'In Russia, people remain homeless for an average of five years’ {based on the statistics collected at Nochlezhka's Counseling Service}, and most often die on the street, too. ‘In countries where there is an accessible and well-developed system for helping people in need, this is under a year,' claims a report by the homeless charity organization Nochlezhka, in their 2020 annual report.
There is practically very little aid for the homeless in Russia other than the efforts of some charity organizations who hand out clothes, offer food and at best the odd washing facilities, free hairdressing services, temporarily accommodation, consultation leading to the restoration of passports, some training, and limited available work. This is all very welcome! But even the best efforts by long established charities such as Nochlezhka and Milo Serdie {A Russian Orthodox church charity} represent a drop in the ocean.
The homeless find 'no entry' signs everywhere they turn when searching for jobs or a place to stay. A volunteer who helps the homeless in Moscow told me "The longer a person stays on the street, the more likely he or she is likely to remain homeless." This is because the longer they stay on the streets, the more chance they have of being robbed of their money, possessions and passport. Without residence registration, a homeless person is more often denied the right to legally work, obtain medical care and social security benefits. In fact, without a passport, he is deemed a 'non-person.’
However, we should not be misled into believing that the plight of the homeless beyond Russia's borders is any easier especially in terms of psychological esteem. The grass is always greener on the other side or as a Russian proverb puts it: 'It is better over there, where you are absent.’
If you look at Australia, the average time a person remains homeless is 3.8 years and for families it is 1.8 years. One report found that almost a half of requests by the homeless in New South Wales did not get a response. As many as 48.2% of those who asked for accommodation aid from specialist homelessness services from 2020-2021 went without anything.
The terrible scale of the homeless problem in Russia is tremendous. Moscow alone has as many as 60 to 80,000 homeless while in Saint Petersburg the figure is estimated at around between 50,000 to 60,000.
In Russia itself in toto, the figure could be anything from around 250,000 to 3 million. But none of those statistics can tell of the immense pain and agony many of those people undergo. And if you go up and ask some of the homeless 'How are you?' some of them burst into tears.
A PREMATURE DEATH
I often wondered how most of the homeless managed to survive in Russia. I soon found a quick answer to my question. The succinct answer was that they did not. They die! And they die prematurely. In Moscow alone, as many as 6000 or more homeless people died on the streets during the period of the pandemic. For anyone willing to open their eyes it is not hard to fathom why. Once a person becomes homeless, he or she spends more and more time preoccupied and absorbed in attending to basic needs such attempting to wash themselves, finding a place to eat by walking long distances to soup kitchens, trying to wash yourself and protect your few cherished possessions from criminal elements.
For example, one homeless person, Sasha, states, "Every day you get up, look for food, fidget about, then bang, it's night again and then morning and it's all over again." Sasha himself spends the night at a cemetery and walks about 13 km a day looking for food. It must seem to many of the homeless that there is no way out. They can easily abandon all hope, get drunk, plunge into deep sleep and freeze to death.
PASSPORTS
I have often asked whether walking around Russia without a passport is illegal. After all, when someone is stopped and claims they don't have their passport, the police do seem to get worked up about that. I pondered whether you had to carry a passport with you all the time. It also seemed that obtaining a passport was a rite of passage! I recall beaming school students boasting of receiving their first passport at 14 years of age. When I told them some people in Britain don't even have or use a passport they looked a little perplexed and bemused by this. It was as if they could not imagine that a country might exist without a passport regime. But in Russian without registration or a proper passport it is almost impossible to work legally.
Those people who write off the homeless as lazy never pause to consider the real difficulties faced by the homeless. It stands to reason that for anyone, never mind a homeless person, they need the mental and physical strength to return to a stable life. They need warmth, a safe and secure environment and undisturbed sleep in order to be presentable for work. You can't do this well if you constantly feel threatened by thieves or are woken up by police officers.
A spokesperson from Nochlezhka stated, 'Every night spent on the streets takes them further away from this goal. They can get beaten up and have their papers stolen, their health gradually deteriorates and they lose self-esteem and self-confidence.' It is not hard to see why many of them take to drink. You often discover that many people who have turned into alcoholics or drug addicts have a hidden history of being deeply traumatized by highly stressful life events.
THE ORDEAL OF ORPHANS
The lack of assisted accommodation for the homeless in Russia is best indicated by Russia's orphans. As many as one out of five orphans commit suicide and around 40% are estimated to go on to become addicted. According to statistics only 10% of young people released from orphanages live to the age of 40! {Arifmetika Dobra report}. Many children were forced to flee from orphanages to escape abuse. I encountered many of those children in Moscow back in the 1990's. I recall one young teenager who approached us for help who carried around a document which confirmed he had been sexually abused by the director of the home he had stayed at. I encountered orphans near and around the railway stations who were hiding from the militia because they did not want to be rounded up and taken back to children's homes. A law was passed by the Russian state Duma in 2013 which declared that every orphan had to be provided with a home after he or she left their children's home.
However, the local authorities in the regions often refused to provide the requested homes. They denied such a law had any judicial status. In fact, homeless orphans had to take officials to court to attain what should have been granted to them in the first place. According to one charity called 'Warm Reception,' they stated that many orphans finally get housed at the age of 40 to 50! The facts are the courts and officials are resisting the enforcement of this passed law. This is especially true of the city of Omsk where officials and the courts are determined to resist the letter of this law. Unfortunately, many orphans are not even aware of this law. They have never heard of it so can remain homeless for years and years and die on the streets. They receive no reprieve from the cold callous and cruel streets.
In regard to the provision of night shelters or hostels for the homeless there are very few places. In fact, the shelters only provide 1,500 places in Moscow! And some homeless can't obtain a place because they lack proper documents. But even if a hostel bends the rules and allows them to stay the homeless are highly reluctant to stay there. Perhaps they don't like to give up their privacy, feel threatened and insecure in such environments.
The good news is that pressure groups such as 'the Outcasts Union' and Orphans aid Committee of the Siberian Labor Federation are fighting for the rights of orphans to receive the homes they are entitled to. They have issued a special guidebook of advice of how to win their rights and won 700 cases where orphans got their homes.
Unfortunately, all too often this help is just too late for so many homeless orphans. Many continue to perish without any pity and with no trace of them.
They simply die.