LETS GIVE THEM THE DIGNITY THEY DESERVE

Every week our volunteers make social routes in the different sectors of the commune, in search of the most excluded. A very volatile population and, therefore, difficult to locate. They explain that "it seems" that there are always the same people, but it is not so: the face of the most vulnerable is changing due to the explosive phenomenon of migration, which has increased the presence of children, adolescents and mothers in street situations in the north of Chile.

Now the volunteers must provide quick help: delivering food, blankets, medical care to migrant families, in transit and in tents in the center, although there are also others who take different routes, settling in parks and streets on the periphery.

"The children arrive with symptoms of malnutrition, dog bites, hypothermia, sunstroke or dehydration. Many no longer speak, look at the ground, don't want to play, distrust everyone," say the volunteers, shocked.

The data from the Casen 2020 Survey are revealing. Between 2017 and 2020, poverty in Chile affected migrants more, reaching 17% of this population in 2020, however, among them there are three groups even more punished: women, children and adolescents; and those who live in the northern part of the country.

For this reason, we consider three essential axes to address this unfortunate reality: the need for shelters for people who have nowhere to stay, the regularization of their papers and, most difficult, a definitive solution, which necessarily involves housing.

Now, in the emergency and with the health crisis caused by COVID-19 at a lower intensity, our volunteers are reorganizing throughout Chile to reactivate the Street Routes that were suspended or very limited due to the pandemic. We know that these are palliative initiatives of the problem, but necessary, sometimes key to avoid a death due to hypothermia or other extreme reasons.

And they are also central because they raise awareness and mobilize the organized civil society to show the invisible, the ghosts of the street, who have multiplied in this complex time with the aggravating factor that they are foreigners. And that, in the eyes of many, amplifies the stigma that people in street situations carry.

Can you imagine living for half a century where the night catches you? This was the daily life of the current resident of the Hogar de Cristo Transitional Shelter in San Bernardo. He was cold, hungry, discriminated against, but the freedom that the street gave him was his greatest treasure. Here he tells us, in summary, what it was like to spend half a century outdoors.

-I've been living on the street since I was 11 years old, that tells you everything. My father threw me out of the house because my mother died half an hour after I was born. According to him, I was to blame for the death of his wife, my mother. 

This is how Jorge (67) begins telling his story of half a century outdoors. Today he lives in the Hogar de Cristo shelter located in San Bernardo; he is in a wheelchair due to arthrosis and arthritis affecting his knees. There, from a space that gives him warmth, bed, food and roof, with a serene voice and a sweet smile, he recalls his thousand and one stories of his half century of life walking and sleeping in various corners of Chile.

"I went through everything. Hardship, sadness, hunger, cold. When I go to a grocery store and I see a child saying: 'Mommy, I want a candy' and they throw themselves on the floor...', I feel sorry for them! I say to the lady: 'Give the child a candy, I'll pay for it', because I imagine myself in a street situation. Going to a grocery store asking for a piece of bread, a little something to eat," he says.

According to Hogar de Cristo's latest estimates, 19,000 people live on the streets in the country, most of them in the Metropolitan Region. During 2021, 9,977 people went through one of the 84 programs that the foundation has for this population in the country. According to the Ministry of Social Development, 91% live alone, as Jorge once was. Forty-four years old is the average age of those who live in these conditions, but 41% indicated that their first experience occurred before the age of 18.

Jorge was always alone. The street changed his character, took away his childhood, but not his heart. "I didn't want to know anyone, not even my siblings," he says. Precisely, he never heard from his family again. "My brothers did not exist. On top of that, my father put it in their heads that I was not their brother," he says.

"I had a puppy but then I threw it away because I felt sorry for it. I said to myself, 'I'm suffering and this poor little animal. I didn't have enough to feed it. So I wanted it to be free and look elsewhere. The dogs are also cold, wet, sleeping in the street just like me. I would set up my rucksacks in a safe place, where there were no other people. Always alone. Next to trees," says Jorge about living on the street, in the rucos (very precarious house), those small houses made of rubble. Precisely, he says that he collected his "walls" from the dumps. "I made them with pallets, a square with two pallets high. And when I left, I would leave it there, for someone else who needed it. Sometimes I slept in the sewers of the Mapocho. I would put pallets there and sleep, with all the water under me.

In 2009 Hogar de Cristo identified the existence of a specific group of people over 60 years of age, who regularly participated in the hospices and who, due to their health, fragility and dependence, required specialized and permanent support. This was the result of the deterioration of the time spent on the street, the dissociation with social and health networks and, in some cases, the presence of problematic consumption of alcohol or other drugs, making them a highly vulnerable population. It is from this reality that the foundation implements the "Shelter Houses" as an alternative for this group of elderly people, who require support that goes beyond an emergency service. One of them is the one in San Bernardo, where Jorge lives. He can stay there for an indefinite period of time, having a roof, bed, food and all kinds of care. 

"I lived on the street until I was 60 years old. After that I only stayed in shelters. Because when there was a big snowstorm here, I was still on the street and my ruco - was just three sheets of zinc. I was in Casas Viejas, in Puente Alto, next to the river. That was my last ruco. They came three times to look for me from a shelter, but I, the stubborn one, said no, no and no".

-Why didn't you want to leave?

-For freedom. On the street I would get up and go wherever I wanted. In a shelter it wasn't going to be the same. It was being locked up and that's what I didn't like. They controlled everything, the time to go to bed, to get up, and that's what I didn't like. I am a free soul. I wanted to go to the lodge when I woke up and I saw a space like that no more than the zinc sheet that had been left without snow and everything else with snow. I looked and thought, 'how am I going to get out of here?' It was very cold. The Hogar de Cristo people came and said, 'Are you going with us?' I said yes right away. I got there and they put a stove, coffee, they were worried about me. They took me to the doctor in case something happened to me because of the humidity from the snow. But I had nothing. I really am a tough person. Fifty years on the street, all my life....