Well, there are expenses again. Foreseen, true, but still unpleasant ... Again, buying a cot, a set of vigorous detergents and collecting sets of used clothes from familiar ones. This necessity declared itself in the form of...

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Here, there are expenses again. Foreseen, true, but still unpleasant ... Again, buying a cot, a set of vigorous detergents and collecting sets of used clothes from familiar ones. This necessity declared itself in the form of the familiar crowd of homeless children at the station. Or rather, like this: everything was the same as ten years ago - and age, and clothes, and tricks - only the faces were different. And their expression is not spaciously detached, but very consciously rigid.

Once upon a time, Novaya Gazeta, in its very first issue, for the first time reported that the fourth wave of homelessness in the 20th century had become a fait accompli and covered Russia with a smog of childhood tragedies.

Now I have a no less sad duty to inform the population about the first wave of homelessness in the 21st century.

And although these social facts are separated by centuries, which, as you know, is a convention, they are interconnected like Siamese twins conceived by stupid parents. Homelessness has become a genetic disease of society, passed down from generation to generation.

Although who cares, except for the children themselves, who inherited from their older brothers a street, a garbage dump and a vomit-filled basement? The older brothers, as best they could, arranged that world for those who came to replace them, and as a result, thanks to a handful of enthusiasts, they ended up (those who survived) in a hundred shelters, which still survive from handout to handout. These shelters are packed to capacity, and their bosses do not know what to do with the already grown up, but still thrown out of society, former homeless children, and now unemployed homeless people.

And how it all began - slowly but beautifully ... The President wrote decrees. A rare newspaper did not print on its pages photos of snotty and dirty faces. There were conferences and press conferences. The deputies shied away from homeless children who, on the initiative of Vzglyad and Novaya Gazeta, paid an official visit to the State Duma. The brutalized local authorities, allocating crumbs from their own budget (the federal center gave pennies for this, without bothering to write a single decent program), created a network of shelters.

All this was called "the fight against homelessness." And it really was a struggle: they were caught, forcibly washed and provided with warmth and clothing. Separate voices of sociologists, journalists and educators, who made noise that all this is only a third of one big problem, drowned in the general chorus of toasts and solemn reports: “There are no more homeless children on our streets!”

Not true? Is it true. By 1999, there were fewer homeless people on the streets, in 2000 - you can hardly find them. And calm has spread in a society so self-confident, so indifferent and narrow-minded that none of the newly created programs: from education and health care reforms to macroeconomic reforms, does not mention the troubles of children for whom parents cannot or do not want to pay. there was not a word.

As always, it is not appropriate to think about the essence of things. The essence of things takes a lot of mental strength, and most importantly - material resources.

And now the same Kursk railway station in Moscow, the same escalator on which the homeless children of the 90s once hung in clusters, is packed with representatives of the new homeless generation.

Only these are different. There is less romance in them than in the former ones, as well as self-esteem, moral limits and life principles. Instead of glue "Moment" now - heroin, instead of collecting bottles - prostitution, instead of "uncle, give me a coin" - "man, drive your wallet."

Of course, you can again build shelters and fill them with those who can be caught (the rest - in prison or in a drug hospital). But even this next civil war with its own future will not begin soon - in two years. When Western human rights activists come to life.

That's why I'm going this week to replenish my first-aid kit with a remedy for lice.

I will buy for the future, because in 10 years it will come in handy again.