To love on the streets, some have decided to say enough is enough after disappointments and separation, but others have established new relationships, at times based on need and reciprocal help, and at other times based on the desire for a normal life.
Paolo has been in a relationship for three years. Before losing his job he shared a furnished room with Ester. Then he moved with her under the platform roofs of Porta Garibaldi station in Milan. But although Paolo has remained loyal to his cardboard boxes, after 6 months Ester accepted the invitation of the outreach workers and moved to a female rehabilitation house.
“I spend all night thinking of her,” says Paolo as he takes out a photograph. “Every evening I look at her photo and kiss her good night, and then I greet her first thing in the morning, but she doesn’t believe me when I tell her these things.” Most people on the streets are alone: often after bitter disappointments or separation they have decided they have had enough. But love on the streets is present, almost pressing, of every type. A constant thought, an encounter or agreement to deal with the difficulties of marginalization, or the impulse and desire to have a normal life again.
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“We got together because I saw that she needed me. She was on drugs, in the Central Station, and she wasn’t with a good group of friends,” Saul explains the start of his relationship. It is Italy in 1991 and he has two marriages behind him, a well-off life and lots of alcohol. He met Hanna six years ago at Garibaldi station when they were both living beneath the bridge beside the station building. She is from Central Africa.
“For two years we just looked at each other,” he says, whispering that he understood immediately “that she was in love with me and I told her if she wanted to be with me then she had to stop taking drugs. She did it, and now we are together.”
But the outreach workers say Hanna is still taking drugs and Saul still continues to drink despite the fact that he has tried many times to stop. In six years they have had two children together, both given up for adoption.
“We don’t make love every day, you know, there, where we live, near to the hospital. There is a rug which we put the sheets and blankets on. She doesn’t have complex needs,” Saul says. Apart from problems of privacy, there are also logistical ones. “We are under a roof a meter wide and when it rains in winter it is a disaster. Then there are the thefts. “She thinks that they arrive at that point so that they can rob her of her underwear.”
Saul feels responsible for Hanna. “If I leave her she will die and I will be a killer.” He laughs while he says it, but the message is clear.
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Lucia and Giacomo also met in the station. “We saw each other for the first time in the Central Station and immediately something was born, like a charm,” she says. After a few days they were together. He writes poems that Lucia reads out loud and he has a small job at the hospital but it isn’t enough to pay the rent. They lived on the streets for a while but the police moved them on and destroyed his bed and all his papers. Giacomo reacted to the news with a breakdown. He stripped naked, shouting in the middle of the street. Lucia put his clothes back on him patiently and was there by his side during his recovery in a psychiatric ward.
“Ours is a very strong relationship, as well as being very good,” he says.
“It is a society, there is complicity,” she adds. “In reality, we can’t talk of passion, because sexual relations between us are rare. There needs to be a calm atmosphere and I need to feel good, because on the streets I was attacked and raped.”
They won’t see each other for a while because she is about to enter a community outside Milan, but they are convinced that this is the right thing to do.
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Although there are not many couples on the street, among the homeless there are long-distance relationships, such as that of Jacopo who has a girlfriend in Romania.
“The last time that we saw each other was in February, now I am hoping to see her toward the middle of October,” he says. “She can’t come to Italy because they stopped her without any documents and she was repatriated. Now there is nothing that can be done for five years. Not even if I marry her.”
Jacopo and his girlfriend have been together for four years. They met while he was in Romania for work and they lived together for a year and a half. The problem is that Jacopo is an alcoholic. At the moment it has been two months since he last drank, but his dependency has ruined his life and taken him onto the streets.
“When I’m upset, nothing exists except alcohol, not even my girlfriend. But she is my only reason for living and now I want a peaceful life.”
His dream is to get married. “I want to build my own house and have children but until I get an apartment, everything will be very difficult.
The problem of housing is a big problem for everyone.
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“Without a home, how can I approach a woman?” Tommaso, 39 years old and homeless since 2001, goes straight to the point. “To have a woman close by is the nicest thing in the world but to have a relationship, one needs a job and a house. From the serenity that having these two things will give you, you get to the happiness of having a partner and then from there you have the power to do anything.”
Luca also agrees with him. He is 41 years old and divorced, just like Tommaso. Now he is in a reception center and is following a course of rehabilitation. “I would really like to find a person who understands me and with whom I could have a stable relationship. But for now I am here. How on earth can I have a relationship?”
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Giulio and Michela have succeeded. They met in a homeless centre in Milan and now they live on an agricultural cooperative in Tuscany.
“It is a trial, our first time living together, and at well over 50 years it is how you start a second life from nothing with everything to rebuild,” Giulio says.
Most homeless people however don’t find a person to become attached to. And at times they are really not looking for one.
“In the canteens it often happens that you meet someone and become close.” says Marco, a Milanese who has been homeless for many years. “They make certain types of advances, affairs that if you say a half word too many they come on to you. But these are quick meetings linked more to physical necessity than the desire to love.”
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“When Ester accepted help from the outreach workers and left the streets, she changed,” said Paolo, mentioned in the first story of this piece.
“At times, starting rehabilitation can be a problem for couples because it means a separation,” confirms Maurizio Rotaria, manager of the SOS Central Station of Milan, run by the foundation Exodus. According to Rotaria, relationships are fundamental for homeless people.
“When we first started it seemed to me that these people were missing material things, in reality it quickly emerged that the key element is that of relationships.” A delicate factor to manage, “the associations and organizations don’t worry about it often because it is really difficult to understand what the right level of equilibrium for friendly assistance is.” In 15 years of work, Rotaria has seen many ideas and tried a few of them. “On the streets there are lots of couples who in general choose each other forever. A man with problems chooses a ‘normal’ woman, while a woman with problems is usually with an older man. The drug addicts are equally with drug addicts and people with mental health problems. Often the couples last, but it is difficult to say where authentic relationships end and where relationships of interest begin. Not many people succeed on the path of rehabilitation, but for those who do, when they leave they are aware of the reality. They know that to have a stable relationship you need to give something of yourself.
At times for Rotaria, the difficulty is also a question of time: “Drugs, alcohol and the streets put your capacity to grow, on a relationship level, on standby. They take away stimulation and the capacity to value things, and when you return and try to reconstruct a normal everyday life, you don’t know how to do it. You are like a child, because you have lost 10 or 20 years of your life.”