In the city of Stockholm, homelessness is surveyed every two years. The latest count in September last year showed that the number of homeless people increased between the years 2020-2022, from 2,379 people to 2,528 people.
What has happened since then is not collected in any report, but the City Mission sees new people every day who seek help, something that P4 Södertälje was the first to report on.
– We have new participants pretty much every day, sometimes three new ones on the same day who have not been with us before. This is accumulating at a rate that we don’t really recognize, says Carolina Bäck, unit manager at Bocenter.
New groups are coming
At Stadsmissionens Bocenter, men are welcome, all men. Even if you have an addiction or are in a criminal environment, you can come to the day care center and get breakfast or lunch. There is a shower, washing machine and rest beds.
– Now with the recession, there are more people who fall through the cracks, who can no longer cope. It is also becoming more difficult to live with someone for a longer period of time, and we believe that it is a matter of it being an additional cost for the person you are living with. Everything costs much more now, and then people come to us instead.
– There are more in the younger ages than we have seen before. We see many of these unaccompanied Afghan boys who had different housing solutions, but who did not have all the tools, we meet them now, says Carolina Bäck, unit manager at Bocenter.
The city mission’s day-to-day operations are funded by donations.
“Women last longer”
There is a corresponding activity for women.
– Women often manage longer without seeking help. They can live under someone else’s roof, often they live with a man, for better or for worse. So the trends in society are reflected more quickly in our business for men, for example we see that more people with violent capital and more criminals come to us, says Carolina Bäck.
Those who come to open day activities, but who are not ready to seek help from Social Services, often feel a resistance or suspicion towards ending up in the bureaucracy, says Carolina Bäck.
There may be underlying risk use or abuse, and mental illness.
– In the vast majority of cases, there is also another problem interspersed, but when one thing in life falls, several pieces fall at the same time. It could be that job that kept the risk-taking from turning into addiction. For the unaccompanied minors who tried to get through studies, there may be underlying trauma that makes it difficult for them to manage their mood, says Bäck.