Today we will talk about what kind assistance to homeless people (homeless people) turns out to be in Moscow and the cities of the Moscow region, let’s introduce the organizations and volunteer teams that do this.
Let's start with statistics. According to estimates by the Moscow Department of Labor and Social Protection in the Russian capital in 2015, there were about 11 thousand homeless people. Officially. Let's add those who were not counted, and we get the number of a small provincial town. A lot of. But they say that the number of homeless people is decreasing. Let's trust the statistics from the Department.
How free assistance is organized for homeless people in Moscow:
City program "Social Patrol".
The Social Patrol program, which was launched several years ago, found a response in the hearts of many people who are not indifferent to those in need. Social security employees use 30 cars and 5 buses to deliver food, warm clothes, and provide medical assistance to areas where homeless people are concentrated. 2 centers for social assistance and adaptation of homeless people have already been opened. A good start.
For those who need help from social protection, we leave a link to the website page of the Department of Labor and Social Protection of the Population of Moscow, where you can find information on the procedure for recognizing homeless citizens as needing social services.
Help service for homeless people “Mercy”.
For more than ten years, the Orthodox aid service “Mercy” has been working with homeless people. This team has 3 main directions in which they move:
- preventive work at city stations.
1. "Hangar of Rescue" of the help service "Mercy"
This is a low-threshold homeless assistance center. This is a frame tent, it also has a mobile shower, as well as a social worker station. The room temperature in the hangar is maintained using heat guns.
The main purpose of the hangar is to facilitate the return of homeless people to society. A social worker in a tent provides assistance to homeless people in restoring documents, establishing connections with relatives, finding temporary shelter and work, and sending them home. On the territory of the hangar for the homeless, a free pay phone is available 24 hours a day for calls within Russia: with its help, homeless people can contact relatives or search for work.
Any person who finds himself in a crisis situation without a roof over his head can get into the hangar, regardless of the presence of documents and place of registration.
"Salvation Hangar" operates in daytime. At night, “Social Patrol” buses daily transport from “Angar” to the Moscow Center for Social Adaptation those wards who wish to receive overnight accommodation there.
The priority task of the Rescue Hangar is to help a person return to society. At Angara, homeless people are helped to restore documents, establish connections with relatives and pay for their way home (more than 60% of Moscow’s homeless are visitors from other regions).
Every day, up to 80 people who find themselves homeless turn to the Rescue Hangar for help. In total, according to various sources, from 13 to 50 thousand homeless people live in Moscow.
The “Rescue Hangar” of the “Mercy” assistance service is located at: st. Nikoloyamskaya, in the courtyard no. 55 (metro stations Taganskaya, Kurskaya, Rimskaya).
Operating mode of the Rescue Hangar:
Monday-Friday: from 10.00 to 18.00
Saturday-Sunday: from 10.00 to 15.00 (the exact closing time depends on the hour of arrival of the Social Patrol).
Items and other donations can be brought around the clock by calling the person on duty in advance at: 89261580758.
Temperature records last days in central Russia have become a real test for the homeless. And if in Greece, for example, due to “unprecedented frosts” (that is, snowfall) to save the homeless, the metro was opened around the clock on these cold days, then in Russia no special measures of assistance have yet been offered, although only for new year holidays in Moscow, 190 people were injured, and two died from hypothermia.
