The staff of the Madrid en Calle teams has sent a letter to the General Director of Social Inclusion, denouncing that the City Council orders them not to inform homeless individuals before evictions and to throw away their belongings. The workers claim they are prevented from recording these operations in the computer system.
The workers of the Madrid en Calle teams have erupted. In a letter addressed to Laura Castaños Quero, General Director of Social Inclusion and Cooperation for Development, they denounce that the City Council of Madrid is lying about the evictions of homeless individuals. The letter, which this newspaper has accessed, comes after Castaños' statements in the Permanent Commission, where she denied that clean-ups are being carried out without prior notice.
Orders of silence and rubbish
According to the staff, the clean-up and eviction operations have intensified under the current 2019 protocol, but the novelty is that they are now required not to inform the people sleeping on the streets. "They tell us not to inform and not to put it in the electronic system where we record everything," explains a worker who prefers to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. The result, they claim, is that the belongings of the homeless end up in the rubbish.
"Regardless of the euphemism they use to describe these actions, the reality is that these activations end with the eviction of homeless individuals from their sleeping locations and their belongings thrown in the rubbish," the letter states. The employees assert that the City Council is trying to gloss over the situation with language that obscures the harshness of the facts.
"They tell us not to inform and not to put it in the electronic system where we record everything"
From the CNT union, they warn that they have already been informed that there will be clean-ups of which even the workers who follow up with these individuals will not be notified. This, they claim, breaks the trust bond they have built with the homeless and prevents them from offering alternative resources such as shelters.
Overwhelmed shelters and three-year waiting lists
The underlying problem, according to the workers, is that the reception centres in the capital are overwhelmed. Centres such as Luis Vives, San Isidro, or Beatriz Galindo for women have waiting lists that extend up to three years. "They are manipulating and making us complicit in a situation where people have been waiting for places for three years," one of the employees denounces.
In the weekly meeting on July 7, management conveyed to them that from now on they could not talk about a "waiting list" and that they should say that the person is "pending access or allocation of a place according to their needs." The workers believe that this change in nomenclature is an attempt to hide the lack of real places. "With that nomenclature, it seems that they are pending paperwork, and the reality is that there are no places," the union explains.
The City Council, for its part, defends that the 2019 protocol responds to "public health" and the "neighbourhood impact" of having people sleeping on the streets. However, the workers assert that these measures only stigmatise the homeless and worsen their situation.
A labour struggle intertwined with the social crisis
The letter also reflects the staff's discontent with the tone of the General Director, whom they accuse of "ridiculing" their labour demands. Castaños, according to the workers, mentioned in the Commission the bereavement leave for a pet that some employees have requested, but ignored the central points of their mobilisations: a less precarious salary, recognition of their professional category in the subcontracting documents, and real negotiation with the company Grupo 5, which manages the service.
The workers of Madrid en Calle have been in conflict for months, with strikes and mobilisations, denouncing that the City Council does not negotiate in good faith. "I have been here for six years, but there are colleagues who have been working in the service for longer, and it has always been done this way," explains the anonymous worker. "We used to inform people that on a certain day a clean-up would take place so they could collect their things, move to another place, and return when it was clean if they wished. Now we are prevented from doing so."
The situation has reached such a point that the workers themselves requested not to be present during the clean-ups for fear of breaking the trust with the homeless. But now, without prior notice, they feel even more powerless.
Meanwhile, the homeless in Madrid continue to sleep outdoors, with the constant threat that their few belongings will be swept away by municipal machinery. The workers of Madrid en Calle have promised to continue their mobilisations until the City Council rectifies and guarantees dignified treatment for the most vulnerable people in the city.
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