Most Countries Required to Provide Housing : Europe Strained by Increased Homelessness

Britain’s Prince Charles has gone out incognito to check on the plight of homeless people sleeping on the streets of London.

In Paris, gray police vans cruise the French capital in search of the down and out.

Mother Teresa is establishing a shelter for the homeless in Vatican City.

In several West European countries, a growing tide of homeless people threatens to burst through social safety nets.

The number of the truly homeless people in Europe probably doesn’t compare to that of the United States, where federal government estimates range from 250,000 to 2 million, approaching 1% of the U.S. population.

West European countries almost all have laws requiring the government to house everyone without a home, and Europeans are astonished at tales of the wretched homeless amid limousine luxury in the United States.

“You can’t compare our system to the U.S.,” said Kurt Danielsson, information secretary at the Ministry of Social Affairs in Sweden. “According to Swedish law, every person in this country has the right to a place to live, and the society is obliged to help in all possible ways.”

Severe Challenges

But if Sweden, with evenly spread wealth and a full-blown welfare system, is experiencing strains living up to its standards, governments and charities in some other European countries face severe challenges.

In London, Lyn Griffiths, 23, spent 45 weeks in a basement room of a bed-and-breakfast hotel with her toddler son, Shane. Her husband was with her for three months, but she asked him to leave because “we were fighting and arguing and it wasn’t fair to Shane.”

“I don’t know if you could imagine living in one tiny room,” she said. “You have all your possessions in that room, all your clothes, children’s toys, your books, no floor space. It’s just impossible. It’s too claustrophobic.”

The Griffiths at least had a roof over their heads. But the hotel had no kitchen facilities, so the family tried to eat in cafes on a welfare allotment of $95 a week and became ill because of poor nutrition.

Lyn Griffiths said her son became “really naughty, really frustrated. . . . He ate on a bed, played on a bed, slept on a bed. It was totally impossible for any family.”

The family had moved from London to a new job in Dorset in southwest England. But the job evaporated and in December, 1986, they returned penniless to London, where the number of homeless families rose by 45% to 5,750 in the last year. Like the Griffiths, many were housed in bed-and-breakfast hotels.

Welfare authorities finally put the Griffiths rent-free into a two-bedroom apartment in November. Husband and wife are together again; 3-year-old Shane is cheerful and pink-cheeked again.

The homeless are “refugees in their own land,” said a new report for a British charity, the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children. The thousands of British youngsters crammed in hotels like “children cast aside on dung heaps” inspired the founding of the charity in 1739.

Homeless people rounded up by the Paris police are taken to the 100-year-old Maison de Nanterre in the western suburbs for a shower and a bed for the night.

But at Nanterre, “even with all the best intentions, it becomes a situation which can be a little bestial,” said Francois Lambert, director of a center for the homeless. The people are put back on the streets each morning.

Many of Europe’s homeless are political refugees and immigrants.

In Sweden, an estimated 20,000 refugees took up a quarter of the 1986 social welfare budget of $660 million, which helped 308,800 households meet all their needs.

While a Swede on welfare gets assistance to rent permanent housing, the doubling of the number of refugees in the last two years has forced authorities to rent hotels and guest houses for the influx from Iran, Lebanon, Chile and elsewhere.

The number of homeless households that authorities in England help doubled from 52,700 in 1979 to 102,980 in 1986, according to government statistics. That period coincides with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s tenure, which has seen a rolling back of the welfare state and a drop in spending on public housing.

Much of Britain’s homelessness is concentrated in London, which has unemployment well below the 9.5% national level and draws people with prospects of jobs. But housing is scarce and expensive, and those who fail to get work can find their families relegated for several years to the bleak bed-and-breakfast hotels that are increasingly used to house the homeless.

Some argue that the authorities should not give housing to anyone who left a home elsewhere. But the Homeless Persons Act of 1977 requires that homeless families with children be housed.

