The document discusses homelessness in São Paulo, Brazil, highlighting the socio-economic factors contributing to the increasing visibility of homeless populations, such as unemployment, family breakdowns, and inadequate public policies. Various initiatives during the 1990s aimed at addressing these issues created opportunities for the homeless to regain dignity, self-esteem, and reintegration into society through community programs, cooperatives, and social movements. It emphasizes the necessity for public policies that protect and promote the rights of this marginalized group while showcasing successful community efforts to improve their living conditions.

1. CONFERENCE: “RETHINKING HOMELESSNESS POLICIES”
FEANTSA AND CENTRO DE ESTUDOS PARA A INTERVENÇÃO SOCIAL
SEPTEMBER, 28 — LISBON
“Social practices developed with the homeless1 in the City of São Paulo (Brazil):
Issues for debate in the European scene”2
In Brazil, a heterogeneous fragment of workers gradually released from the formal work
market, performing professional activities considered irregular, unstable and low remunerated, has
emerged. For not having a permanent residence, they alternatively live in boarding houses, shelters
and city streets, and they take advantage of places offering food or social care centers to eat. Now,
more than ever, for these people, not only does living on the street mean the exposure to unsafe
conditions of life and work but it also means violence – by policemen and streets –, which is
worsened by the increasingly subjugating presence of crack.
Therefore, the presence of the homeless in the Brazilian large and medium cities has
progressively gained importance. It is not an issue excluded from the critical social problems arisen
out of severe transformations in both the labor market and the Nation in the last decades, nationally
and internationally. In the late 70’s and in the early 80’s, the association between unemployment
and ‘street status’ was first verified. News widely spread by press revealed an unambiguous profile
of people and families inhabiting public areas of the city of Sao Paulo, surviving on insecure
activities they do on the streets. In this economic and social situation, a lot of manpower and a little
1 In this text, I use the expression homeless to identity a group of people living on public places, such as streets,
sidewalks, bridges, squares, gardens, abandoned real states (different from the rural homeless), vacant lots, improvised
shelters or in the dampness, as well as those living in housings and public residences. In Brazil, there is an extensive
nomenclature, historically constructed and filled with meanings, which, in turn, expresses both the society’s
representations about them and their communication with certain social, economic and political-institutional conjectures.
However, in different social groups, there is an unmistaken trend to find a common denominator, one expression
comprising the heterogeneity of street status, in the generalizing meaning of disqualifying the population living and
surviving on the streets and housings – ‘burglars’ –, as well as another expression functioning as a counterpoint and
relieves prejudices or makes standpoints more explicit – ‘street people’, ‘street population’ or ‘population on street
status’.
2 I refer to the studies População de Rua: quem é, como vive e como é vista (Hucitec, 1992, co-author), População de
rua: Brasil e Canadá (Hucitec, 1995, organizer), Pesquisa documental (CD-ROM, 1999, material that I collected in
newspapers published from 1970 through 1998), and my master’s degree paper published under the title Vidas de Rua
(Hucitec/Rede Rua, 2005).

2. employment, corrosion of salary and workers’ living status, dislocation of initiatives of laborers’
organizations are noticed in an economy being developed by rejecting most workers. That is when
there comes out more perceptibly a percentage of workers, who, due to the 80’s social crises, no
longer finds industrial and usual job opportunities and starts working in the service segment, mainly
taking irregular positions in the informal economy. In Brazil, more precisely in the 80’s, the economic
recession along with the high inflationary rates led to an unprecedented worsening of misery and
poverty, as well as the problem regarding the homeless becomes more visible.
In the past few years, the globalized world’s capitalist development and social
transformations have equally created fragments of workers who, for failing to be up-to-date with the
changes in job profiles, experience the consequences of a strong release from the work market. It
can be verified by either the high unemployment rates or the precariousness of the work conditions
of the group of workers, who are now labeled ‘useless’ and ‘disposable’ in the production process
and gradually kept away from the possibilities and/or alternatives of work. An additional and
significant contribution to the release is workers’ low school level and lack of professional
qualification, especially in this economic environment.
It is evident that economic processes are not the only thing to blame for the fact of people
permanently or temporarily staying on streets or housings. There is a wide-ranging group of issues
that are associated with one another, mainly those connected with fragility and/or rupture of a
family’s loving ties, for a number of reasons: relocations when searching for a job, distance from
family’s restricted circle, harsh losses by death or desertion, breakups by conflicts, separations,
quarrels and fights.
