For the last 5 days, I have been staying with a friend in Rio de Janeiro. He lives in Ipanema, one block from the beach. His apartment is spacious and air conditioned. Five blocks away is designer shopping, including Hermes and Louis Vuitton. The entrance to his building is small with stores on either side. A guard sits in the front lobby 24 hours per day, buzzing in the residents. To the right side of the apartment building’s entrance is a medical supply store that closes at 7 p.m. Five minutes after closing, a homeless man and his dog set up their night’s residence outside the display windows, under the building’s overhang. The man is dressed appropriately for the neighborhood in a clean t-shirt, shorts, and flip flops. His dog is timid, has a red collar, and sleeps on a square bed at his side. The man never meets anyone’s eyes as they pass. Early each morning I emerge for my morning beach walk. They are gone. The space the homeless man and his dog occupied is spotless.
The first time I saw this man he struck me as an anomaly. But perhaps he is not. I don’t know much about homelessness. My Portuguese is not good enough to talk to him and obtain his story. I would like to understand how this clean, well-kept man arrived in this situation, and why he cannot get out of it.
Homelessness has several definitions, depending on the source of information. “Lack of stable housing” is succinct. Almost the same is “instability of an individual’s living arrangements.” Perhaps better is “An individual or family who lacks a fixed, regular, or adequate nighttime residence.”
Homelessness has several definitions, depending on the source of information. “Lack of stable housing” is succinct. Almost the same is “instability of an individual’s living arrangements.” Perhaps better is “An individual or family who lacks a fixed, regular, or adequate nighttime residence.”
The lack of a standard definition of homelessness leads to wide variations in the number of people characterized as homeless around the world. Organizations may have an interest in including people as homeless, whereas governments may say that the same people are not homeless. Take informal settlements, for example. In many countries, including Brazil, many poor people live in large, informal settlements. Situated on appropriated government or private lands, people begin building housing. They often have electricity and plumbing. Housing is stable, but there are no formal property rights. Homes are bought and sold by family, friends, and realtors. These sales are not recorded on official government registries. Theoretically, if the government or private individual owning the land on which the houses sit wanted to level these areas, they could. In Brazil these informal settlements are called “favelas.” In Africa the term is “townships.” In the past, the USA had “shantytowns.”
One reason for the widely varying statistics on homelessness is that some organizations include those living in informal settlements as being homeless. This, in my opinion, is disingenuous. Many favelas have been present for decades. They have a local police presence and utilities. In Nigeria, for example, some organizations include these people as homeless, stating that over 10 percent of Nigeria’s population is homeless. This seems very unlikely.
In my opinion, people living in favelas or townships have accommodations that are “fixed, regular, and adequate,” even though they are theoretically “unstable.” If we exclude people in informal settlements from homeless statistics, 0.27% of Brazilians are homeless. In the USA it is 0.17% and in South Africa the number is 0.34%. In the USA and Brazil the main causes of homelessness are poverty, mental illness, and substance abuse. In Africa, the list includes the loss of one’s home or displacement from it by natural disasters or conflicts (wars).
In the USA, I avoid homeless people, assuming they are all either mentally ill or substance abusers. My prejudices have been intermittently challenged, though. Two years ago, I lived in Capitol Hill, a semi-wealthy section of Washington DC. I remember seeing a young woman sitting in the courtyard of my neighborhood public library. Shaded by a tree, she was reading a book, just like the other patrons. Next to her was a small rolling suitcase, like the carry-on bag used for travel. Taped to that suitcase was a sign. “I am homeless. Please leave me and my things alone.” Like the homeless man here in Rio de Janeiro, I have often thought about this woman. What got her to the point that she had no fixed home?
