The Pandemics and the population without housing: a Brazilian case

study

(Introduction)

Situation as pandemics stroke in Fortaleza, Brazil:

 Basic human rights for homeless people are not attended nor respected;
 Homeless are already in a greater risk of contamination due to the
context they live into (contagious diseases are spread out at large);
 The Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemics lead to a plenty of
damage, highlighted health issues and, mainly, social concerns in
regards to the population without housing;
 During 2020, as a result of the pandemics, hundreds of people working
informally lost their jobs and the number of low-income families has risen
in city ghettos or in more socially-vulnerable neighborhoods;
 We have found that, amidst the pandemic, cities with a Human
Development Index (HDI) at extremely low levels have had a significant
increase in homelessness, both in inner city areas as well as in city
ghettos

(Body)

This setting, that has not only the #StayHome movement as a background but
also the social isolation that governmental agencies recommended, due to the
new Coronavirus being an infection that is so easily spread, was the frame
during which this project was developed. Such a campaign made it possible to
address the help to the more socially vulnerable ones, aiming to contribute
significantly to maintain at a reasonable health the people without housing, in a
holistic manner. Therefore, some private enterprises and NGOs seek to
address issues, which the public sector’s welfare initiatives cannot resolve, by
providing various services to assist the population without housing.

In this context, the contribution this project did was the connections created
between the people without housing and the volunteers and workers. It differed
from other assistance works it was already given. In this project, each person
and his or her issues were attended individually and worked one by one.

Several actions have taken place in this context, including the ones investigated
in this paper.

As an example of these actions, follows: giving out food, water, place to shower
and to do laundry, social assistance, psychological assistance, health care
(such as doctors and nurses available to attend their needs, medicine available
to be administrated when necessary, bandages, etc) at the same time as covid
tests.
Also, part of this work was to address these people to other institutions that
could help to continue the work done in the streets. An example are the
addiction recovery homes where the addiction issue could be worked over more
deeply.

The most important characteristic of this work was the humanistic approach,
which differed it from a simple assistance work. The homeless needs were
attended as a whole and not only in a punctual way, which made them want to
change their lives by the new opportunities they were given.

(Conclusion)

Among the best efforts that these actions involved, changes were made when
such initiatives added up and proper assistance could be given to the homeless
population. By the means of medical, social and psychological approaches,
through itinerant street sessions or appointments delivered to those who live in
the streets, the project that this paper reviews succeeded on looking after this
population, since it focused on an assistance that could be as humanistic as
possible. Also, it resulted in a continuous work of assisting and rescuing people
from the streets, giving an opportunity of a life change, that is social
reintegration.