Seventy-one percent of homeless ended up on the streets of Athens in the last five years and 21.7 percent alone in last year, a survey conducted by the Athens Municipality found. Forty-seven percent ended on the streets after losing job. Average age is 48.
According to the study findings:
62% of Athens homeless are Greeks
85.4% are men
57% percent) are aged 35-55.
47% percent said they ended up on the street after losing their job
29%percent said they do not want to move to a shelter or other organized facility.
41.2% of respondents admitted to use drugs, 7.3% alcohol and 2% both.
The study was conducted by the City of Athens’s Homeless Shelter (KYADA) in cooperation with polls company Public Issue between March 2015-March 2016 among 451 respondents.
The number of people experiencing some form of homelessness in the greater Athens area last year was estimated at over 9,000.
Exact numbers are no possible. I remember that according to estimation of previous years, the homeless in Greece were estimated to be 20,000 with the majority of them being in Athens. The social phenomenon of Homelessness was existing also before the lenders’ bailout agreement in 2010. However, it started to formally explode after the first year of MoU, in parallel development and growth of unemployment.Unemployment was 9% before 2010, it hit 27% in 2013, was stuck to 25% in 2014-2015 and has alleged dropped to slight over 24% in first months of 2016.
Anyway, the study was funded by the Norwegian government and other European countries and is part of the “Fighting Poverty and Social Exclusion” program of the EU (I suppose…)
— it would have been better if the study was funded by the Eurogroup or the Eurozone member states or best: by the Troika of IMF, ECB and EU.
PS that’s nice: first create poverty & desperation conditions with asphyxiating bailout agreements, then fund a study to read the impact.
Neeext!
I thought Greeks live with their family? So all these homeless have no family?
Where do you get your caricature of information from? Young people have to live with their families, since they could never afford to leave home on the meagre wages usually offered. (And that was before the Troika…) These are middle-aged people and elderly, with some young people who have no family.
Invite some to sit on your bench and just ask them or read more than headlines
My advice to everyone: Stop feeding the trolls
The EU can come to the rescue here, considering the whole circus of the European Parliament moving twice per month from Brussels to Strasbourg because the French wanted to have EP sessions there. This is utterly pointless and useless not to mention very costly. This costs 250 million Euro per year. So one of these two locations can be used to house the homeless in Europe. Perhaps they can all then be assigned as MEP. Probably cheaper than the thousands of Euros the current MEP get for being yes-men and yes-women.
“41.2% of respondents admitted to use drugs, 7.3% alcohol and 2% both.
47% percent said they ended up on the street after losing their job.”
Many of them were probably using some kind of drugs before loosing job.
They have money for alcohol and drugs, but no money for food and rent.
And “they do not want to move to a shelter or other organized facility”. Because they have to follow given rules, not be drunk all day long and so…
What else to say?
And many of them probably makes more money in metro, then full time working person can make.
But the numbers tell exactly the opposite as normally the people you’re about often are consuming both drugs and alcohol, so more alcohol is at least a little positive aspect but I guess the survey wasn’t conducted in areas where the famous police sell drugs and citizens march with weapons against police protected dealers and killers. “Metro”, what for? May be Heroin is cheaper than pot, check it out…
Your ignorance of society is remarkable. People turn to drugs and alcohol to cope with life — instead of committing suicide. Try thinking about other people’s lives, instead of imposing your own arrogant morality on others.
For the record, I have never taken drugs and do not abuse alcohol. Yet I can understand, with some effort, why people do so. Try thinking for a change, as opposed to just speaking.