Across Europe, Faces of Homeless Become More Visible and Vexing

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Across Europe, Faces of Homeless Become More Visible and Vexing

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January 5, 1992
Across Europe, Faces of Homeless Become More Visible and Vexing
By WILLIAM E. SCHMIDT,

Just before midnight, an unmarked Salvation Army van pulled up to the curb outside Euston Station and a trickle of tattered men and women edged cautiously from the shadows around the railroad terminal, hunched against the biting winter air.

There were, in all, about 30 of them, many wrapped in blankets. Most were young, in their early 20's, a few smelling sharply of alcohol.

As they formed a ragged line to collect their ration of sandwiches and soup and steaming tea, one man, a mute, leaned into a Salvation Army volunteer, his eyes wide as his hands chopped the air in a frenzy of sign language, trying to make himself understood. A bearded companion intervened, explaining that his friend's sleeping bag had been stolen. Could he have some blankets to help him make it through the night?

He was given blankets, plus a chit that entitled him to collect a free sleeping bag the next day from a Salvation Army warehouse.

The young, the infirm, the mentally ill, the alcoholic, the immigrant -- they are among the faces of a growing population of homeless people who are increasingly visible these days not only on the streets of London, Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid and Rome but also in smaller cities across Europe.

"One of the biggest changes are the numbers of young people, not just in London but in small towns too, in Basingstoke and Eastbourne, Croydon and Hastings on the coast," said Maj. Robert McClenahan, a Salvation Army officer who regularly makes the midnight soup runs around the capital. 'I Am Hungry. Please Help Me.'

Sue, a woman in her early 20's who begs for handouts in the London underground, often holds a small sign that reads: "I am hungry. Please help me."

"I don't want to do this, but I don't want to go home either," she said, explaining that she could not find steady work after leaving home four months ago because she did not get along with her parents. "At least I have some friends now, and we all look after one another."

But many other homeless people, particularly the older men, gave up long ago, and now refuse offers of assistance. One of them is John, a thickly bearded, scruffy man of indeterminate age who has survived for years beside a subway entrance along the Thames, not far from the posh Savoy Hotel. His legs are badly infected, but he refuses medical attention.

"I worry about the cold and winter, but I'll get by," John said as he adjusted a plastic bag around him and settled against a wall. "Don't worry about me."

In Paris, Panayotis Xirias, who is 46 years old, said he had spent 24 years on the streets. "I won't sleep or eat in any of the shelters," he said flatly. The small monthly Government subsidy he receives he uses to bet on the horses. "If I win, I will treat myself to a night in a hotel." Otherwise, home is a sleeping bag over a ventilation grill.

Homelessness in Europe does not appear to have reached the grim proportions familiar to New York, Washington and many other American cities. But the romanticized image of the clochard, the footloose European vagabond, has been supplanted by a more Dickensian scene, of thousands of people -- many of them sick, some of them immigrants, most of them without work or hope -- who sleep in doorways, parks, underground parking garages or cramped shelters in which whole families must share a single room. Accurate Numbers Elusive

Still, as in the United States, the precise scale of homelessness in Europe is difficult to judge, and numbers and impressions vary widely.

In London, the Salvation Army estimates that there are as many as 2,000 people sleeping on the streets on any one night -- more than double the Government's tally. The Salvation Army says that is about the same number that charity workers counted in 1904, when the population of London was only slightly smaller than it is now, or about 6.8 million.

In addition, the Salvation Army counts 18,000 single people in hostels and shelters run by churches or charity organizations and 30,000 illegal squatters in London alone. They also estimate that 25,000 people, including 8,000 children, have been placed in Government-subsidized bed-and-breakfast hotels because there is no space for them in public housing. New York as a Reference

In New York City, by comparison, the Coalition for the Homeless, an advocacy group, estimates that of 7.3 million residents, about 67,000 live on the streets or as illegal squatters each night, and 23,000 others, most of them families, seek refuge in city-run shelters.

