The Syndicature of Greuges of Barcelona, headed by David Bondiahas denounced in a release that a significant number of complaints from social entities that affect about 50 cases and which indicate that Barcelona City Council is making it difficult to register homeless people by delaying a mandatory prior report to receive it.
This delay occurs due to a circumstance that until now was not recorded. The usual thing is for a homeless person to go to the Office of Social and Economic Benefits of Barcelona City Council to begin the registration process.
Derivation from this summer
There, until last summer, the Residence Knowledge Report (ICR), essential to have registration. But according to these complaints received by Bondia, a few months ago the applicants were indicated that they must go to the Service for Immigrants, Emigrants and Refugees (SAIER), if they are foreigners, or to the Social Integration Service (SIS), if they are locals, to request the report.
In both cases, this means entering a waiting list of about three months. If before the process of preparing the report lasted about three months, now we have to add another three, those of waiting, to the process.
Get the applicant to give up
The consequence is that applicants’ access to aid that cannot be received without registration, which leaves them in a helpless situation: among other aspects, it prevents them access public health and send their children to school if they have them. And another common effect is that some applicants end up giving up.
For example, a Moroccan who tries to register and fails ends up choosing to go to his country. Although the Ombudsman does not specify this suspicion, this outcome has a clear material result that could be sought to reduce the public resources invested: fewer people registered, fewer people to serve. In itself it is not an unprecedented measure: in all countries there have been cuts in times of austerity. The particularity of the denounced system, if confirmed, is that the cut is done covertly.
The town hall version
For now, the Ombudsman only speaks of “concern over difficulties in registering homeless people.” It does not have data to demonstrate that there is a new veto sought. He has requested information from Barcelona City Council to determine whether or not it is a reality. In fact, he requested it on August 2 without receiving a response. Asked about this newspaper, The council has replied that the registration granting system “has not changed.”
Something that does not match the complaints of the entities. One of them has indicated to the receivership that the Social Benefits Office has already modified its way of acting in recent months. Until then, an applicant received a telephone call or a visit to verify that he resided at the address indicated by each person, which, without being a legal address, serves as a reference for the council. Sometimes, the entities themselves provide their address for applicants. But for some time now, what he received, 24 hours after his visit to the office, was a message indicating that he had not been able to corroborate his address, which is essential for the approval of the report.
Subsequently, the time came when the office informed an entity that serves homeless people, and that assists them in their requests, that it had stopped issuing knowledge of residence reports.
The change of criteria
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What seems most significant about the case is that for now it is more difficult to demonstrate: that the modification in the process responds to a change in criteria, as representatives of one of the entities heard last week from council staff.
A change in criteria that does not necessarily have to be linked to the change of government that took place in Barcelona after the elections of May 28 and the investiture of June 17, when Jaume Collboni and the PSC began to run the city alone, although To begin with, that is one of the most logical suspicions. One of the outcomes of the analysis that the Sindicatura de Greuges will carry out should be whether this change in criteria is confirmed and who should have dictated it.