A rua é minha casa

condições de vida de pessoas em situação de rua em um município de Santa Catarina

Abstract

Homeless people are a group of people who are on the margins of society. Considering that social conditions are determinants of the health-disease process, social inequities end up making this population extremely vulnerable to illness, since many of their basic needs are not contemplated. This research aimed to get to know life histories and strategies of survival of homeless people in a large city of the state of Santa Catarina, Brazil. A qualitative research was carried out in which five homeless persons older than 18 years old participated in a semi-structured interview. The interviewees’ life histories reports were organized based on Bardin’s (2011) content analysis technique and in this article the category “Surviving on the streets and despite the streets” will be herein discussed. The research data made it possible to identify that the life histories of homeless people in the municipality in question are marked by a succession of tragedies, losses, violence, social exclusion, difficulty in accessing public services and denial of human rights, and, paradoxically, some feeling of belonging, of group identity, and of survival easiness.