If you live in Barcelona or one of the cities in your conurbation, you either suffer from it or have people very close to you who suffer from poverty. There are more and more residents who go through serious hardships to make ends meet by covering their basic needs or simply don't make it. Against the indifference to this reality, Cáritas yesterday put figures on the growing problem: in 2022 they served 35,414 people, 28% more than a year earlier. There had never been so many since the beginning of the 21st century, as explained by the director of the entity, Salvador Busquets.
This is reflected in the annual report of Càritas Barcelona and can be seen in the attached graph, which reaches up to the year 2009. If it continued, the line would never be as high as in 2022. The data includes the Catalan capital but also localities such as L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Cornellà de Llobregat, Badalona or Sant Adrià de Besòs, among others, and reach a radius of action of municipalities with a total of 2.7 million inhabitants.
Busquets acknowledged that they expected the number to drop after the pandemic. But it hasn't been like that. The crises are chained together: from the explosion of the real estate bubble of 2008 to the current inflation and the war in Ukraine through covid. And many people stay on the road.
"We believe in the effect of measures such as the minimum vital income", said Busquets. "Many of the people we serve come from countries in conflict", added the director of Cáritas.
"We are the critical look at reality, but from a proactive point of view, with proposals to improve and we are also hands that help", remarked the Cardinal Archbishop of Barcelona and president of Càritas, Joan Josep Omella.
Miriam Feu, head of social analysis and advocacy at Càritas Barcelona, described the main causes of this increase in the number of people served by the institution: several economic crises have been linked in recent years, the eternal problems of access to a decent home and a job and, moreover, people in a situation of administrative irregularity have serious problems to be able to regularize it.
In this sense, 49% of the people served by Càritas Barcelona are in an anomalous administrative situation. That is eight points more than in 2021. Almost half of the residents who seek help from the association come from Colombia, Peru, Honduras, Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia.
And to regularize the administrative situation one of the most important steps is to get the register. It is one of the keys to being able to get attention from public administrations. In Barcelona, a fixed address is not required to process it. A situation which, according to the director of Càritas Barcelona, "is an oasis in the metropolitan area". "We fight with most of the councils and many times we don't achieve the goals. It's like a fish biting its tail. People who live in other towns are arriving in Barcelona, and there is a collapse. The law must be the same for everyone. You live in Barcelona or in another municipality in the metropolitan area", lamented Salvador Busquets.
The Caritas report gives other relevant data. For example, 67% of the homes they serve cannot be considered decent housing and three out of four young people served have neither decent housing nor work. They also recalled that 49% of single-parent families are at risk of poverty or social exclusion. They specified that there is a problem with the regularization of children of parents who are in an irregular situation.
Caritas allocated 2.5 million euros to aid for housing, food, health and childhood, among other needs. "We are concerned that more than 60% of the aid is to pay for temporary rental rooms or housing-related expenses. It shows that the housing issue is not resolved. It is the main problem of most families in the Barcelona area", analyzed Miriam Feu.
