The Homeless Planning and Intervention Center (NPISA) in Viana do Castelo is currently supporting 37 people through a partnership involving the City Council, social institutions and public bodies, it was announced today.
According to the coordinator of the IR+ Street Team of the Family Assistance Office (GAF), one of NPISA’s 13 partners, of the 37 homeless people identified up until last September, the majority are men (27), aged between 24 and 70, mainly Portuguese.
“In the municipality of Viana do Castelo, the institutions that provide a provisional response to these situations are the Emergency Reception Center (CAE), run by Methamorphys, the Portuguese Association for Human Development, and the GAF’s Insertion Community (CI). Both have well-defined criteria and rules which, in certain situations, make it difficult or even impossible to admit these people,” he explained.
The PPA “is an answer for three months, a period that can be extended”.
At GAF’s CI, “homeless people can stay for six months, but they can stay longer, depending on their life project”.
Cláudia Marinho pointed out that “another constraint” in the response to this social problem is related to “the shortage of places available”.
He defended the need to implement the ‘Housing First’ and ‘Shared Apartment’ models to respond to the situations identified in the municipality.
“The ‘Housing First’ model applies to one or two people (couple or cohabiting). It’s an independent housing solution for people experiencing prolonged homelessness,” he said.
The “Shared Apartment solution can meet the needs of up to five people”. It is “transitional in nature, allowing people to live together in a community, with social integration as its main objective”.
Currently, he said, the overnight center created in 2021 by the Viana do Castelo City Council is the only existing accommodation response.
“Although it is limited in that it can only help up to 10 people, if it didn’t exist it would be much worse,” he said.
According to her, “data on people experiencing homelessness began to be recorded in 2021, after the NPISA was set up”.
“In previous years, as a result of the work of the GAF’s Ir + street team, the number of homeless people fluctuated between two and five at the most,” he said.
In October, the Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo presented the Schelter On project, which aims to respond to homeless people who, by “their own decision”, want to live on the streets.
“This project was conceived based on the reality of homelessness in Viana do Castelo, which is transversal to the rest of the country. In most cases, people live on the streets by their own decision. In Viana do Castelo, there is accommodation in institutions that work in the area, but people don’t want to be subject to the rules of these responses. What we tried to do with this project was to transpose their way of life on the street into a space where they don’t have to abide by rules,” explained Professor Manuel Rivas at the time.
The coordinator of the Interior Design course at the School of Technology and Management (ESTG) explained that Schelter On was “designed for people with reduced mobility” and to blend into the “urban context and not be a nuisance to the population”.
Manuel Rivas added that the project was presented at the end of 2022 at a meeting at the Viana do Castelo Town Hall, which brought together entities from the areas of health, justice, police forces, civil protection and institutions working in the social area such as the Methamorphys association and the GAF.
“Viana do Castelo City Council is very interested in the project. The idea is to install a prototype in the city and evaluate how it works over six months. We want to hear the opinion of the users themselves in order to improve it and find solutions that make it easier to build,” he explained at the time.