The role of the State must also be emphasized, on account of its neglect, its inefficiency and
nonexistence of public policies, given that until the 90’s, the responsibility for serving this population
segment had been delegated to confessional organizations and very scarce funds to the housings
had been allocated.
One aspect to deliberate when understanding why people and families live in public spaces
is that, beyond the acquainted relation between street population and alcohol, there is a new
element: the seriousness of the presence of crack, which jeopardizes physical and mental health in
a short term. People living on the streets are subject to traffic network and can become users or
dealers3. The street/drugs/crime association has a high destructive power and strengthens the
social images automatically related to poverty and marginality.
Consequently, complex social processes are at risk. The relation established between
reasons of economic, social and institutional orders and the rupture of family’s loving ties, which are,
in turn, endangered by internal and psychological factors, is likely to happen. It is necessary to learn
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3. how the loving ties, which were torn apart, were explained from the psychic viewpoint – what could
make it clearer to understand the life together with what is more despoiled: living on the streets and
housings.
In Sao Paulo, until the 90’s, there were only estimations of people on the streets and
housings, varying between 3 thousand and 100 thousand people. Ever since, the (current)
Department of Social Care and Development of the City Major Office have performed six surveys,
the two last of which were in partnership with University of Sao Paulo’s Institute Foundation of
Economic Studies – FIPE. In the year 2000, a census was conducted throughout the city and, in the
year 2003, a census was performed in the center of the city, with samples taken in the rest of the
city (see table below).
Surveys regarding the homeless in the city of Sao Paulo (1991-2003)
Number of people
Year Coverage Shelters Streets Total
(month) N.º % N.º %
1991 (May) Expanded center – – 3,392 – 3,392
1994 (Aug.) City 1,749 38.5 2,800 61.5 4,549
1996 (Sept.) City 1,913 35.9 3,421 64.1 5,334
1998 (Dec.) City 3,416 52.9 3,037 47.1 6,453
2000 (Feb.) City 3,693 42.4 5,013 57.6 8,706
2003 (Oct.) City 6,186 4.,0 4,213 59.0 10,399
Sources: População de Rua - quem é, como vive e como é vista, São Paulo, Hucitec, 1992, p. 49;
Síntese da Contagem da População de Rua – September 1994 (mimeo); Research about street
population in the city of Sao Paulo − 1996 (mimeo); Counting of street population in the city of Sao
Paulo and Profile of city shelters’ – December 1998 (mimeo) and Primeiro Censo dos Moradores de
Rua da Cidade de São Paulo, Fipe, Dec. 2000 (mimeo); Estimation of the number of street
residents and the study of the results achieved with SisRua (preliminary report), Fipe, out. 2003
(mimeo). These surveys were performed with diverse parameters, methodologies and periods of
time, but with a similar concept: people using public spaces and housings to inhabit.
This data shows that such a phenomenon has been gradually increasing and that, due to its
significant dimensions, it can and must be tackled by governors, by producing public policies of
consolidation of rights aimed at this population segment.
3

4. Breakthrough experiences
I hereby present some kinds of work conceived during the 90’s and the recent years, within
the scope of public power in partnership with social care organizations and civil society. My focus is
the ongoing breakthrough experiences, even though some of them have begun in varied political
environments.
Between 1989 and 1992, there were countless political and scientific improvements in the
work with the homeless, where public powers, nongovernmental organizations and the Universities
were concerned; their agents were united as partners, concentrated on promoting the homeless’
citizenship. The fact that they considered the social work in a grouped, participatory and democratic
way has led these public and private agents to establish the Coordinating Court of Works. This level
of participation discussed the planning and evaluation of the results of the research and activities
that renew the social practice in this area, such as Grouping Houses, labor unions, shelter in winter
season, among other activities with the intention of organizing the homeless and the political
standpoint, like creating the Day of Street People’s Struggle, street demonstrations and the event of
the I National Seminar of Street People.3
Just then, the episode of the first research about street population in the city of Sao Paulo
stood out, breaking the classic pattern of vagabondage, by presenting a profile of workers in an
unemployment and underemployment status, contrary to the current view within the society that
normally considers the homeless idle, socially isolated and unable to think, ponder and be organized,
and that all of them are alcohol addicted. Among other issues, the research has induced the
reflection about the heterogeneity of street population and, consequently, the confidence of a need
for modernization, with equally diversified practices.