But the problem isn't just staying warm. Every day of a homeless person is a struggle for survival. Finding a place where you can stay warm, spend the night, get food and some clothes, get medical care, and ideally also wash - all this seems like an insurmountable task for a person without a penny of money in his pocket. But in reality, there are enough places in Moscow where all this can be done completely free of charge, but not all homeless people know about it. Brief instructions on survival - in The Insider material
“I’ve been on the street since childhood,” says homeless Dmitry Nikiforov, a volunteer of the network of organizations “If there is no home...”, “in 1989, my family and I came to Moscow; I myself am from Baku. We came because a war started in Azerbaijan. Here I went to school, and then my father was killed, my mother started drinking. And there were three of us brothers in the family. They kicked me out of the apartment. Now I understand that my father simply came to an empty apartment, paid the cops, and that’s how we started living. Of course, we didn’t have any registration. We were kicked out of the apartment. There is nowhere to live: basements, train stations. And my brothers are small, I need to eat something. He made a living as best he could: somewhere you steal something, somewhere you earn something. That's how we lived. Mom died. Then I worked, even found and rented housing. Then he sat. I came out - no documents, now I’m working again and helping the homeless. There are ideas to create jobs for the homeless - a sewing workshop and a carpentry workshop, because mostly the homeless are those who came from places not so remote. Relatives, for example, while they were imprisoned, their apartments were sold, they have nowhere to return, and it is now very difficult for a homeless person to get a job in Moscow.”
According to the Lyublino Center for Statistics, there are now about 16 thousand homeless people in Moscow. Approximately 80% of people without a fixed place of residence came to the capital from the regions, mainly from those places where there is almost no work or from the so-called “depressed” areas. For them, the process of socialization turns out to be quite difficult, since from Moscow such homeless people are sent to where they were registered last place residence.
Where to eat:
There are a lot of such places in Moscow. One of the sites where a homeless person can get food is located at Three Stations Square. It is organized by a group of volunteers from the “If there is no home...” network. “We feed the homeless there on Thursdays. There is also a Salvation Army day center and a Salvation Hangar tent there. The volunteers there are homeless people, and they themselves, along with social workers prepare food, go to the Square of Three Stations themselves and distribute it. It helps people come out on the other side. Many later become social workers thanks to such projects,” says activist Nadezhda Klyueva. Dmitry Nikiforov also often takes part in this project and enthusiastically talks about how he and his volunteers make sandwiches and prepare tea for the homeless. During this entire process, there is a constant dialogue between the participants of the organization “If there is no home...” and those they help, which, according to Dmitry, is the most important thing in this project.
Where to wash and get medical care:
Destation No. 4 always smells of urine and caked mud. Even when there are no homeless people crowding around here to shower, change clothes, or get medical help. “It’s a homeless place,” says someone behind me in the crowd, leaving the tunnel near Kurskaya.
And during office hours the smell is even stronger. At the very exit from the metro, the silhouettes are sorting something through their black plastic bags, another figure is approaching, slowly chewing a piece of cracker. Soon there is a line. Burnt, bearded, on crutches, haggard, in oversized sweatshirts, ridiculous caps, but all with large bags - plastic bags in both hands. Mostly men. They talk among themselves, someone takes out a mobile phone and begins to press the buttons with effort. Apparently he dials the number from memory.
Here, during cold weather, you can sometimes get something warm from clothes. They also provide free medical care here, albeit basic, but there are also places where the homeless can even qualify for free dentistry.
Where to stay overnight:
Homeless people can spend the night in state social centers, where not everyone wants to go, since the living conditions there are more similar to the conditions of serving a sentence, and they are mainly located on the outskirts of the city.
True, if a homeless person has little money, he can pay for a bed and stay in a so-called hostel; no one will force him to work there.
There are also centers where they provide social assistance, which includes sending them home, issuing a certificate of loss of documents, assistance in renewing a passport, assistance in placing people in social shelters for the homeless, as well as assistance in finding employment.
Most often, people without a fixed place of residence do not have the opportunity to call and somehow contact loved ones when they need help. For this purpose, in the north of Moscow there are several so-called public telephones. They can be used for free for calls to landline and mobile numbers in the Moscow region. There is even Wi-Fi in the cabins (surprisingly, homeless people with smartphones are also sometimes found).
