Daily Journal:

Homeless people are not exactly our profile, we deal mainly with refugees, so my comments are not entirely qualified, although some refugees end up in this environment, refugees are a risk group for becoming homeless, but still there are only a few of them. In general, the bill is similar to Yeltsin’s decree, according to which people were imprisoned for vagrancy, but in a somewhat softened form. We need to understand how this relates to our Constitution, because we are talking about deprivation of liberty. If people do not violate anything, why are they deprived of their freedom? It seems to me that Yeltsin’s decree was canceled precisely because it was unconstitutional: one cannot be deprived of liberty without a court verdict. But the homeless problem is, of course, very serious, and it would be good to solve it. We need shelters where people can spend the night, especially in cold weather. In Moscow they exist, but only for Muscovites and former Muscovites, and besides, there are few of them. I once participated in a seminar that was held at the Social Rehabilitation Center for the Homeless in Lyublino, that is, in a shelter, and I heard there an interesting thing that we do not encounter when working with refugees: a refugee does not need to be convinced to start a normal life , he strives for this himself. And homeless people are very often weak people, they simply cannot cope with daily tasks, for example, brushing their teeth or making the bed, they do not know how to force themselves to do something. Therefore, in a situation with a homeless person, two factors matter: external - some circumstances that unsettled the person, and internal. And it is very important, in addition to helping, to simply save lives, the same shelters, to talk to these people. This is a big job that requires skill and large internal costs. Therefore, if there is psychological help, real and not formal, then this is good. However, the bill has a police perspective, a focus primarily on repressive measures, and this is alarming. One of the women from the Social Rehabilitation Center told an interesting thing: she could not work with homeless people for a very long time, she was disgusted, and one of her colleagues advised her: “You must remember that every person, even the most lost, knows something something you don’t know.” He says it helped.

Elena Burtina - Deputy Chairman of the Civic Assistance Committee