HOMELESSNESS WITHIN A POLICY VACUUM Without a co-ordinated national policy to address the plight of the homeless, municipalities must come up with responses to the growing number of people living on the streets, writes Anél Lewis
T
here’s no reliable data to quantify the extent of homelessness in South Africa. Before the pandemic, it was thought that about 200 000 people were living on the street. However, Raymond Perrier, director of the Denis Hurley Centre in Durban, says the number of meals
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for the homeless has doubled. And this is just in eThekwini. “The economic impact of COVID-19, the riots and the recent flood has probably led to more homelessness.” The National Homeless Network, a movement of more than a dozen organisations in eight cities, says StatsSA’s
recent census in February this year was “completely flawed”, and a lack of planning means that the recent count will be “useless in accurately gauging the number of homeless”. As Stephan de Beer, executive director for the Centre for Contextual Ministry in the Department of Practical Theology at the
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