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Learn More About: Social City Tours in Switzerland

BY JUDITH TACKETT

“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.

(Left) Benno Fricker, holding up a street map listing social services and city services for people in need. The map is printed on cloth andtherefore more durable than paper.

Photo by Judtih Tackett

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 bedroom).

Only dogs sniffed him out once in a while, Benno recalled.

Public restrooms like this one can be found across Swiss cities and are accessible for citizens and tourists. They unlock after 15 minutes andsome of them are self-cleaning devices. This one served as Benno’sbathroom.

Photo by Judith Tackett

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.

In summer, people living on the streets have easy access to taking a bath in the River Rhein, which is a prominent destination for Baslerresidents to escape the heat.

Photo by Judtih Tackett

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 guides us from Solitude Park along the River Rhein next to beautiful historic mansions to the local shelter run by The Salvation Army.

The Social City Tour in Basel demonstrated the contrast between rich and poor as we passed these villas next to the River Rhein.

Photo by Judith Tackett

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.

The goal for the first year was to assist 15 people, but only eight have been housed, which Benno says shows how hard it is to come by affordable housing.

“If even the Salvation Army struggles to find housing for people, how hard do you think is it for a person who is homeless with a lot of debts and arrears?”

As we walk a few miles from one spot to the next for a total of about two hours, I pay attention to the questions the church leaders ask. I hear the expected questions showing an array of sympathies (or not so much) ranging from why folks are not working to the role addiction plays in homelessness to why people’s social supports break down. I observe how Benno takes every opportunity to educate people about the system, about the stress of poverty, about the nature of addiction. He takes his time and at times doesn’t shy away to admonish systems that perpetuate poverty rather than help end it. He praises the outreach and legal teams that helped him work through the bureaucratic mountain and regain housing.

Benno’s “living room.” This is where Benno used to eat and read a book in the evening after walking miles to get to basic services such as the Street Kitchen for meals.

Photo by Judith Tackett

His own story into homelessness was steady. As a temporary employee he struggled to make ends meet and work while keeping up with the demands and requirements of the social welfare and at times unemployment systems. Finally, he was so exhausted, he just gave up and waited for the police to come to evict him. The first weeks on the streets were tough, especially since he was still trying to hold down his temporary job.

Benno thinks about 100 people live on the streets in Basel. As part of the tour, he provided us with details of a recent study conducted by the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW), which was trying to count the homeless population and collect demographics nationwide. In a recent article from February 2022 that I found online, the Swiss government estimates that about 2,200 Swiss people experience homelessness with another 8,000 at risk of homelessness. The country has a population of just over 8.6 million people.

When the tour was officially over, I stuck around to chat a little longer with Benno. I told him how I loved the way he managed to balance advocacy with information and remaining respectful while pushing the group participants to think about absolute poverty.

The biggest value I took with me was the way the tour was set up to give Benno full control. He said Surprise offered him in-depth training. Then we spoke a little about the street paper, the soccer team, the street choir, school workshops and other programs Surprise offers.

What stands out to me is the dignity this network brings back to people. When people know they have a voice and use it, we listen. Benno opened my eyes to understand why homelessness exists in a rich wealthy enclave like Switzerland. He made me hear him!

A huge thank you to Benno and the Team at Surprise for accommodating me, especially Andreas Jahn and Paloma Selma Borja. A special thanks also to Beatrix Boxhoven who allowed me to join her church group for the tour.