Jean-Paul Moireau is 64 years old and has spent the past seven months sleeping on the streets of Brussels. It snowed the night before, covering most of the city in a freezing, white blanket. He spent the night in a sleeping bag huddled beside a shopfront shutter, trying to stay warm. “The plan is the same tonight,” he says.
Originally from France, he came to Brussels in the middle of last year to meet a woman, but things didn’t work out and he quickly found himself without any accommodation and sleeping rough.
He is tired and cold. “It has been more difficult, I sleep in the same conditions as when it was warmer. Last night I slept by the shutters of a shopping centre,” he says. “I have a plan to get out of this situation, to return to France, I don’t have a home there, but I will go back.”
As a cold snap brought temperatures to below freezing in recent days, concern grew for the large population of rough sleepers in the Belgian capital. Many opted to bed down in train and metro stations, but others were left with no other option than to sleep outside in doorways and temporary camps.
“We see a lot of migrants, people who are really here with nothing,” says Lauren Michaud, a volunteer with the Belgian Red Cross, who last Thursday evening was out delivering food, warm drinks and supplies to rough sleepers.
Two years ago an official count put the number of homeless in Brussels at more than 7,000. Figures from a new count carried out late last year have yet to be published, but those working in the sector expect the numbers now recorded as homeless to surpass 10,000. “What we know is that the number of people on the streets has increased,” Michaud says. “The problem is not food, it’s shelter, housing. It’s the same as in most cities, Paris is the same thing.”
The group of 10 volunteers from the Saint-Josse branch of the Red Cross gathered earlier in the evening at a bookshop run by the humanitarian organisation to raise funds, which doubles as its local base.
In a small kitchen in the basement two of the group prepare a pile of sandwiches, soup and large flasks of coffee and tea. Others load packets of toothpaste, shaving foam, gloves, socks and underwear into bags, as well as some heavier blankets and sleeping bags, to hand out.
“We are doing what we can as the plaster on a broken leg,” says Barbara Bentein, a retired Unicef worker from Belgium who volunteers with the Red Cross. “We do the best we can to at least prevent people freezing to death, that’s what can happen. That’s the fear, it has happened in the past,” she says.
Organisations working on the ground with the homeless have seen the numbers of rough sleepers increasing, she says. “There are the train stations, metro stations, there are also the doorframes of buildings, entrances of banks, then they are chased and so they have to move. They try to find some warmth. One of our tasks tonight will be to make them aware that it will be very cold in the coming days.”
The volunteers from the Saint-Josse branch head out one evening a week, on what is called a “maraude” to hand out food and supplies to rough sleepers, usually splitting into two groups to cover more ground.
At the start of the night they come across several men sleeping rough on mattresses and cardboard in a makeshift camp at the front of a boarded-up building. Two of the men get up to take some soup and coffee. One of them explains he has applied for asylum but been rejected, a ruling he is appealing. He complains that he was recently roughed up by a security guard when he entered a nearby fast-food chain.
The volunteers carry on. They stop by two older men who are wrapped up in blankets in a doorway near the entrance to a car park. The pair are among the few familiar faces the group meet most weeks. Both men are glad of a cup of coffee, thanking the volunteers as they head off. The vast majority of rough sleepers the group helps over the course of two hours on the streets are either older men or migrants.
Usually they might meet 100 rough sleepers a night, but many spots where homeless people are known to camp are empty. It is likely the snow has pushed people from doorways into metro or train stations, or abandoned buildings and squats. “It’s difficult to find our audience because they are always moving,” says Thomas Brunhes, another of the volunteers. “You have people who come for one or two days who are migrants and the next day are in Calais or somewhere else,” he says.
From Normandy, France, Brunhes has lived in Brussels for 20 years and during the day works in the European Commission. “I have been volunteering here for one year, before that I was a volunteer in another section,” he says.
“Soup is normally appreciated during this season ... Many people are happy with a coffee, but there are also people who are willing to have a conversation as well,” he adds. The volunteers view the short conversations they have with people while handing out food or a sleeping bag as just as important, to make the marginalised cohort feel less alone or invisible.
It’s warm inside Gare Du Midi metro station, one of the city’s biggest transport hubs. A dozen rough sleepers have bedded down in a quieter corner of the station. Nearby a woman is stretched across a row of seats, trying to sleep. In many other stations along the metro lines homeless people have found themselves spots where they hope to spend the night.
As part of an emergency cold weather plan, the operators of the train and metro have agreed to allow homeless people to rest in stations when temperatures hit zero degrees or lower, without fear they will be moved on by security staff. The existing network of nearly 2,600 homeless hostel beds in Brussels is at full capacity, so a temporary 150-bed shelter has been opened to get rough sleepers off the streets.
Near the centre of the city it has started snowing again. The group from the Red Cross heads for Gare Central, one of the other main train stations. Near the entrance they meet a handful of homeless migrants, who are appreciative of cups of tea.
The volunteers are inside less than five minutes when two of the train operator’s security staff approach the group and instruct them to turn back. The security staff say they don’t want food and warm drinks being handed out, for fear it might attract large numbers of rough sleepers into the station.
One elderly homeless man who is begging for change in the station stops for a coffee and some soup before the volunteers leave. “Thank you, thank you,” he says, as he heads on his way.
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