Representatives of the opposition parties in the Reykjavík city council held a meeting on the “state of emergency that increases among more and more homeless people in Reykjavík” yesterday, Morgunblaðið reports.
The opposition issued an official statement, which says that they are stunned about the passivity the city council demonstrates towards the issue and that the council is going into its summer holiday without having solved the problem. The opposition further states that they had requested a special session with the welfare council to tackle the matter in its full complexity earlier this summer. They were then told that it was not possible to hold such a special meeting earlier than August 10. Meanwhile, the distress of homeless people is increasing rather than decreasing, the opposition states.
The opposition parties have agreed that emergency action needs to be taken immediately and they have requested an extraordinary meeting with the city council’s committee on homelessness next week.
In a statement the spokesman of the Icelandic parliament Alþingi published earlier in July, he reported that the number of people considered “misfits” among the homeless has increased by 95% from 2012 to 2017.
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This post was originally published on the Reykjavik Grapevine, and is republished here with the author’s permission.
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