Two months’ emergency shelter
01-03-2009

The doors are opened. It is 11 p.m. on the 23^rd of February. The big group of about 20-30 homeless people, who have gathered in the street in front of the door, rush in and hurry to the corner where sleeping bags and air mattresses are piled up. It is important to get hold of a sleeping bag and an air mattress and to conquer one of the good and quiet corners where there is room to make the bed and perhaps get a nice and quiet night’s sleep.

We are in the emergency shelter for East European homeless people which have existed for nearly two months. In about a month the place will no longer exist and the foreign homeless people will again be obliged to become rough sleepers. Luckily for them springtime will be close, even if the prospects of rough sleeping can hardly be called a bed of roses.

The emergency shelter has been established by different organisations which ordinarily work with the exposed and homeless people. Besides project UDENFOR they include: The Church Army, The Mission among Homeless people, The Cathedral of Copenhagen, The National Organization of Homeless People (Sand), Kofoed’s School, and The Organization of Private Institutions behind the emergency shelter. The Oasis takes care of accommodations.

This evening is very much like the other evenings in the temporary shelter. Nice and quiet and with friendly guests. Little by little more people come sauntering in and when the users have made themselves comfortable around the floor, they move to the kitchen where the warm soup, tea and coffee have been set out. Everything takes place quietly and several exchange words and laughter. The voluntary assistants greet those they have seen before and note down newcomers.

There are surprisingly many rather young people; the average age is perhaps maximum 35 years. Offhand the majority of the users don’t seem to have any problems with abuse and seem clear-headed but physically worn out by the life in the street. Wearing the spectacles of employment one would think that they are more ready for the labour market than the “Danish” homeless people we know in projekt UDENFOR.

I get into conversation with one of the users with an East European background and ask about his life and experiences in Denmark. He tells me that he has come to find a job, but that it is difficult for him to find a “white” job and get a decent payment for it. His highest wish is to get a “white” job, pay his taxes and obtain a normal life in Denmark like the “Danes”. With these words he lets me understand more or less directly that he has not succeeded in finding a job where the papers are legal and where the salary is paid automatically like for the rest of us. The despair at the situation radiates from him but nevertheless he expresses a resolution to continue until he succeeds.

I can’t help thinking where he will be in a year or two if he doesn’t succeed. Still living in the street in Denmark? With an unstable attachment to the Danish labour market where he can be cheated and forced to do moonlighting? Or in the emergency shelter if we succeed in establishing it again? Or  the year after? What a life which, in the short run, to him perhaps seem more attractive because of the hope and the resolution that he of all people will succeed. And yet, I can easily imagine a social failure with the financial crisis and the lack of jobs on one side and the fact that he has had a false start in the labour market by ending in the street. Already on that background he will have a hard time in order to be favoured among potential applicants for a job. An employer will hardly prefer employing a foreigner “directly” from the street” if he can choose his employees freely.

Half an hour later I am talking to a somewhat younger guy, he too with an East European background. He has stayed with friends and acquaintances but after three months here and there it could not work any more, and now he is here in the temporary shelter. A young man with an attachment to Denmark. He knows the Danish society and nonetheless he expresses a lack of energy and knowledge to do something about his situation. He tells me that he has not slept very well last night and altogether he keeps brooding about his lack and need of sleep. His eyelids are heavy, and I encourage him therefore to turn in and profit from the temporary shelter while it is still there. It is close to one in the morning, and by 8 o’clock he, like all the others, will have to leave the shelter at the time when the place will be changed into a drop-in shelter for elderly people.

A little later as I am plodding along towards home, it is with a strange mixture of frustration and joy. With the joy of meeting once more sweet and nice people in the street who like the rest of us deserve a life in dignity but also with the frustration of life’s unbearable injustice and the situation the users of the shelter find themselves in. In the darkness of the night it gets even clearer to visualize a deadlock situation for the foreign homeless people if we and our politicians do not take the increasing number of foreign homeless people seriously.

I am comfortably lying in my own bed while mixed feelings from the experiences of the night continue into my dreams.

 

Serap Erkan