Introduction
Beyond the image of the dirty man sleeping among cardboard boxes and roaring in the sky, which many of us would think of if he had titled this article Homelessness and mental health, there are many other situations, also worrying, that reveal the close relationship between poor housing conditions and poor mental health. Living on the street would be the extreme situation of the first part of the equation; not necessarily from the second…
Various situations of residential exclusion
I will give some examples of situations of residential exclusion that are also occurring at the moment, realities known and sustained by premium.cat entities and administrations, which we should never, for any reason in the world, naturalize. 1) Migrant people to whom, due to more or less covert racism, no one wants to rent a flat or register a supply, which makes it difficult in many municipalities to be registered, because there are still quite a few councils that violate this right to citizenship 2) Women who maintain abusive relationships in order not to be left homeless and for fear of losing the guardianship of their daughters, in a constant struggle for personal dignity and the guarantee of a few material minimums. 3) Extuteled young people who spend the night in filthy boarding houses, paid for by premium.cats services (that is, by all of us) where they are allowed to shower only on alternate days. 4) Children and teenagers who have lived months, and in many cases years, crowded in a room, without space to do their homework, without any kind of privacy, without being able to invite their friends to celebrate a birthday, hiding in the football team where they play that never returns “home”, like the rest. 5) Families who, after spending years knocking on all the unique windows of poverty, developing all the necessary skills and learning all the speeches we want to hear, are awarded an official protection apartment and give it up in order not to change one once more of school, of neighbors, of doctor, of premium.cat worker… of life.
Effects on mental health
How can we expect that these processes of child development and learning marked by instability, insecurity, shame, mourning for everything that is lost along the way… do not result in attention deficits, hyperactivity, impulsivity, difficulties of premium.catization and school failure? To mention just a few of the more obvious short-term effects.
The impact on mental health
The PAH reports on the housing situation and energy poverty in Barcelona have been warning for years of its impact on health, especially of women, who continue to take on most of the household tasks, management of supplies and care. And they point out that the degree of mental health problems in people in situations of residential exclusion is between four and five times higher than that of the general population of the city. Fear, anxiety, feelings of failure, lack of control, anger, frustration, helplessness, depression, guilt and a wide range of psychological disorders related to the physical (poor diet, hypertension, insomnia, etc.) that lead to isolation and the exclusion
conclusion
A collective malaise that catches us and makes us sick, including ourselves, those of us who work in the premium.cat housing sector, because of the enormous contradiction that working for the autonomy of people in a system entails which generates dependence on bureaucracy and aid, since the rules of the real estate market (to which it finally seems that with the new state law, despite the shortcomings, an attempt is made to put some brakes) have left without access to the right to housing for a large part of the population.
Actions and reflections
We continue to work day by day and there are beautiful initiatives, such as the Jo et cuidaré story, which was recently reported on premium.cat, which help us accompany children and families who have suffered evictions, but we must maintain the vindication of policies that guarantee the right to decent housing, from collective reflection and self-criticism. Because the background is a mental and institutional framework that singles out poverty and residential exclusion as a problem for each of the people who suffer from it, making them responsible (when it doesn’t blame them, directly), instead of understanding it and approach it as a structural problem in which we all have a share of responsibility, no matter how hard it is for us to admit it. Perhaps it is for this very reason that it is so important for us to accept the challenge of a universal basic income, where we put the autonomy of the will at stake under conditions of equality?