March 2008: Last week in Ploiesti, Romania, I spoke to a group of homeless people in a bid to gain opinion to assist us to create a facility to provide help and support for a community of over 200 people in the city that live outwith its society. Some live in makeshift houses alongside some large pipes which afford them some free heat in a winter which often sees temperatures of -20 degrees.
One woman in her fifties told me that she had lived in the streets all her life. Her parents lived on the streets and so does she. Another man in his thirties concurred. he too had never lived in a house or experienced what we would consider normal life. He had been reised in one of Romanias horror orphanages which were revealed to the world in the aftermath of the removal of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and spent some time in Ploiesti's Rudului prison.
What then is the answer? I am not sure that the answer lies in 'giving them houses': There must be way however, to integrate and educate them into a more productive way of life.
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