In these days of home confinement, we cannot forget the people who are homeless. Homeless people live in places where today you can't go: the street, parks, libraries, cash machines... Now they find themselves in places they don't like to go: shelters.
The shelters have given shelter to homeless people and then closed their doors so that they do not go out on the street, like all of us. These circumstances have led to difficulties of overcrowding, poor hygiene, and bad coexistence. Homeless people are not very used to living in a family, to living together, they have lost their homes for different reasons, their family ties, and they live alone on the street. Sometimes this situation of loneliness, defencelessness and vulnerability has led to mental and other types of illnesses, which condition their relationship with others.
In any case, these circumstances: the lack of a home where they feel safe and secure, the difficulties of coexistence resulting from loneliness and dependency, and the overcrowding in shelters... make this population particularly vulnerable at exceptional times when we do not know when the confinement will end or what scenario we will find when we can go out onto the street. In this context, having a home has become a privilege, because there are still many people who do not enjoy it.
A few months ago, Libros de las Malas Compañías (Bad Companies Books) published a book written and illustrated by Pablo Caracol, Hogar (Home), in which a person who finds himself on the street tells a child who gets lost in the city why he got into this situation. The child also tells the homeless person what a home means to him: to sleep safely, to eat every day, to receive tenderness and support, and to be cared for. It is a book that has two beginnings, and the end is the encounter because the only end to poverty and homelessness is the encounter.
That is why we are publishing this book, which seeks to make the voice of the homeless our voice too because if we do not cry out together for these situations of helplessness to be resolved, there will be no end. That is why we publish this book without words so that injustice does not leave us without them. And because a home is not a roof, but a place where we feel safe. We hope that after this situation of confinement we will be able to build a world that is a home for everyone.
In this video, you can see our book Home, to which Victoria Pellegero has given voice to talk about what a home is in these times without a street.