The story seems so absurd that it is difficult to believe. It happened on January 3 at around 5:00 p.m. at a homeless shelter in Bolesławiec. The PCK employee we spoke with unofficially warned us that the matter was not as simple as it might seem and that both sides of the situation needed to be heard. We agree, although the same employee did not want to comment on the removal of the 77-year-old homeless man from the PCK shelter. She referred us to the Municipal Social Welfare Centre in Warta Bolesławiecka (GOPS Warta Bolesławiecka). There, we were to ask why a sober homeless man was removed from the shelter by an intervention team after a month-long stay. Even before speaking with GOPS Warta Bolesławiecka, we asked the PCK employee whether she would admit the homeless man for that night. The woman replied that there were no grounds to admit him.
We spoke with the homeless Ryszard in the ambulance after his examination. The man was shaken and could not stop crying. He was deeply hurt by the shelter staff and the intervention team because of how he had been treated.
“They threw me out rudely and insulted me,” Mr Ryszard said. “That caretaker was taking revenge like crazy. The people from Jarex led me out. I pay for my place from my pension and behave civilly. I am ill, and they said an ill person cannot stay here. I was treated in a psychiatric hospital because of a family dispute. My heart is ill; I have had two heart attacks. They said a sick person cannot stay here. There was plenty of room, and they threw me out shamelessly, with batons and handcuffs. There are many drunks and sick people here, and nobody touches them. I do not drink or do anything,” the homeless Ryszard added.
A brief history of Mr Ryszard
The 77-year-old Ryszard is experiencing homelessness because of the breakdown of family ties. The family disputes mentioned by the 77-year-old in the recording—which he said led him to receive treatment in a “psychiatric hospital”—involved six years of treatment for perpetrators of domestic violence, including at the Regional Hospital for the Nervously and Mentally Ill in Świecie (Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship). According to the diagnosis, the treatment was successful, but family ties, most likely repeatedly and brutally destroyed, will not be restored overnight. Adult children are not obliged to care for an abusive father. After therapy and several years of treatment, the senior has a chance to rebuild his life from scratch on the ruins. Mr Ryszard receives a pension and used it to pay for his stay at the shelter in Bolesławiec, where he went after leaving a psychiatric hospital (he paid PLN 850 without a municipal subsidy).
While still in the psychiatric hospital, as a senior and a person with mental illness, the only thing Ryszard could do was apply to the municipality (GOPS Warta Bolesławiecka) to be transferred from the hospital to a Social Welfare Home (DPS) for people with mental illness. The municipality secured him a place in such a home, but in Osiek. A month’s stay at this DPS costs more than PLN 7,000. Therefore, the municipality applied for child support payments from his children for their father and did not extend the homeless man’s stay at the Bolesławiec PCK shelter. In this way, GOPS Warta Bolesławiecka is, in effect, forcing the homeless man to move to a Social Welfare Home.
The problem is that the medical board that discharged Ryszard from the hospital determined that the man had recovered. As a free man, he can attend mandatory therapy and perhaps, even in the autumn of his life, try to rebuild his relationships with his adult children. This would be much more difficult or impossible because of the distance if Ryszard stayed in Osiek. Most importantly, however, the 77-year-old does not want to return to a facility for people with mental illness, as he clearly indicated in his conversation with us. Especially since he no longer needs such a facility.
We asked the director of the PCK in Wrocław to explain the circumstances surrounding the removal of the 77-year-old from the shelter. Here is her response:
Mr (...) has a place secured at the DPS in Osiek by decision of GOPS (Warta Bolesławiecka—editor’s note), and until January 9, 2023, they are awaiting Mr (...)’s arrival at the facility. Regarding the incident at the shelter, steps have been taken to clarify what happened and its course with the shelter employees.
Ewa Duda, director of the Lower Silesian District Branch of the PCK in Wrocław
We asked the police spokesperson why the officers who arrived at the scene did not place the homeless man in the shelter.
Bolesławiec police officers were called regarding an elderly person staying outdoors. At the scene, the patrol established that he was a 77-year-old man who had been staying outside for some time and was suffering from hypothermia because of the low temperature. Given this and information about previous health problems, the officers called an ambulance. We also learned that GOPS in Warta Bolesławiecka had arranged a place for the man at a facility, but the 77-year-old refused to use it. In addition, during the intervention the man said that he had money and that if the ambulance did not take him, he would rent a room.
asp.szt. Anna Kublik-Rościszewska, press officer of KPP Bolesławiec
We also sent an inquiry to GOPS in Warta Bolesławiecka asking on what grounds the intervention team removed a sober 77-year-old homeless man from the shelter. We are awaiting a response.
Attorney Wojciech Kasprzyk provided us with a legal comment.
“It is astonishing that a person who is not only homeless, but also 77 years old and in poor health, is thrown out or forced to leave a homeless shelter,” said Dr Wojciech Kasprzyk. “This is a person protected by the Polish state; a person of this age cannot be thrown out. It is astonishing that Jarex was called in. It is not PCK employees in Bolesławiec who throw this person out; they commission an external entity to remove him. There must have been a report or notification that someone needed to be removed, because Jarex does not simply come to interventions without being called. Human rights standards were not respected. The man was treated worse than an animal. The worst thing is that animals may receive better care in an animal shelter than this person did in this case. After all, protecting human rights is the most important thing, as established by numerous international documents and, above all, the Constitution,” the lawyer added.