More and more young people sleep in the open in Barcelona. 13% of the homeless people that the Arrels Foundation recorded in 2019 are between 16 and 25 years old. Three years earlier, they were 8%. 95% of young people are immigrants -mostly from outside the European Union- and more than half stayed in juvenile centers before. The director of the entity dedicated to the care of the homeless, Ferran Busquets, sees the reflection of the shortcomings to avoid the helplessness of foreign boys ex-guardians once they lose the coat of the Generalitat with the age of majority.

"They have been put in a protection system, at 18 they have been let go and we have led them to the street," recriminates Busquets, who warned that Arrels found in May the largest number of people who had been scrapped since making censuses. in Barcelona: still under a state of alarm, the entity identified 1,239 people without the possibility of confining themselves between four walls. To the figure are added 836 people in barracks and sub-housing settlements and 2,171 shelters in accommodation for homeless people.

Busquets stressed that 86% of the surveyed boys who lived in the open last year came from Morocco and were previously under guardianship. Between 2018 and 2019, 5,944 minors arrived in Catalonia alone. They are the so-called ores: almost 80% of those who have moved to the community in the last two years are Moroccans.

"If a citizen who was born here with 18 years of age is hardly prepared to carry out his or her life, migrant and homeless people are unprotected after passing through the juvenile center and thrown onto the street in a way that is very hard for them" , warned the head of the foundation.

Arrels estimates that street boys with high vulnerability have grown from 4% to 22% in three years, exposing themselves to illness, addiction, extreme poverty and assault. Four out of 10 of the homeless people interviewed by the entity declared having been victims of violence since 2016.

The failure that supposes that there are young people devoid of a livelihood that frees them from marginality after ending the custody of the Generalitat has rejuvenated the profile of the homeless in Barcelona: 85% are men and their average age has dropped from 45 to 40 years in three years. Also, Busquets pointed out that three out of every four homeless people are foreigners.

Statistics reveal that those who fall on the street accumulate, on average, three years and five months without a home. "It is serious if we take into account that in six months we observe a significant deterioration in health," warned Gemma Gassó, an educator at the foundation: "There are people who must go long distances to go to health care services and suffer from sores, ulcers ... Until it becomes unsustainable, they do not go to the ER. Having to survive, health is in the background. And we see how elements are installed in portals and other points in Barcelona so that they do not sleep. It is a criminalization. "

Arrels lacks accommodation to leave the elements. "They live up to 20 years less than the rest of the population. It is a high cost for health and we could put it in a home so that they have better conditions," Busquets says.

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