<
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/08/13/1191832318/a-tiny-house-gives-them-hope-how-a-homeless-family-in-brazil-got-a-fresh-start>
'"There was a morning when our son asked for a glass of milk and I knew I
didn't have any to give him," says Erica Lacerda de Souza. "All we had left to
eat in the house was rice and
farinha [toasted manioc flour]. That's not
enough for a child."
The 32-year-old Brazilian and her husband, Bruce Lee Sousa, 28, had already
sold both of their cars and closed their bodega because of pandemic regulations
when they sent their son Henrique, then 6 years old, to live with his maternal
grandmother in the east end of São Paulo.
Bills were piling up and the couple's other work — hers as a cleaner and his at
a carwash — wasn't enough. When the pandemic shut down the carwash where Lee
Sousa worked too they lost the house they rented and almost everything in it.
With a few changes of clothes in a backpack and nowhere to go, the two ended up
living at São Paulo's downtown Barra Funda Terminal. They hoped sleeping on the
floor of the busy station — a massive central hub for the city's buses, subways
and trains — would be safer than staying on the streets.
That was in July 2020.
Three years later, their life has had a remarkable turnaround. For the past six
months, Lacerda de Souza and Lee Sousa have lived with their son in a tiny
home. They're one of 37 families in the Anhangabaú neighborhood to benefit from
a new program in São Paulo called Vila Reencontro. It's one of the ways this
city of 12 million is trying to help its rising number of unhoused people — an
estimated 53,000 in March of this year, up from 44,300 in 2019 and 48,600 last
year.
The tiny houses of São Paulo are part of a global effort to address the
critical issue of finding homes for those who, because of the pandemic and
other economic factors, are among the more than 150 million unhoused people
around the world.'
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
