3.152
On the night of September 30th, more than 400 people took to the streets, industrial estates, and edges of some roads throughout the Balearic Islands. It was not to go for a drink, but to count so that everyone counts, as the motto of the citizen science project promoted by the UIB and the Network for Inclusion-EAPN said. We were going to count people sleeping out in the open, in tents, inside vehicles, in shacks. The result of that night—the 1st regional Census on homelessness and residential exclusion—is a figure that should shake consciences and political agendas: 3,152 people without a decent place to live in our Islands.
3,152, but it is worth making it clear from the first moment: it is not the magnitude of the problem, but a minimum. Those of us who designed the census were aware that the data we had available until now, which spoke of about 600 people three years ago, were insufficient, because they neither covered the entire Archipelago, nor did they collect the diversity of typologies of residential exclusion that the Ethos category collects at a European level, which ranges from homelessness (which is only the tip of the iceberg) to people living in situations of insecure housing or inadequate housing. The photo after this scientific and citizen count is a little clearer, but it remains incomplete. It is the photograph that, for example, leaves out all the people who have learned to make themselves invisible, especially in the face of the wave of evictions of settlements in Palma and Ibiza. What we have counted is what we have been able to see and, therefore, an approximation on the low side. The reality, as always, is worse.
The data contradicts some narratives that circulate with too much comfort through political and media discourses. 45% of the people interviewed that night had some paid activity, and almost half were working. And despite this, they had to spend the night on the street, in a vehicle, or in an emergency resource. 95% identified the economic barrier as the main obstacle to having a home: it is not a question of will or merit, but of wages that cannot keep pace with rental prices that have lost any connection with the real life of the majority of residents in the Balearic Islands.
However, the situation on each island deserves its own interpretation. In Ibiza, for example, seven out of every ten people were sleeping outdoors or in shacks; in Menorca, the majority are concentrated in vehicles and abandoned buildings; in Mallorca, the distribution between street and structures is almost symmetrical. On each island, residential exclusion is expressed in different ways, and each island deserves its own response. There is no generic Balearic 'solution', but there must be a shared effort by all administrations.
I would also like to speak about the more than 400 people who went out that night to do the count, because without them we would not now have this data, which is so important to know the magnitude of the problem and so that whoever needs to act, acts. We are talking about UIB students, professionals from the social and educational spheres, workers from the involved municipal social services, and members of the public without any professional link to the topic. More than 400 people who left their sofa that afternoon/evening to help us understand a reality that often remains out of sight. It was, in the most literal sense of the term, citizen science. And the response was magnificent, sincerely moving: a community that organizes itself to produce knowledge about its own reality.
It was not easy either... The continuous evictions that had occurred in Ibiza and Palma during the previous weeks meant that, especially in the first case, the people who were victims of residential exclusion had scattered across the territory, and there was not much willingness on the part of some people to be interviewed, for fear that the information they gave us would be used to evict them again. So that we understand each other, counting residential exclusion in a context of systematic evictions is like trying to take a patient's temperature while someone is taking the thermometer out of their mouth.
We are starting to have data, but it is not enough. Therefore, in the next phase we want to go further and incorporate resources for women fleeing violence, for refugees, and for young people in the process of emancipation, among others. And, above all, to approach the exclusion that is not so visible on the streets, but that we all know: families living in one room, homes without electricity or water, people under the threat of being evicted... situations that we do not see, because no one wants to look at them with the attention that the situation deserves.
It is fortunate that this initial data, which as I told you is just the groundwork, because there is much more, will be the foundation so that the majority, one day not too far away, can have a roof over their heads. And the more dignified, the better.