Friendliness services and art workshops
It is important to emphasize that, in 1991, friendliness services were created, a bunch of
socio-educational activities intended to rescue self-esteem, provide earnings and support the exit
from streets. The Grouping Houses were, at that time, a breakthrough and model initiative inspired
in the work developed by the Organization of Friendly Assistance (OAF), a pioneer organization in
the defense of the homeless’ rights founded in 1955. On the top of this work lied the adjustment of
working methodology, which broadened the professional outlook with the knowledge of the
3 Researches and works in Vieira, Bezerra & Rosa, orgs. (1992). I National Seminar of Street People was
discussed in ROSA, org. (1995).
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5. homeless’ characteristics and profile, aiming at the street population’s rights and the concept that
the way the society is organized gives rise to a significant fragment of workers released from their
most elementary rights of citizenship. This outlook of analysis strived to destroy theories and
practices that were formerly deemed conservative and prejudiced because they would repeat
subordination and dependency over and again, mostly by taking emergency and assistance actions
in an authoritative and infantilizing way.
The works of friendliness and arts have been spread throughout the city in the last years
under divergent focuses and are an evident opportunity to return close to their life project and family
and friends (accordingly), to overcome the feeling of social uselessness and conquer autonomy.
Some examples: Street Color House, Light of Street, Boracea Art Workshop, Coorpel and Metuia
Art Workshops.
Collectives forms of work: the example of the collector’s cooperatives of recyclable materials
In the city of Sao Paulo, the first experiences of waste paper collection organizations,
cardboards and recyclable materials date back to the 80’s, when religious entities became
interested in socially including the homeless. In 1985, an association of waster paper collectors was
launched, offering them the chance to obtain a revenue by collecting and selling recyclable
materials, what, in May 1989, resulted in the first corporation of this category in Brazil, the
Collector’s Autonomous Cooperatives of Waste Papers, Scraps and Recyclable Materials
(Coopamare), and exerted a vast influence over the organization of collectors from other areas.
Initiatives like this were replicated both locally and nationally in the 90’s. Besides pursuing the
achievement of providing an income to their members and preserving the environment, these
associations pledged to participate in the definition of public policies, most of which being clearly
insufficient for this population fragment. The association work of offering earnings, which represents
a tool for consciousness and organization of unemployed workers and a new panorama of
economic and social development, has taken countrywide dimensions with the event of the I
National Congress of Collectors of Recyclable Materials held in Brasilia in the year 2001, attended
by approximately 1,300 collectors from 17 Brazilian states. After this event, the National Movement
of Collectors was structured, counting on representatives from a few Brazilian regions.
The collectors’ organization has assumed substantial proportions with the occurrence of the I
Latin American Congress of Collectors of Recyclable Materials held in Caxias do Sul in January
2003, when not only were experiences exchanged by collectors, technicians and agents from the
participant countries, but the political deliberations about creating a network of both solidarity
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6. economy between collectors and models of social and productive organizations of Latin American
collectors were intensified.
The homeless inclusion in the Brazil's Landless Workers Movement (MST)
A significant, new and still surprising data revealed in the early 90’s was the incorporation of
street population into a grouped and organized social movement of a fight for a land, Brazil's
Landless Workers Movement. Although this movement – From Street to Land – started in Sao
Paulo in 1994, only between 1996 and 1998, the MST’s Center of Formation was created downtown
Sao Paulo, when the weekly meetings with the participants from housings and Grouping Houses,
encounters and seminars about themes and talks on the subject of returning to land and rescuing
self-esteem were intensified.
Everything indicates that the association with MST has presented the homeless with the
recovery of personal dignity, the feeling of belonging to a community, the opportunity of redoing a
life project, by conveying them to new goals, to reconstruct their life: this way, they primarily recover
their identity as workers and, consequently, the connection to work and affection, joining others in
similar conditions, inside a movement thought to have a great visibility and political power. The
chance to conquer not only one piece of land, but the internalization of dignity and self-respect, the
revival of self-esteem, as well as the feeling of belonging to a family, reestablishing loving ties, are
essential ingredients of this prospect of life reconstruction. Something brand new has happened in
the work scenery, having an invaluable likelihood of exiting the streets – with positive outcomes in
the images they have of themselves, acquiring a beneficial identity –, inside an organized social
movement, integrally articulated to build a personal project, which is also a political and grouped
project.
