2023-11-17 08:34:00
“Prevention is better than cure”, that was the adage of the day, this Thursday in Etterbeek where the mayor Vincent De Wolf (MR) brought together the president of the CPAS and three social workers, the head of the Montgomery police zone Michaël Jonniaux and a commissioner, the ASBL Transit which supports and accommodates people subject to addiction, doctors of internal medicine and emergencies from the HIS network (Hôpitaux Iris Sud), an assistant prevention officer and the coordinator of municipal street social workers, under the leadership of Karima Fachqoul, member of the De Wolf cabinet, who led the project.
The objective of the day: “to find together transversal and structural solutions to a multifactorial problem”, sets the mayor. That of people who are wandering, homeless and subject to addiction that we are seeing more and more in the Etterbeek region, particularly in the Stib stations. “We don’t yet have our heads underwater on these issues in Etterbeek, but half our bodies are submerged,” concedes the mayor. Although he has observed the deterioration of the situation over the last ten years, it was upon returning from a recent parliamentary trip to Lisbon, well in advance on these issues, that Vincent De Wolf wanted to coordinate the health and social approach.
At the heart of the deepest poverty, a stone’s throw from the Gare du Midi: “It’s this society that made us like this”
Housing, the first pillar
Concretely, what to expect? It is already planned to organize maraudes (or mixed patrols) composed of members of different organizations. Social worker, Transit worker, police officer. Thus, the assistance is polymorphous and more adapted to specific needs. The different actors also planned to work in subgroups: training, intervention, health, housing, etc.
And it is on this last point that the task will be greatest. “There are around 150 homeless people in Etterbeek,” lists the liberal. The social workers at the CPAS counter that they count twice as many if we include people in hybrid situations such as squats. “If at the end of a (detoxification) treatment, the person is back on the street, all the work will have been for nothing.”
This is the message that the various social actors sent to the mayor: we need housing. “Winter is coming and we will have to choose the people who will be housed in the warming room,” worries a social worker. “And some of my followers are now looking for accommodation outside Brussels, towards Charleroi because the AIS are overwhelmed,” reports the Transit worker.
At the end of the meeting, Vincent De Wolf seems to have heard the message. “We are in the process of recovering a large number of housing units under public management law, around twenty.” Clearly, these unoccupied accommodations will be requisitioned by the municipality to rent them out at a (very) reduced price.
Brussels: opening of a lower-risk consumption room by early 2024
A consumption room, if…
Once these front-line services were strengthened, Vincent De Wolf was rather in favor of opening a lower-risk consumption room in his territory. “It’s clear that this is not the idea most supported by my party. But in my situation, what should I do? Watch or act? The lower-risk consumption room won’t solve everything, that’s clear. But the students of Saint-Michel College who no longer dare to go down to the metro stations because people are injecting themselves there, do we find that normal?”
The opening is still far away, the consumption room is still only an idea at the moment. And several conditions must be met for the project to succeed. “If we want to support something, we need regional support. If the Region does not help us, I will have to make noise,” assures the liberal. Including for a social branch that he would like to see open at least once a week.
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