Houses in the first place. That was the answer pointed out by several specialists gathered since Friday (21), in the capital of São Paulo, to discuss the problems, paths and solutions for Cracolândia, the name by which a region of São Paulo that brings together drug users and addicts became known. . Photo: Rovena Rosa/Agência Brasil “It is impossible to solve the situation of any homeless person without thinking about housing in the first place”, said sociologist Marquinho Maia, in an interview with Agência Brasil, shortly after participating in the seminar Cracolândia em Emergência. The event continues until Sunday (23), at the Container Theater Mugunzá, in the center of São Paulo. “From the moment the person has a place to be, social assistance and health can provide better assistance. Care has to be done in freedom. There is no care without freedom ”, he reinforced. Urban cleaning Photo: Rovena Rosa/Agência Brasil Psychiatrist Flávio Falcone agrees with the statement. He is also a clown and coordinates the Roof, Job and Treatment project and is a member of the Advice and Assistance Program for Dependents at the Federal University of São Paulo (Proad-Unifesp). For the doctor, it is impossible to solve the Cracolândia problem without first solving the housing issue “because all you need to do, which is generate income and undergo some type of treatment, without housing is not possible in practice”. Falcone cited an example that has been recurrent in drug treatment aimed at homeless people. “Because of the rapa, which is what the city calls urban cleaning, today I prescribe medication for the person. However, the rapa takes everything and the person is left without medication. There, in the SUS system [Sistema Único de Saúde], it is said that I took medication for two months. And until these two months pass, the person cannot take the medicine again”, he said. “I have no doubt that all other issues, such as work and treatment from the perspective of harm reduction, without having the minimum, which is housing, are impossible to resolve,” he said. According to Falcone, this housing needs to be free of demands and bureaucracy. “The first thing you should do is offer low-stakes housing, which is different from the high-stakes housing that the government currently offers, where you have to be abstinent and have urine tests to prove you’re abstinent. And if your test is positive, you go back to the street and go through the whole cycle again, which is the hospitalization and therapeutic community, ”he explained. Removal of families For specialists, the solutions adopted by governments for Cracolândia, historically, favored the removal of people and families from the center of São Paulo rather than dialogue with local residents. “[A remoção] it is a solution to expel this population from here. What is actually at stake, at this moment, is the attempt to expel this population from the center of the city”, Falcone told Agência Brasil. During a table that discussed the issue of housing and territoriality, Toni Zagato, master in public policies and specialist in cultural heritage, reinforced that forced removals are strategies that have been used for the central region for many years and by different and different governments, without solving the problem. “The Public Power uses millions to expropriate. In the process, he evicts everyone and seals the properties. These properties are often considered cultural heritage and cannot be sealed, which is a mischaracterization of the property. They don’t even disguise that this is a theater: they leave only the facade, like a theater scenography, and behind they build a construction that evicted 300 families and that will no longer inhabit this place. They will grant it to other people, who are outsiders. This is a feud, it’s archaic, it’s colonial, and it takes place in the center of São Paulo. But that would not happen in the Pinheiros neighborhood [que concentra atualmente um grande número de novos empreendimentos na cidade], for example”, he argued. Perpetuating Poverty “We are in a war we did not choose to fight. We were thrown into this situation. This war in which we were placed explains a lot about who has a house and who doesn’t nowadays, who has access to a bathroom and who doesn’t”, said Diva Sativa, who lives in an occupation in the center of São Paulo and is part of Bloc Feminist of the Marcha da Marijuana in São Paulo. Diva recalled the past of Brazilian slavery and reinforced that the current situation mainly affects the black population. “Who was pushed into risk areas because they were here in this country and didn’t have an education? Who lives in fire-prone areas today? What is the skin color of these people? This is a cycle of perpetuating poverty and discrimination. This cycle that started back there is coming to us today. When we talk about drugs today, we have to carry out this rescue”, she highlighted. “Kgt of gunpowder” Photo: Rovena Rosa/Agência Brasil In an interview with Agência Brasil, Aluízio Marino, a researcher at the Public Space and Right to the City Laboratory at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo (LabCidade), recalled that many projects have already were built involving the central region of the city, but ignored the population of the region. “These are projects that claim to be renovation or revitalization based on the assumption that this is a lifeless territory, which is a great untruth. This territory is historically occupied by workers. It is also popular territory. These projects come with the intention of making a scorched earth project to remove and renew the population that inhabits it”, he said. “This takes on other contours, from the 1990s onwards, with the arrival of the flow from Cracolândia”, he reinforced. According to Marino, the projects were incapable of dealing with problems in the region. The researcher pointed out that data from the Secretariat of Public Security show that the flow of people remains unchanged. “We continue with these people increasingly vulnerable and being targets of violence. We also have a serious problem, which is the fact that the presence of users, in this condition, generates a series of inconveniences for merchants and residents of the surroundings. So, this territory became a powder keg”, he said. “Obviously, we need a policy that thinks about the drug issue, but this has to be worked on nationally, either through the decriminalization of use or by confronting the large circle of drug trafficking. We fight this only in this territory, catching small fish and feeding them to a machine for grinding people does not solve the problem”, said Marino. “We need a public arena to discuss Cracolândia”, he reinforced.
Agência Brasil
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