I would like to share one of those encounters — the story of an elderly man who has been experiencing homelessness for around ten years, and whom our team has been supporting for quite some time.
That day, we meet him at a train station where he spends most of his days.
He is sitting on a large piece of cardboard placed directly on the ground. When he sees us approaching, he greets us and offers us another piece of cardboard so we can kneel beside him without dirtying our clothes.
We ask him how he is doing, how his day has been. He talks about the station floor — the areas that are cleaned and the ones that are always forgotten. Tiny details that only he seems to notice. He knows every corner, where to place his belongings, where he risks being disturbed, and where he can rest for a moment.
As the conversation unfolds, we come back to an appointment we had prepared together the week before, one he was supposed to attend on his own. He hesitates, stares into the distance for a moment, then finally says in a calm voice: “Without you, I don’t dare go to the appointment, because I don’t feel like a citizen.”
We remain silent for a few seconds. This sentence, spoken without anger or complaint, resonates deeply. It reflects both his modesty and the distance he feels from the rest of the world — as if he no longer recognizes himself in a society he was once part of. In our field, we call this self-exclusion: the insidious process by which a person, after being pushed aside again and again, comes to believe they no longer belong anywhere. It is no longer only society that rejects them — they begin to reject themselves.
As if these words were not enough, a maintenance worker arrives and, in a sharp tone, asks the man to move because he is sitting in front of a door reserved for waste disposal.
He then turns toward us with an accusatory look, as if our presence beside him had no right to be there.
The exchange is tense and unfair. The man does not protest. He remains calm, almost resigned. And when it is over, he quietly tells us: “I’m sorry you had to experience that.”
Our hearts tighten. Because it is obviously not his place to apologize. We tell him that we are the ones who are sorry — for what he has just endured, and for everything he has to endure every single day, unnoticed.
This scene takes on an almost symbolic dimension. Just moments earlier, he told us he no longer felt like a citizen. And here the world around him seems to remind him, once again, that he no longer truly belongs. As if humiliation had become part of the scenery — just like the cold, the noise, or the lack of sleep.
That day, once again, we became acutely aware of the power of the gaze society casts on people experiencing homelessness. A gaze that sometimes erases them, reduces them to a nuisance, to an unwanted presence. And yet, these people fully exist. They have their stories, their strengths, their sensitivity, their humanity. They are citizens — human beings in their own right — and they deserve respect.
They are dignified people living in an undignified situation.
— Marie, nurse with the street outreach team