Up to 2,000 people staying in squats in Brussels

Belgian homeless organisation Samusocial warns that the invisible proportion of homeless people living in squats in Brussels is even higher than assumed. Belgium's asylum reception crisis is causing more and more people who are entitled to reception to end up on the streets or in squats.

Samusocial and Project Lama, a non-profit organisation that provides help to drug addicts in urban areas, jointly set up the Cover team in July 2022. This team aims to prevent health risks, in particular outbreaks of scabies, tuberculosis or diphtheria, among the homeless population in the Brussels region. At the same time, it provides support to people living in squatted buildings so that they do not have to live on the streets.

Samusocial and Project Lama, a non-profit organisation that provides help to drug addicts in urban areas, jointly set up the Cover team in July 2022. This team aims to prevent health risks, in particular outbreaks of scabies, tuberculosis or diphtheria, among the homeless population in the Brussels region. At the same time, it provides support to people living in squatted buildings so that they do not have to live on the streets.

Due to a shortage of reception places, more and more asylum seekers who are entitled to reception are ending up on the streets. On 15 February, a squat of more than a thousand asylum seekers and homeless people in the Rue des Palais in Brussels was dismantled. Most of the people living in the building should have been housed by the Belgian asylum agency Fedasil.

"The squat in Rue des Palais is only the visible part of a much larger phenomenon," says Clément Redondo, coordinator of the team. "In a few months, we have intervened in 13 precariously occupied buildings housing between 1,500 and 2,000 people. And that's not counting the many small squats".

Cover's multi-faceted approach takes into account the risks to both the occupants and the building or neighbourhood. For example, drug users are taught how to obtain clean and hygienic materials and how to eliminate risks to others. Over the past few months, more than 100 people have received individual psychosocial counselling and 68 have also been vaccinated against COVID-19. In nine of the 13 squats, residents were suffering from scabies or bedbugs.

^{The Rue des Palais squat in Brussels, Belgium © BELGA PHOTO JAMES ARTHUR GEKIERE}