Thursday, April 15, 2010
Street Sleeping
A common sight on the streets of Porto Alegre is sleeping men and women who appear to be homeless. Sometimes they stretch out with nothing between their bodies and the pavement. Other times they have cardboard. Often though, they lay on mattresses. I'm curious where they find these mattresses. And, I find myself wondering if this complicates movement from one place to another. Once I saw a mattress stuffed in a tree, perhaps waiting for its owner to return. I imagine it must require effort to maintain possession of one's bed. Passersby (myself included) just walk around the people on the ground, more often than not, barely noticing them or pretending not too. They are usually sleeping and so there is no eye contact. It seems accepted that they use this public space like this - I haven't seen anyone asking these people without a roof over their head to move along.
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such a thing would never stand here! i wonder if there are many shelters there and what they are like? and does there seemto be less stigma?
ReplyDeletexo*lauren
Hey Lauren! It is interesting because on some levels it does feel like there's more acceptance, but I can't honestly say if there's less stigma. There are shelters (interestingly, one shelter I pass by on the bus everyday is located right next to a day care), especially an active municipal "Street Action" social service for homeless children and adolescents. I think though that one of the differences is that there are so many more people here living in poverty and often homeless that all of this is a more frequent, common sight. There are many attempts being made by social services to address these issues, but the problem (of course) is a very small amount of funds to be divided amongst a very large group of people. For example, to receive a government financial assistance (Bolsa Familia), a family must include children/adolescents and they must be making no more than R$140 a month. Yup, that's about $60 American a month...
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