In July 2021, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova, chairwoman of the Council for Guardianship in the Social Sphere, instructed the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Labor to clarify the concept of “citizen without a fixed place of residence” and discuss the need for additional measures to prevent homelessness.
She also instructed the departments to develop rules for maintaining a register of persons without a fixed place of residence and criteria by which Russians will be classified in this category.
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The director of the Nochlezhka Foundation, Grigory Sverdlin, in a conversation with RBC, drew attention to the fact that the abbreviation BOMZH (persons without a fixed place of residence) is vague from a legal point of view: some departments call this term people without documents, some – people who do not have registration, “and it is clear that not all people who do not have registration are homeless.” According to him, no one knows for sure the number of homeless people in Russia now.
According to the charity’s 2020 report, the average age of a homeless person is is 44 years old, more than 80% of them are men, over 85% are Russian citizens. According to Nochlezhka, the main reasons for moving to the category of persons without a fixed place of residence that year were moving to another city in search of work, problems in the family, loss of work and sources of income, loss of documents, collision with scammers, and others.