Homelessness hits Murmansk

“Urgent help to homeless” – that’s the name of a project spearheaded by the volunteers of the organization “Red Cross” in Murmansk in northwestern Russia.

Volunteers and social workers are driving in a special bus to the places where most of the homeless people live to distribute kits with food, medicine and other supplies.

They’re trying to find out how many homeless people there are in Murmansk, an Arctic city of about one million, and what kind of help they need.

The majority of the homeless in Murmansk are men (80 per cent), 40 to 50 years old, and are former prisoners or sailors. Nearly all of them suffer from alcoholism. Most of them have no relatives in Murmansk, no work and no place to stay. They sleep in the streets, in cellars or attics. A lot of them lack ID-documents.

To ease the homeless situation, Murmansk has opened its social centre and added extra places in the isolation hospital.

At the city’s tuberculosis treatment centre, 109 homeless people are registered. However, they need money to get to the clinic and receive care.