Today, I witnessed a crowd of easily 200 people in a breadline on Helsinginkatu. I can't believe it! I used to live on Helsinginkatu for a while, my brother for years and years. There were never any breadlines.
It made such an impression on me that I mentioned it in my interview with an officer from Helsinki City Council later in the afternoon. She showed equal "passion" for the phenomenon, she agreed that 10 years ago you would get less people queuing up for handouts. She really wants someone to do a bit of research into it, there's been such an exponential growth of people seemingly unable to make ends meet. The really strange thing is that whilst there were a few of the "usual suspects" hanging about (i.e. homeless alcoholics, of whom Helsinki always had its' fair share) but the majority seemed to be quite untraditional types: sort of "normal" looking people.
"Uusavuttomat" [nouveau helpless] my interviewee suggested. Some time ago people would do almost anything to avoid the humiliation, whereas it wasn't such a big deal for this new generation of people to join the breadline. They'd rather prioritise something else, above getting food on the table, as they knew that the food thing could be resolved if they bothered to queue up for it.
Harsh words perhaps? Undoubtedly these were people living in (relative) poverty. I noticed myself that the price of food has hiked up in Finland, probably outperforming any pay rises (or increases in state benefits for that matter).
Still, I'm gobsmacked.
1 comment:
This is really sad - are there really so many more people going hungry? I thought that the standard of living was higher but I guess there are homeless and hungry people everywhere.
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