ARCHIVED - Cartagena and Murcia step up help for homeless as temperatures drop
Charities like the Red Cross are providing much of the help and supplies to people in precarious housing situations in the Region
Winter is often the hardest time of year for homeless people and those sleeping on the streets, with the cold weather representing not only a discomfort but a danger.
It is estimated that there are around 30,000 homeless people in Spain, according to the Hogar Sí foundation, and data from the Assís Homelss Centre suggest that one homeless person dies every five days.
That’s why social services and humanitarian organisations like the Red Cross are handing out more clothes and blankets than ever before in in Murcia and Cartagena. More than anything, though, volunteers and social workers are recommending that people living on the streets go to a shelter during the current cold snap.
Extra places have been set up at local homeless shelters, while volunteers are distributing more warm clothes and blankets to homeless people who don’t wish to go to one of these shelters.
In Murcia capital, thirty people have received assistance in fifteen days by the Mobile Emergency and Social Care Service (SEMAS) in the framework of the so-called ‘Operación Frío’ (Operation Cold), which began on January 12 and will be continued all this week in response to the plummeting temperatures, as indicated by municipal sources.
SEMAS has been providing local homeless people with “food, hot drinks, sleeping bags and blankets”, according to the Department of Social Services. As it is expected to get even colder, especially at night, “this week SEMAS is going to increase the level of attention to people on the streets, which includes both actions on the streets and the provision of additional places in the facilities of the Fundación Jesús Abandonado”.
“Depending on the specific circumstances of each person, SEMAS will offer to transfer them to Jesús Abandonado or to hospitals, if necessary, as well as carrying out the corresponding follow-up,” continued sources from the Department of Social Services.
In Cartagena, meanwhile, José Antonio Martínez Meca, head of Cartagena’s homelessness and begging unit, has explained that they attend to “half a dozen homeless people on a daily basis, who are passing through, on their way to Almería and coming from Alicante”.
It is not the City Hall that hands out most blankets in Cartagena, though, but NGOs such as the Cruz Roja (Red Cross). María Díaz Roca, who works for the Cruz Roja, says that as well as handing out blankets and hot drinks every Friday night, they also supply homeless people with necessities like “toilet paper, water and food”.In the last two weeks, the Red Cross has attended to 16 homeless people in Cartagena, providing them with “hats, scarves and socks, which, if it rains, are usually soaked”.
And it is not only those sleeping rough that they help. “We also attend to people living in very precarious circumstances in settlements, in shanty towns, in areas of Campo de Cartagena such as La Palma or La Puebla,” says Díaz Roca, adding that these are people who “do not have supplies” and who are equally affected by the cold weather.
Images: Cruz Roja
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