'People on the Street' (“A Gente na Rua) Program: contracting the homeless as a community
agent of street health
It is about a program included in the Family Health Program, in the federal extension,
accomplished in partnership with Nossa Senhora do Bom Parto Social Center and the Municipal
Department of Health. 'People on the Street', launched in 2004, was an answer to the requests
made during the event of the People's Struggle Day held on June 26, 2003, having such a theme as
'Right to Health'.
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7. Measures taken by the communitarian agents of street health are comprised of approaching
people living on street status, send them to the Basic Units of Health and monitor their treatment, for
the major purpose of ensuring them that their right to health is accessible. Pursuant to the
Information System of Basic Attention, around 4,639 homeless have been registered by July this
year, out of which 3,173 were male and 1,466 were female. In the registration system, it was noticed
that 15.87% of them were alcohol addicted, 21% diabetics, 8.21% hypertensive, 2.13% tuberculous
and 6.8% pregnant, out of whom 5.06% were teenagers.
Initially having 11 agents, the program presently counts on 35 communitarian agents of
street health divided into three teams working on central areas of the city: Lapa, Pinheiros, Se and
Mooca; and there is a possibility of expansion into other areas of the city. Agents are selected from
people on street status (homeless) holding a professional document. Nowadays, agents pay their
own residence, many of them return to school, two of them are already at the university, and Orley
de Jesus Santos after the selection process was done, has been awarded with a scholarship to
study Medicine in Cuba.
Nongovernmental agencies for the defense of rights: Rede Rua Association and
OCAS
Another type of work that is noteworthy for its originality and value is the one performed by
two prominent nongovernmental agencies (ONGs) using communication as a means of defense,
struggle and conquest of the homeless' rights: Rede Rua Association, with their O Trecheiro paper,
and Civil Organization of Social Action (OCAS), with their magazine OCAS: saindo das ruas.4
Among the breakthroughs regarding the homeless' organization in the 90's, the presence of
Rede Rua Association, firstly named as Information Center of Excluded's Documentation, was
crucial. Founded in 1991, its target was to register the life on streets, the struggles and works
developed, by showing documentaries, videos, pictures, in addition to providing cinema sessions on
the streets, meetings, parties and talks. Since August 1991, Rede Rua Association has been editing
the monthly newspaper O Trecheiro (www.rederua.org.br), functioning as a room to rescue the
history of people living and surviving on the streets, complain about their harsh conditions of life and
the break of human rights; texts written by the homeless are also a significant contribution. It
indicates national and international facts and situations of the social reality, which interfere with
people's life, mainly those revealed as social injustice, violence, mistreatments, uneven treatment,
nonexistence of public policies. It adds visibility to the activities the ONGs and public power develop
4 Verify on:. www.rederua.org.br and www.ocas.org.br.
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8. together with the homeless. Supported by Editora Paulus and a few subscribers, the newspaper has
a circulation of 5 thousands issues freely distributed to the homeless and popular organizations.5
In more recent circumstances and following the example of the New Yorker publication
Street News (1989) and the British The Big Issue (1991), in July 2002, in the cities of Sao Paulo and
Rio de Janeiro, OCAS: saindo das ruas was first printed. OCAS is published by the Civil
Organization of Social Action (founded in April 21, 2001), in order to rescue the self-esteem and
provide money – a project to self-manage the homeless, emphasized on seller’s participation
throughout the working process, in the organization’s activities and decisions. The originality of this
publication is the scenery, in which a qualified cultural product and a social project are combined.
This means a participation in the definition of the advertising campaign line, in sellers’ performances
as multipliers of the sales training, a solid action in the events, a presence in conferences about
themes with respect to their situation. Therefore, along with the publications, there is currently a
support program for the sellers, which offers cultural and leisure activities, develops other skills, plus
a writing workshop with a debate and an evaluation of the reports, and a definition of the magazine
guidelines. The magazine is a member of International Network of Street Paper (INPS) and relies on
a series of supports.
Eventually, in the way to study the theme of the homeless in Sao Paulo and in the way to
confront it with public policies, civil society’s initiatives and social movements, chances to tackle it
have arisen and are expected to be shared with other experiences in Europe to go forward in the
struggle for the homeless' citizenship.
5
The word ‘trecheiro’ had already been used in the early 80’s to represent people walking from a city
to another, the ones taking the ‘trecho’ (space interval from a place to another). Later, it was
enlarged to represent people moving inside a city.
8