In Paris, the Salvation Army estimates the homeless population at 15,000 to 20,000 homeless, including those in shelters, or just under 1 percent of the central city's population of 2.2 million.

Madrid, with a population of 3.5 million, has an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 homeless people, most of them sleeping on the street.

Catholic charities in Rome count about 6,500 street homeless among the city's 2.8 million people.

In Berlin, where more than 7,400 people have officially registered with neighborhood centers because they require help in finding bed and board, officials say homelessness in not a major problem in a population of about 3 million. But health officials add that the number could be three times as high if large families in inadequate housing are counted. And, according to the officials, the majority of the chronic homeless are German, many of them suffering from drug or alcohol addiction.

Much of the problem of homelessness is a result of not only the sharp decline in the stock of low-cost rental housing in many European capitals but also of the consequences of a weak global economy that has exacted a steep toll in both jobs and lost income.

According to some experts, though, the growing number of poor and mentally ill on European streets is also a measure of another phenomenom: a slow but gradual deterioration in the historically strong web of family, church and government support systems that have traditionally afforded the poor and the vulnerable in Europe a much wider safety net.

While officials in Italy say a strong sense of church and family makes homelessness less a problem there than in the United States, they are troubled by a sharp increase in the number of young people under the age of 18 seeking meals and beds at church missions.

"It is a bad sign indicating the strength of the Italian family is beginning to wane," said Francesca Zuccari, a volunteer worker who wrote a booklet for the homeless in Italy titled "Where to Eat, to Sleep, to Wash," distributed from the St. Egidio Community Center in Trastevere. Government Aid Cut

Church and private relief agencies argue they are being forced to carry more and more of the burden as governments cut back on social welfare and housing programs and as growing numbers of illegal immigrants are drawn to Western Europe in search of a better life.

Government officials in France, Britain and elsewhere argue they have increased spending on programs for the homeless. The British Government has set aside more than $186 million for the next three years to build new shelter and housing for homeless, and the French are spending about $37 million a year on similar social services.

In Rome, the city government provides about $4.3 million annually, or about 40 percent of the cost to Catholic charities of providing twice-daily meals and changes of clothing for the city's poor and homeless.

Still, voluntary relief agencies complain that reductions in longstanding government programs to build low-cost public housing have forced people out in the cold. Mental Asylums Closed

Shelter, a British organization that campaigns for homeless people, says annual Government investment in public housing in Britain declined to $2 billion in 1989-90, from about $6.3 billion in 1980-81. Over about the same period, the share of housing units available for rent declined by half and now represents barely 7 percent of the total English housing stock.

And Governments in Italy and Britain have adopted initiatives that have closed scores of Government-run mental asylums, in favor of community-based treatment programs. But as has been the case with similar initiatives in the United States, critics argue that changes in policy have only turned thousands of mental patients out into a world in which they cannot cope.

Jean-Marie Ederer, a director of Emmaus, a French relief agency, said the mentally ill make up a disproportionately high number among homeless people in France. "Many of them now have mental problems even if they didn't start off that way," he said "They are trapped in a vicious circle which completely excludes them from society."

In Britain, Maj. John Boyd, a sociologist and a Salvation Army official in London, says the homeless problem has been aggravated to some degree as a result of social initiatives undertaken during the administration of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Savings vs. Costs

"The intent was never malicious, but all the decisions involved a certain kind of financial calculation," he said. "So you cut back housing subsidies and encouraged renters to take over their own homes, you eliminated welfare benefits for teen-agers in the hopes of reducing welfare dependency, and you closed down mental hospitals, with the idea that it is cheaper to keep people in bedsits."

Now, he said, Britain does not have enough affordable rental housing, more young people are sleeping on the streets than ever before and the mentally ill are clogging the prisons and the shelters. "We failed to measure the social costs when we looked at the monetary savings."
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