Providing Climate Refuge: How Municipalities and NGOs are Helping Homeless People in Spain Escape the Summer Heat

Madrid

This summer the temperatures are still abnormally high. In fact, for the moment, in Spain there have been three heat waves where the thermometers have touched, and even exceeded, 40 degrees. On the street, under those temperatures, 28,500 homeless people sleep. For this reason, municipalities and NGOs have launched projects that serve as a climate refuge for this group.

In the Valencian Community, some municipal swimming pools open until 12 at night to alleviate the 47 degrees that the thermometers have touched. In Córdoba, associations such as the Red Cross or APERFOSA distribute water and cold gazpacho to combat sweat. In Jaén, there are facilities open 24 hours to make the red warning for heat more pleasant. And in Murcia, Solidarity for Development NGO It has changed the winter afternoons of movies and hot chocolate, for the summer afternoons of forum cinema and cold pineapple juice. organize activities throughout the year to accompany the homeless but, for the first time, this July, they have extended this project so that this group can escape the heat in the central hours of the day. “It is about having a space to breathe, take refuge and have shade. A space where they can alleviate the very high temperatures that we are having this summer”, explains Ángeles Carnacea, coordinator of Solidarios in Murcia.

“Homeless people move to coastal areas”

However, Carnacea points out that in these months “not even half of the people are served” because a very high percentage travels to coastal areas where the thermometers give a truce: “they prefer to go to the streets of La Manga or municipalities near the sea of Almería because there the temperatures are somewhat lower. It is a pattern that is repeated every July and August, although this summer we have noticed it a lot more”.

Carmen Sánchez Guevara, a doctor of architecture from the School of Architecture of the Polytechnic University of Madrid, assures that, from an urban point of view, neither homeless people nor pedestrians are thought of: “Over the last Over the years, maladaptation strategies have been produced, which means that the urban heat is increasingly intense, the thermometers rise and the nights are harsher”. Sánchez Guevara affirms that a relevant factor is the so-called heat island effect, which “produces because solar radiation accumulates in the materials that are in the city in the central hours of the day, and is returned in the afternoon and, especially, at night”.

“Cities are increasingly hostile”

Andalusia is one of the autonomous communities where the thermometers have been abnormally high. Seville, for example, has far exceeded 40 degrees. And there, the NGO Solidarios has carried out activities similar to those in Murcia throughout the week. “The homeless have a worse time in summer than in winter, there are deaths within the group during heat waves. For this reason, every day of the week there is a scheduled activity that we do from three in the afternoon to nine at night, the hours when the sun is hottest. We serve around 300 people throughout the summer”, explains Carmen Tamayo, coordinator of Solidarios in the province. She agrees with the doctor in architecture that cities are increasingly “more hostile” to this group, with “less shade, fewer trees, fewer fountains and fewer public services.”

Sánchez Guevara explains that measures can be taken so that communities better accept the heat, such as “changing pavement materials, such as asphalt, and incorporating more vegetation in the center of the cities.” If they were put into practice, “they would benefit the homeless and pedestrians because air conditioning would lose prominence.” He comments that the most important are the climate shelters: “all municipalities should incorporate them because they play a fundamental role in the health of people who sleep on the street.”

2023-08-19 10:53:53
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