Of course, all the infrastructure described above, at best, will allow the homeless to live a little longer, but does not provide the opportunity for full socialization. By “saving” on the homeless, the state actually saves nothing, since they create an additional burden on police officers, doctors and social services. In the majority developed countries To solve this problem there are special social programs, making it easier for homeless people to obtain housing. For example, in Salt Lake City, a program has been launched since 2015, within the framework of which a homeless person is provided with housing ready for living (with a refrigerator, microwave, etc.), calculating that this turns out to be cheaper for the budget than the additional burden on government agencies (ambulance , police, prisons) arising from homelessness.
In Moscow, there is a service for people who have lost their home or visitors who find themselves in difficult life circumstances: social hotels, where they will receive first aid, shelter from the cold, and even in some places help to rehabilitate themselves in life.The capital's Department of Social Protection of the Population claims that Moscow shelters are ready to accept everyone who wants to stay warm in winter)) There will always be an extra bed or at least a mattress. Moreover, some establishments employ volunteers who help people restore documents or find work. Moscow night shelters today can accommodate, on average, up to 1,600 guests. One thing, of course, is not very pleasant for the casual visitor: in winter, tipsy citizens are required to be admitted into shelter houses, while in the summer they were categorically not allowed in. What can you do, it's cold.
Addresses of social hotels:
Social hotel in Moscow:CSA LUBLIN south-eastern adm okr 109651 st. Ilovayskaya, 2 from metro tekstilshchiki to Pererva station Sergey Velgelmovich director Ragilkhanova Valentina Borisovna deputy director 3573611 Deputy for ACh Kuzmina Tatyana Viktorovna 3564111
Social hotel in Moscow:
Filimonki on the basis of psycho-neurological dispensary No. 5 Director Lopatkina Natalya Vladimirovna 4366469 Deputy director Elena Leonidovna 4366201 Leninsky district p/o Valuevo village. Filimonki M south-west highway 611 to the Moskovsky state farm. Then take highway 420 to the village. Filimonki
Social hotel in Moscow:
Western Admin District 30 people St. Matrosova, 4 Director-Anufriev Boris Trofimovich 4391696 Deputy. According to ACh-Kondratiev Vyacheslav Sergeevich 4391684 Dezh administrator 4397869 Directions: metro station "Yugo-Zapadnaya", then bus No. 66 to the stop. Platform "Vostryakovo" or bus No. 720 to the stop "DSK-3". From Kievsky railway station by e-train to the Vostryakovo platform.
Social hotel in Moscow:
DNP North West Adm District Department of Social Protection 30 people Director Maksimov Genad Genad. 8499 1917590 3rd Silikatny proezd, 4, building 1. Director-Maksimov Gennady Gennadievich, deputy. Directors Yuri Vasilievich. Directions from M. Polezhaevskaya station, bus no. 48,271,800 to the MZhK Atom stop, Silikatny proezd no. 4, building 1
Social hotel in Moscow:
Social shelter for the homeless in the southwest of the South-Western Administrative District st. Golubinskaya, 32, k.2 Director-Grachev Nikolay Nikolaevich 4234055 head. vr Tamara Ivanovna 427 9570 Directions from M. Yasenevo, bus no. 781.769 to the stop Novoyasenevsky Prospekt, building 1, building 3 117463
Social hotel in Moscow:
DNP "Kosino-Ukhtomsky" Eastern Administrative District st. Mikhelsona, 6 Director-Osyutin Dmitry Nikolaevich 7005235 Directions from the station. M. Vykhino, go to the Vykhino platform and then take bus 722 or 747 to the stop kindergarten St. Mikhelson 6
Social hotel in Moscow:
Yuzhnoye - Stanislav Aleksandrovich 89026859555 Elena Ivanovna Dorozhkina 9585451 Kanatchikovsky Proezd, building 7 Metro Leninsky Prospekt last car exit to Vavilova Street
Social hotel in Moscow:
TERESA'S HOUSE OF MERCY Parkovaya 3rd st. 44a, metro station Izmailovskaya
