Social sequelae of Covid require structural actions in addition to assistance

The pandemic forced the expansion of social assistance measures in Brazilian metropolises, and demand for services remains high amid a context of high unemployment and inflation.

Given this scenario, emergency measures continue to be necessary in the country, but they need to be accompanied by policies that bring about structural gains in areas such as professional training and education, say experts and representatives of social organizations.

According to them, this is the recommended path for Brazil to be able to fight more consistently, in the coming years, the situation of difficulties accentuated by the health crisis.

“All kinds of aid policies have been important in the pandemic. But people don’t want to live their entire lives with donations of basic food baskets. They want to work. They want to have a job. This only comes with economic policy”, says Sebastião Santos, president of Viva Rio NGO, which carries out social actions in the state of Rio.

Economist Marcelo Neri, director of the FGV Social study center, recalls that the labor market and the area of ​​education are among the sectors most punished by the pandemic. Advances in these fields, he says, will be fundamental for the medium and long term.

“During the pandemic, Brazil gave anesthesia, stopped some pain, especially with income transfer. But we will need complementary operations for rehabilitation”, says Neri.

Due to the crisis generated by the pandemic, city halls of large cities such as Rio and São Paulo saw the demand for various social assistance services grow, requiring public management to expand programs and create new fronts.

In Rio, the Social Assistance Secretariat says it has adopted measures such as an increase in the number of vacancies in shelters, emergency cash transfers (Auxílio Carioca), inclusion of families hitherto invisible in the CadÚnico (Single Registry of the federal government that gives access to programs such as the extinct emergency aid and Bolsa Família, the latter replaced by Auxílio Brasil), visits to vulnerable communities to provide various services and training people in shelters for the job market.

The ministry foresees an increase in the budget for social assistance in 2022. “Of the R$ 435 million planned for 2021, the amount will reach R$ 591.5 million for execution in 2022, with the main goals until 2024, according to the Plan Multiannual 2022-2025, the fight against extreme poverty and food insecurity and the viability of the employability of the homeless population that is in the shelters”, says the secretary.

According to the city hall, a census carried out in 2020 identified 7,272 homeless people in Rio. The municipal administration says that there is no way to compare the number with previous years, due to the absence of a survey with the same characteristics. The next census is scheduled for 2022.

Even without the data for comparison, the city of Rio de Janeiro says that there is a noticeable change in the profile of people who are living on the street.

According to the 2020 census, the group consisted mainly of adult men who lived alone in the Rio de Janeiro capital. With the crisis deepened by the pandemic, more families started to look for the municipal assistance network in search of reception in recent months.

The change in the public that demands help is also observed by organizations that work with the homeless population. Juliana Silva, partnership and relationship manager at Projeto Ruas, says that the audience has expanded.

“There was already a group in a street situation that attended our actions here in Rio. With the pandemic, we see more people who even live in houses, but can’t maintain food”, he says.

On Thursday night (16), the project organized an action that donated lunch boxes and offered services such as haircuts in the central region of the state capital.

A leaf talked to a 71-year-old woman who went to the scene. The elderly woman, who worked as a domestic before retiring, currently lives in an occupation and prefers not to be identified. She reports that the difficulties have gotten worse in recent times.

With the food shortage in the pandemic, she has been seeking help from social projects to make her meals. “With a simple pension, you have to choose between eating, buying medicine or paying rent,” he says.

In Juliana’s view, in addition to emergency actions by the public authorities in the short term, the improvement of the situation will depend in the coming years on measures of a structural nature. “We understand that it is necessary to seek definitive solutions. It is necessary to invest in areas such as housing and education.”

In the capital of São Paulo, the city government does not know, today, how many citizens are living on the street. A census that was scheduled for 2023 was brought forward to 2021 due to the impacts of the pandemic. The forecast is to release the results in early 2022.

The most recent data are from 2019, when 24,300 people lived on the street. The number already indicated an increase of 60% compared to 2015.

In the city, coping with the most severe consequences of the pandemic, such as the increase in the homeless population and vulnerable people —lack of food security or victims of domestic violence, for example,– are divided between the subprefectures and the Social Assistance secretariats. and Human Rights.

Many already existed, such as the service of approach and referral to reception centers, where there are 24,800 places, plus 54 Cras (Reference Centers for Social Assistance), 30 Creas (Specialized Reference Centers for Social Assistance) and six Pop Center (Specialized Reference Center for Homeless People).

The vacancies in the NCI (Centers for Elderly Care) were expanded as a matter of urgency, with 1,760 more placements, according to Social Assistance.

Other actions, such as the Solidarity City programs and the Citizen Kitchen Network, were created from the beginning of the health crisis, in March of last year. The first program distributed 5.2 million basic food baskets and 1.3 million hygiene and cleaning kits to extremely vulnerable families.

On another front, Cozinha Cidadã bought meals from small establishments and distributed lunch boxes to the homeless. In all, 4.2 million meals and 222,000 liters of water were delivered. Another arm of the program distributed 2.7 million lunch boxes in communities. According to the Secretariat for Human Rights, the program continues to distribute meals, but is undergoing reformulation.

For now, the discussion on social assistance policies at the national level in Brazil is focused on Auxílio Brasil. Launched by the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government, the program replaces Bolsa Família, but has points contested by experts and still raises uncertainties about the financing capacity.

“There is talk of an aid of R$ 400 that does not take into account the size of the families. Larger and poorer families have a greater need for help than smaller ones. The manual is not being followed”, says economist Marcelo Neri, director of the FGV Social study center.

Economist Ely José de Mattos, a professor at the PUCRS Business School, also questions aspects of Auxílio Brasil.

“There is social pressure for income transfer, but the new program is still very uncertain. It would have been better if we had used the energy to expand and improve Bolsa Família. We are wasting something that is very valuable, the expertise of a social program”, it says.

For Mattos, the social area brings together a series of challenges for Brazil in the coming years, and it is necessary to think about income transfer accompanied by initiatives of inclusion in the labor market and education.