Purely Moscow history

Residents expelled the “cultural laundry” for the homeless and poor from the Savelovsky district because of the “fear of bugs and lice”. And in St. Petersburg she works

At the end of August, Grigory Sverdlin, the director of the Petersburg charity organization Overnight, announced that the “cultural laundry” would open in Moscow - a place where anyone could dry and wash their things for free. The “Overnight”, along with the Charity Foundation “Second Bid”, found a room in the Savelovsky district of the capital. At the end of August, an agreement was signed with the lessor, but they did not manage to start the repairs in the room: “Overnight” and “Second Bid” were faced with unforeseen difficulties. Some of the inhabitants of the Savelovsky district opposed the "cultural laundry". They created a petition on the Change.org platform demanding to transfer the laundry to another place.

“The matter, of course, is good and correct,” the text says, but “around the playgrounds, and it is not difficult to guess exactly where visitors of this institution (laundry - ed. ) Will spend their free time from washing. “But in addition to the unsightly species, dirt, smell, bugs and lice for children, these are also dangerous infections, including, for example, tuberculosis,” local residents say. According to the opponents of the “cultural laundry”, from all this it follows that for her “no doubt, you can find a more suitable place”.

The organizers of the laundry room met with local residents and discussed the problem. However, in early October, “second wind” and “overnight” due to active resistance decided to find a new place for the “cultural laundry”.

“The topic of homelessness, unfortunately, gives rise to many myths and fears,” explains Grigory Sverdlin. -Some of the local residents of the Savelovsky district had fears that literally all homeless Moscow would come to wash in this laundry room or that people would remain [to live] in this area, or that some epidemics will break out in the Savelovsky district in connection with its opening. Since a similar project has been operating in St. Petersburg for two years, we are sure that these fears are groundless, but, unfortunately, the fears were so great that we could not agree with many residents. We made a difficult decision for us that we will look for another place, because it is very important for us to start working as soon as possible, and a waste of time for this confrontation is not included in our plans.

Almost all municipal deputies of the Savelovsky district were on the side of those who are against the laundry room. As for the Moscow government, we have repeatedly contacted them and continue to interact now. For example, for seven months we have been trying to get a premises for the implementation of the project not only of the laundry, but also the shower, as well as the legal consulting service, where it would be possible to come with questions in employment, restoration of documents, the search for relatives, the abolition of fraudulent real estate transactions, because of which people were on the street. Such a project also works in St. Petersburg.

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We would also like to open a shelter. But all these are such projects that require rather large rooms, at least 250 square meters [each], and we cannot remove them according to commercial prices. It seems to us that this is an important activity for the city, so we hope to get a room either at some kind of preferential rate, or for free use.

So far, they received only two rejection of the Department of Property Relations in response to our official requests. But what to do - we continue to prove the need for such a project in Moscow.

Laundry requires less area, 60-80 meters. We are able to rent such a premises at a commercial value. We are doing this with the Partnership Foundation "Second Binding" together and divide the costs in half.

We were not offered any compromise option to open the cultural laundry after protests, the only thing was “there was a proposal to open such a laundry room on Izhorskaya Street, but it is in eight stops from the Seligerskaya end station. There are homeless people or people who are on the verge of homelessness, who mainly move on foot, will never get.

We took responsibility for all adjacent territories and were ready to allocate funds for the rate of another laundry administrator-the one who would somehow control the situation outside it, because the locals had concerns. According to the experience of St. Petersburg, we know that people come to such institutions, about whom you usually will never think that this is a homeless person on the street, they are watching themselves.

The “cultural laundry” already exists in St. Petersburg, it was opened in November 2016 on Borovaya Street “Overnight” and a Prachka.com laundry self -service network. The website of the St. Petersburg “Cultural Laundry” states that in 2017, people werehed and dried things more than 9,000 times in it. According to Sverdlin, there is another situation than in Moscow.

“Next to the place where we opened it, there are a shelter and a consulting service,” he says. - They have been at this address for many years, since 2006. For these years, the district has been used to it and convinced that the “overnight stay” is able to organize work in such a way as not to interfere with anyone, and even rather ennoble the space around itself. We really renovated the building over the years, and the yard was put in order, and the surrounding fences somehow fell and painted. In general, we try to be comfortable and pleasant to be around our projects. ”