Georgia has no strategy for addressing problems of homeless people, rights defenders assert

The Georgian authorities still have no strategy to address the needs of people who lost their homes, said Tamta Mikeladze, a human rights defender, at the presentation of the results of studies of homeless people's life held by the NGO "Centre for Study and Monitoring of Human Rights" (CSMHR).

According to Tamta Mikeladze, one of the study's authors, they studied four sites in Tbilisi, where homeless people live. The human rights defender has noted that homeless people live deprived of basic living conditions sanitation, electricity, water, and gas, and they live next to a garbage dump, where there is a risk of the spread of epidemic.

Another issue related to the homeless people is the lack of education, since because of the constant change of place of residence and lack of money; their children are deprived of the opportunity to attend school.

Tamta Mikeladze has mentioned the main reasons why people become homeless. According to the human rights defender, people most often became homeless when they had to sell their housing to raise funds for their medical treatment.

The human rights defender has also reported that the other large group of people claim they never had own apartment or house because of their difficult economic situation. Besides, the category of homeless people also includes women, who were unable to obtain housing after their divorce.

In this September, members of a number of NGOs are to meet government agencies, and the human rights defenders are to present their recommendations to address the problems of homeless people.