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Article retrieved from Haaretz.com 4 Jan 2006 03:33:29 GMT – by Google

Two homeless men sleeping on a bench. Between 2000 and 2004, the homeless population increased by 217 percent. (Motti Kimche)

The homeless are ignored and left to die, while cities spend less and less on them

In December 2002, a homeless man, just released from the hospital, came to the Petah Tikva Municipality. The municipality sent him alone to the National Insurance Institute (NII) to collect a guaranteed income. The man did not arrive at the NII. According to Welfare Ministry regulations, the homeless are supposed to be accompanied when they go to organize their affairs.

Two months later, in February 2003, the man was beaten up by a street gang and hospitalized once again. When he left the hospital and returned to the municipality, he was sent unaccompanied to a hostel. He didn't arrive. In April 2003 he once again asked the city for help in order to receive guaranteed income. This time, too, the social worker sent him to the NII by himself. In March 2004 he was murdered.

This man's story appears in a harsh report by the state comptroller in a review of how seven municipalities dealt with the homeless in their jurisdiction.

At least 236 homeless people died in the years 2001-2004, according to the statistics of the Welfare Ministry.

In the five years from 2000-2004, the number of homeless known to the Welfare Ministry rose from 908 to 2,874, an increase of 217 percent. The ministry estimates that in each of those years there were about 1,000 more homeless than recorded (the ministry calls them "street dwellers"). According to Welfare Ministry statistics, during the years when the number of homeless increased, the resources to assist them declined drastically. If in 2000 the average budget for a homeless person was NIS 5,246, in 2004 it was NIS 2,162, a decline of 59 percent.

The comptroller's investigation of seven municipalities - Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Haifa, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Bat Yam, Petah Tikva and Netanya - demonstrated that the homeless are at the bottom of their priorities.

The Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality reported providing care for the homeless in frameworks that do not exist in the city. According to the municipality report, it spent about NIS 5.06 million on the homeless in 2004. In fact, says the state comptroller, the municipality spent only NIS 1.73 million. In other words, the municipality reported spending about NIS 3.33 million that was not spent at all.

The Petah Tikva Municipality told the state comptroller: "Because of a lack of manpower in the department, and a different order of priorities, the social worker cannot personally accompany those who live on the street, and everything is handled via telephone."

In Febrary 2004, a homeless man who used to sleep in the wholesale market in South Tel Aviv died. The comptroller found that the city knew about him, that it had a file stating the man was about 70 when he died, he suffered from heart and lung disease, shortness of breath and edema in his feet. In October 2002, a municipal social worker discovered that he hadn't received any allotment from the NII. However, the Tel Aviv Municipality did not help him to receive a pension or the welfare services to which he was entitled, nor did it examine the possibility of putting him up in a shelter.

The comptroller proposes that the Welfare Ministry decide on a special procedure to investigate the deaths of the homeless and their prior treatment.

For example, in Tel Aviv, a favorite of the homeless, the municipality conducted only eight patrols to locate them in 2004. Only half of them were conducted at night, and only three in the winter. The comptroller notes that many calls about homeless people reach the municipal hotline from residents who care, and the calls are transferred to the welfare departments, but at least in five of the cities examined - Ashkelon, Bat Yam, Haifa, Netanya and Petah Tikva - the department workers "did not go out to the street in order to check out the situation of the street dweller concerned, and did not try to get him off the street."

In reply to the criticism, Bat Yam wrote: "The Bat Yam Municipality, with its limited resources and its attempts to improve its difficult financial situation, is incapable of dealing with the scope of the problems with its own resources alone." The municipality also noted: "The cost of [sending out] an ambulance is about NIS 500, and even in case of a false alarm, we are obligated to pay. With our limited budget for special needs, this assistance is not in our order of priorities."

According to the regulations of the Welfare Ministry, in a local authority with at least 15 homeless, one or more frameworks should be set up in order to care for them: a day center, a hostel for temporary residence, special apartments, and centers for diagnosis, therapy and rehabilitation. In practice, in four of the municipalities examined no frameworks had been set up. The Bat Yam Municipality said that the city administration opposed the building of a shelter for the homeless, because, "This is an answer that involves a high cost, on the one hand, and one that the local authority was not interested in having in its jurisdiction, on the other, for lack of a strong community."

Petah Tikva wrote that it had considered setting up a shelter, but decided not to set it up in the center of the city, "since it would constitute a nuisance to the merchants in the area."