Free
movement adds to EU’s homelessness crisis
Brussels
faces calls to step in and help countries tackle homelessness.
By HANNE
COKELAERE 2/19/20, 7:11 PM CET Updated 2/21/20, 3:48 AM CET
Illustration
by Noma Bar for POLITICO
To its
champions, free movement of people is one of the EU's biggest wins, but it is
leaving some of its most destitute citizens out in the cold.
While a
record number of citizens now live and work in another EU state, the number of
Europeans who move country and end up living on the streets is also on the
rise. Outreach workers and MEPs say it is time for Brussels to step in.
While EU
workers can roam the bloc freely, not everyone finds it easy to make a
comfortable life at their destination. Residence procedures favor people who
can prove they won't be a burden on the local social security system, meaning
that poorer people, often in precarious and low-paid jobs, risk falling through
the cracks.
The rough
sleeping problem is hard to miss in the Belgian capital, with many homeless
living on the streets and in the metro stations around the city's EU quarter —
home to the European Commission, Council, Parliament and other institutions.
Here, rough sleepers beg for change from some of the EU's best-paid officials
and diplomats.
“I didn’t
come from Romania [to Belgium] only to receive social assistance," said
59-year-old Nicolae, speaking over mint tea at a busy café near the city
center. "I want to work."
"Morally, the EU bears part of the
responsibility" —
Freek Spillewijn, director of FEANTSA
Six years
ago, Nicolae lost his studio apartment in Molenbeek, a diverse district in
central Brussels, because he could no longer pay the rent. Today he spends his
nights in a shelter and his days in the area near Brussels Midi station — the
destination for the Eurostar and trains from across Europe — where he makes use
of soup kitchens and free Wi-Fi hotspots.
The
increase in rough sleeping is visible around the bloc. According to a 2019
report by FEANTSA, an organization working on homelessness in the EU, at least
700,000 people across the bloc were sleeping rough or in an emergency shelter —
a 70 percent increase on a decade ago. In Finland, which rolled out a long-term
strategy offering homeless people a house, the numbers have gone down.
Rough
sleeping
There are
no official national figures for homelessness in Belgium, but organizations
dealing with the problem have signaled an increase in the number of citizens
from other EU countries needing help.
Data from
Brussels’ emergency accommodation organization Samusocial indicates that 15.3
percent of people who came to them for shelter in 2018 were non-Belgian EU
nationals. Belgians make up 16.4 percent of the total, while 61.6 percent come
from outside the bloc (the origins of the rest were not documented). Among
Europeans, 33 percent came from the bloc's east.
Brussels
outreach organization Diogènes says that 42 percent of the people they helped
in 2018 were Belgian, 43 percent were other EU nationals and 15 percent came
from outside the bloc. Poles alone made up more than 15 percent of the people
the organization reached out to in 2019.
Other major
cities in Europe reported similar trends. Barcelona recorded a sharp increase
in the number of non-Spanish EU men sleeping rough, with their share of the
total jumping from about one-third (tied with Spanish and non-EU nationals) in
2014 to 44 percent in 2018. Female non-Spanish EU nationals also outnumbered
Spanish and non-EU women.
And while
49 percent of those sleeping rough in London between 2018 and 2019 were U.K.
nationals, 31 percent were from Eastern Europe, with another 7 percent from the
rest of the bloc, according to data from the Greater London Authority.
"Morally,
the EU bears part of the responsibility," said Freek Spillewijn, the
director of FEANTSA, pointing to the link between free movement and
homelessness. “It’s a pity they’re keeping their eyes closed to the negative
consequences of free movement."
“This
problem has been urgent for about 10 years, but little is being done to tackle
it," he added.
Extending
welfare benefits to people from other EU countries is a sticky subject as
lawmakers fear the possible impact on their social security systems.
"The
free movement of workers is a good thing for European citizens who are looking
for opportunities, for the economy and for the labor needs of EU countries, but
it shouldn't evolve into a free movement of social support," said Gilles
Verstraeten, an MP in the Brussels parliament for the Flemish nationalist N-VA
party. That could lead to "social shopping," where Europe's most
generous systems become a target, he argued.
But
Spinnewijn argued the EU should make sure that people get guidance in their
search for a new job, or see to it that they can return to a country where they
do have access to social assistance in a sustainable manner — including a push
for some EU countries to set up this kind of service. That requires an
overarching EU framework, he said.
In Brussels
at least, there are new efforts to get on top of a rising problem. Alain Maron,
a Green minister for the Brussels region, announced a new homelessness strategy
in December, with a €14.8 million increase in funding — for shelters, projects
to prevent people from losing their homes and housing projects following
Finland's approach.
The
paradigm shift should help the city shift away from emergency measures — such
as boosts in aid during the winter — to develop a more sustainable long-term
plan, Maron said on local radio. "People are dying on the streets, also in
the summer. We want operators to manage this on an annual basis."
The new
Commission says it has heeded calls for action. "Housing is at the heart
of all social problems," Commissioner for Jobs Nicolas Schmit told MEPs in
a January debate, promising a common "thread" for national
governments and regions to tackle homelessness.
The
homelessness trap
One major
obstacle for low-skilled migrants from other EU countries is navigating the
bureaucracy in their country of arrival.
Nicolae
left Romania's Transylvania region in 2007, the year his country joined the EU,
to find a job in the “capital of Europe." Then, in his late forties, he
took up work for a fruit grower in Londerzeel, a small municipality 20
kilometers north of Brussels. His pay was low, but better than what he would
have earned in Romania and accommodation was included, he said. After his
employer died two years later though, he found himself back on the streets.
When he
became seriously ill in 2011, his misfortune initially brought a modest
financial windfall. He cleared a first step in Belgium's registration process
when the federal government decided he could stay to get access to the medical
services he needed. And as someone on his way to acquiring residence rights,
that also came with a monthly allowance and a one-off sum to settle down, which
he used to move into his Molenbeek apartment.
But his
stay there was short-lived. The government subsequently overruled its decision
to let him remain in the country on medical grounds and scrapped his allowance.
“Everything I had: my TV, my bed, my fridge. All gone,” he said.
"Without
an address, you don’t exist, so you don't have rights" — Bram Van de
Putte, outreach worker at Diogènes
Now
embroiled in an appeal procedure that started in 2014, he is still holding out
hope that the decision will eventually be overturned. “Had they told me from
the start that I had to go back to Romania, it would have been better,” said
Nicolae. Now he has nothing to return to there, he said. His parents have died
since he moved to Belgium.
A recurring
problem is EU nationals' unreliable access to social services, which are often
reserved for legal residents of a given country. That's exacerbated by the EU's
hands-off approach to the way governments weigh people's employment in their
residence applications. Countries often lean toward a narrow interpretation of
"genuine" work, with citizens who move abroad to work precarious,
low-paid jobs particularly vulnerable to missing out, according to FEANTSA.
That means
homeless people who have migrated from other EU countries risk finding
themselves in a vicious cycle that makes their status quasi-permanent: no home
without money, but no money without work, and no work without a home.
"Without
an address, you don’t exist, so you don't have rights," said Bram Van de
Putte, an outreach worker at Diogènes.
Many EU
countries are a long way from breaking that cycle.
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