La Taula Sense Llar de Badalona, formed by social entities and the City Council, has located ninety people sleeping on the street, a figure that doubles the average of recent years. "As a society we have a problem and we have to help improve it," says the spokesman for the Taula Sense Llar, Josep M. Lluch.
The count, carried out on the night of May 30, began in 2016 and the action is repeated every two years with the aim of making this reality visible and trying to influence the design of public policies to fight against homelessness. The third sector entities explain that there are "new profiles of people who have never been found on the street and highlight that the economic crisis of recent years has done" a lot of damage.
Social entities and the third sector regret this increase in people sleeping on the street in the city and call for the visibility of a problem that affects people "who are often invisible". Josep M. Lluch hopes that actions such as the recount can "influence" social policies. In fact, the entities affirm that without the count, the Can Bufí Vell overnight center, opened in 2020, “would not be a reality”.
The spokesman for the entities affirms that there is a "transversal" problem in all metropolitan cities, such as access to housing, and ensures that there are currently people on the street who "had never met". Among the new profiles there is also a large volume of young people, according to the data with which the Taula Sense Llar de Badalona works.
The balance of this 2023 shows a situation that supposes an increase of 87.5% of people sleeping in the street with respect to the figures of the previous counts. In 2021, 48 people were found sleeping on the street, in 2018 there were 57 and in the first count of 2016 they located 39 people.
In addition to the 90 people who have slept on the street tonight in Badalona, there are 135 more who have slept in centers, apartments and pensions managed by the same social entities or by the City Council. The Taula Sense Llar also has a 'census' of 237 people living in settlements, of which 216 are men and 21 are women.
The evolution of the figures of people spending the night in resources of social services and entities is similar. In 2018 there were 172 and in 2021 there were 299. In this sense, the launch in 2020 of the Can Bofí Vell overnight center, with 45 places, and the increase in social flats of entities, which have gone from 31 to 50 places in 5 years, it represents an increase of 61%.
The count began at dawn to ensure that the volunteers found the homeless sleeping at their usual overnight point, in such a way that the data reflect reality in the best possible way. 170 volunteers have participated and of the 90 people found sleeping on the street, 58 are men, 6 women and 26 could not be identified.
The Taula Sense Llar de Badalona has organized the volunteers into different groups that have combed the city on foot. The main tracking points have been banks, ATMs, farm porches, garage entrances, underground passages or parks and the investigation has lasted about two hours. The last groups have arrived at the Can Banús farmhouse, where the device has been centralized, after 2 in the morning.
The next count to be carried out in Badalona will be in 2025 and the entities are already thinking about how to complement the action with qualitative information through interviews with homeless people living in the city.
The situation that leads people to live on the street, the entities explain, can be diverse, such as lack of work, economic poverty or homelessness, and "having this information can help to better understand and focus the fight against homelessness”.
