Natasha hides her face from a journalist's camera and won't reveal her last name. As layoffs began to bite in Russia this January, she lost her administrative job. Now, she waits for the so-called Night Bus in St. Petersburg, a kind of meals on wheels for those on the fringes of society. Steaming hot soup, ladled out of Soviet-era army canisters from the back of a bus, accompanied by bread and tea. "At least it's something," Natasha, 57, says, her face obscured by her parka's hood in –11 C temperatures. "I don't need to spend money for bread. I can buy something else with this money. There's not enough money for life."
A warming tent for those with nowhere to go. They come in by 8 p.m. and leave by 8 a.m. A stop gap in a city with not enough permanent shelter beds.
As Russia's economy stalls, more Russians are being pushed into poverty. Three million more Russians fell below the poverty line last year — meaning they made less than 9,452 rubles, or $180, a month — pushing the total to more than 19 million. That's a record high in nearly a decade, and some analysts from the Russian Academy of Sciences suggest the poverty rate is as high as 25 per cent. Some see the current situation as reminiscent of the 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union saw wages drop drastically, and 29 per cent of the country fell below the poverty line.
The Nochlezhka shelter set up two large army tents in the suburbs of St. Petersburg to house the homeless. Three million more Russians fell below he poverty line last year, bringing the number of Russia's poor to over 19 million.
Russia's economy, heavily reliant on oil, has been battered by low oil prices and international economic sanctions, including those from Canada, imposed in the wake of Russia's annexation of Crimea and its role in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. "Our country faces serious economic challenges," said President Vladimir Putin Tuesday, speaking to business people at a large engineering congress in Moscow. "Investments have decreased, the demand for your production has reduced. I can understand well your anxiety for the future."
With the government implementing widespread budget cuts, the social safety net for Russia's poor is thinning. In St. Petersburg, the homeless get some help from a shelter that operates a night bus that brings hot soup and bread to the outskirts of Russia's second largest city.
The average rate of inflation last year more than doubled to 15.5 per cent before falling back this year, to 7.3 per cent in March. Real incomes have fallen at least 10 per cent. Russia's currency, the ruble, has devalued by roughly 50 per cent. "When the economy is not healthy, more people become homeless," said Gregory Sverdlin. Sverdlin runs a St. Petersburg charity named Nochlezhka, meaning "shelter." It's the largest homeless shelter in St. Petersburg but has only 52 permanent beds. Some estimates put the number of homeless in Russia's second largest city at 50,000.
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