured and loses the opportunity to work. By the way, now there are more and more labor migrants, because because of the pandemic many are losing their jobs and going to large cities in search of work, ”explains Daria Baibakova.
There is a widespread stereotype that homelessness is a personal choice. However, dry numbers refute this. In second place after unsuccessful labor migration among the reasons - family conflicts, during which people are sometimes simply kicked out of the house. Another 20% of homeless people have lost their place of residence due to fraudulent real estate transactions. There are many lonely pensioners, graduates of orphanages, victims of black realtors among them.
“There is an opinion that people become homeless because of drug or alcohol addiction. About 8% of homeless people actually find themselves on the street due to chemical addiction, but most often it becomes a consequence, not a cause of homelessness. Alcohol is the easiest way to warm up and forget, because homelessness is a life in a state of constant stress, ”explains the interlocutor.
According to Baibakova, the coronavirus pandemic has left “normal” people in conditions similar to those in which the homeless live every day.
“We have never seen such attention to the problem of homelessness from ordinary people, as during the quarantine period. Many people, due to quarantine in their lives, unexpectedly experienced circumstances that they did not choose and could not cope with. For example, one woman told us that she went to rest with her child abroad and suddenly all borders were closed. She had to live at the station for several days. She said that after that she decided to help Nochlezhka because she understood what it was like for homeless people, ”says the director of the Moscow branch.
Second attempt
In 2018, Nochlezhka tried to open a Cultural Laundry in the Savyolovsky district of Moscow, where homeless people could wash their clothes for free, but then local residents opposed such a neighborhood.
When organizing a shelter in the Begovaya area, the organization took into account previous experience and organized meetings with residents last fall to allay their fears that the area next to the shelter would turn into a dirty and dangerous den. Despite this, there were also those among the residents who, under the leadership of the municipal deputy of the district Zoya Andrianova, organized an initiative group and in September last year collected 1,500 signatures against the opening of the branch.
“During this time, someone got tired of fighting with us, someone took our side. There is still a small group of radical people who are still against it, but this is their right. We, as an organization, are obliged to comply with the laws, but we are not obliged to please everyone, - says Grigory Sverdlin. - I understand people who do not want to notice the difficult sides of life, but I cannot agree with them. AIDS centers, hospices, shelters for victims of domestic violence or homeless people should not be located on any special reservations, they should be located in the city, where those in need are most. "
There are no official and accurate statistics on the number of homeless people in Russian cities. "Nochlezhka" in its calculations relies on data on mortality and hospitalization of residents. According to the statistics of the organization, 50-60 thousand homeless live in St. Petersburg, about a thousand of them die every year. As Sverdlin notes, at least three times as many homeless people live in Moscow, every year three thousand of them die on the streets.