The bed-and-breakfast solution is widely criticized as extravagantly expensive. London boroughs spent $113 million in 1987 on such housing, paying hotels $360 to $900 a week to house a family--more than enough to make mortgage payments on a new house. But the law makes no provision for the poor to be given title to homes, only to house them.

The south London borough of Lambeth issued an appeal in November to owners of vacant houses to lease their properties at attractive rents, with the borough taking over maintenance. The borough got a surprisingly vigorous response and was able to house immediately about 20 families of former Vietnamese boat people who were evicted from a bed-and-breakfast hotel.

Charities report a problem of burnout among British social workers, who know they have no real solution--a home--to offer. “This leads to a situation where powerless workers are talking to the powerless homeless, with all the distress this brings on both sides,” a Coram Foundation report said.

In winter, the number requiring assistance swells. In France, the authorities supply accommodation for 30,000 homeless through most of the year, but 38,000 in the winter.

‘Important Phenomenon’

The migration of the homeless to Paris in the winter is a “very important phenomenon,” said Philippe LaFouge, director of the city social aid office. The winter influx includes seasonal workers, people from the north of France and some foreigners, he said.

The homeless are one thing, the aggressively homeless another. They are the squatters, a subclass of the youth protests that swept Western Europe in the late 1960s. Squatters showed up most dramatically in Holland, and they still invade vacant properties, housing themselves while drawing attention to housing shortages.

“In some cases, people squat because they need space for their political activities,” said an Amsterdam squatter who gave only his first name, Leo. “People find it important to live as a group. Then you pretty much have to squat.”

The Dutch welfare system, however, is geared to providing a home to all comers. Marius Nuy, a researcher at Nijmegen University, said the government spends $25 million to $37.5 million a year on care for the homeless.

120,000 Homeless in Holland

There are 19 hostels where 2,000 homeless can stay indefinitely and about 50 other hostels that offer short-term shelter, he said.

Poverty is not the only reason for homelessness. Nuy said the homeless tend to be single, have little education, low social skills and little chance of finding a job.

About 120,000 of Holland’s 14 million people are homeless, he said.

“The situation of welfare recipients is worsening and unemployment has risen enormously in the last few years,” Nuy said. Adding to the problem are government cuts in health care and a tendency among psychiatric clinics to hospitalize only people who urgently need treatment, he said.

No Statistics in Italy

In Italy, officials do not have statistics on the homeless, whose number appears to be increasing. People can be seen sleeping in doorways in downtown Rome or huddled in blankets near the central railway station.

Mother Teresa, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and her Sisters of Charity Order are building a 74-bed shelter for the homeless inside Vatican City.

Pope John Paul II set aside space in the Vatican for the shelter, which will have sleeping, dining and bathing facilities.

In West Germany and Belgium, officials say that slum housing is more of a problem than homelessness. The West Germans estimate that about 100,000 get shelter out of a population of 61 million, but about 700,000 are in inadequate housing. The Belgians sheltered about 15,000 out of 10 million and reckon there are about 30,000 slum dwellings in Brussels, the capital.

Headed for Shortage

Nicole Brasseur, who is in charge of housing for greater Brussels, said the city is heading for a serious housing shortage.

“Rents are representing an increasing part of income for lower-income people (43% for those earning less than $14,300 a year),” she said. “The number of homeless is sure to rise in Brussels.”

The Belgian Assn. des Maisons D’Accueil, which provides homes for the poor, has about 2,500 beds, while long-established state-run homes have about 700 beds for derelicts.

In West Germany, the Health Ministry said the government spends about $14.3 billion on social programs, including help for the homeless. But no specific figure for aid to the homeless was available.

‘Holes in the Net’

“We certainly take the problem of homelessness seriously, but it is not one of our greatest problems,” said Eckart Grossman, spokesman for the Family and Health Ministry in Bonn.

The government’s programs deal with the problem well, said Joseph Scheu, spokesman in West Germany for Caritas, the Roman Catholic welfare organization.

“It’s generally a good system which provides an adequate safety net,” Scheu said. “But, as in every system, there are holes in the net.”