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(Left) Benno Fricker, holding up a street map listing social services and city services for people in need. The map is printed on cloth and therefore more durable than paper. (Right) In summer, people living on the streets have easy access to taking a bath in the River Rhein, which is a prominent destination for Basler residents to escape the heat. PHOTOS BY JUDITH TACKETT
LEARN MORE ABOUT: SOCIAL CITY TOURS IN SWITZERLAND BY JUDITH TACKET T “Griessech mitenand!” means, “Hello everyone!” This is how Benno Fricker starts his Social City Tour in Basel, Switzerland. With approximately 200,000 inhabitants, Basel is the third largest city in Switzerland and is located in the northwest of the country bordering Germany and France. Basel is where Benno spent four years on the streets from 2015-2019. A lot of his time he slept in Solitude Park, a green area that is rather small in comparison to U.S. parks, but it offered a public restroom (which can be found all over the city, are self-cleaning and unlock automatically after 15 minutes), a covered area with picnic tables (his living room), and enough overgrowth for him to lie in the bushes, hidden and protected until the morning (his bed-
room). Only dogs sniffed him out once in a while, Benno recalled. When I found that the Swiss street paper, called Surprise, offered social city tours, I immediately reached out to sign up for one. There were different focus areas to choose from: surviving on the street; poverty trap — addiction; women in poverty; and the downward spiral and solidarity, which is focused on the loss of community as people drift into and experience poverty. Surprise offers social city tours in three cities: Basel, Zurich and Bern. Growing up in Switzerland, I was not aware of people experiencing homelessness, at least not street homelessness or sleeping rough as they call it in Europe. In addition, Switzerland is known for its solid social welfare system. So why are there increasingly people experiencing
homelessness in this rich country in the heart of Europe? That’s why on May 14, I found myself standing amongst members of a church group that generously invited me to join them and learn about being homeless in Switzerland. Benno is our sole guide, telling us about his life’s story, how he became homeless even though he speaks multiple languages, has studied at a university for three semesters, and eventually finished a four-year apprenticeship to become a mechanic for agricultural machines. As he recounts his life story — from happy childhood to temporary jobs that did not allow him to make ends meet to finally giving up his ongoing fights to overcome bureaucratic barriers put up by the social welfare system — he
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guides us from Solitude Park along the River Rhein next to beautiful historic mansions to the local shelter run by The Salvation Army. The first shelter night in Basel is free. After that, people who are eligible for services, pay $7.50 Swiss Francs ($7.66) per night if they are from Basel or $40 if they are from a city or district outside of the city. No pets are allowed. Curfew is strict. People need to get up at 7 a.m. and be out by 8 a.m., even if they are sick, except on holidays. We continue our tour, and Benno educates the group about the Housing First model, which is still new to Switzerland. He explains that this approach comes out of the United States and has been successfully implemented in Finland and Austria. Basel launched its first Housing First program two years ago.
