By Emma R.14 February 2020
https://voiceofeurope.com/2020...
Swedish independent journalist Joakim Lamotte recently interviewed a nearly 90-year-old homeless man in Trelleborg. The man, Rolf Hansson, doesn’t receive any housing assistance from the municipal social services, and as a result is forced to eat, sleep and live in his car.
“He has worked and paid taxes his entire adult life, but now risks living his last days as a homeless person in Sweden since the municipality refuses to help him with a home or nursing home”, Lamotte wrote on Facebook.
The outspoken journalist also urged his readers to “put pressure” on those responsible so that Rolf does not have to live in a parking lot.
During the interview, tears run down Rolf’s cheeks. “Is this how it will end?”, says the 88-year-old man.
According to the municipality, there is no place for Rolf in a nursing home, even though he is almost 90 years old.
When Lamotte and Rolf visited the municipality office, the staff said that it is his own responsibility to find a place to live and that they couldn’t help in any way.
They two of them initially refused to leave the office before they could talk to a superior. But no boss came to talk to them.
Within just one day, Lamotte’s film got over 1,500,000 views on Facebook.
The leader of the Sweden Democrats’ opposition council in Trelleborg, Helmuth Petersén, says that the party immediately after hearing about the case sent out people to find the elderly homeless man.
“He’s been found now, I got a call just five minutes ago that he’s on his way to a hotel where we will install him. We will provide food and shelter until the municipality takes its responsibility”, Petersén says.
The SD politician says he is convinced that Rolf would have received help immediately if he had had “another surname”.
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“It’s obviously the case that if you have a different last name, you get help earlier. He has a regular surname and then you may not get the help you are entitled to,” he concludes.
