Shelter for the homeless (Moscow)

About the Shelter for the Homeless

The Shelter for the Homeless is Nochlezhka’s project in Moscow. Clients get temporary accommodation for several months and professional support necessary to start the process of getting them off the street. The Shelter operates in the building of the Counselling Service and Nochlezhka’s office at Bumazhny proezd.

- Social workers help people to re-issue their papers, register as disabled, find jobs and housing, reunite with their relatives, get admitted to care homes, overcome addictions;
- Lawyers challenge fraudulent transactions and help to get property back;
- Psychologists help clients to cope with consequences of living on the street, to believe in themselves and provide support in a safe space.

Why we do it

Nochlezhka’s Shelter for the Homeless in Moscow is a living space for several months for those who are in the process of working with our Consulting Service and have nowhere to live at the time. The Shelter temporarily gives a person a modest place to live, psychological help and moral support so that one can focus on solving his or her problems and, upon completion of work with the Consulting Service, move to rental housing, go home, to relatives or get admitted to a care home. The Shelter is not just a roof over one’s head. This is a comprehensive support, through which a person gets off the street and has the chance at a normal life.

How it works

We opened the Shelter for the Homeless in Moscow in the spring of 2022. Nochlezhka’s clients, who are under the guidance of a social worker, live there. These are people who found themselves in a difficult situation. All the wards of the Shelter have different stories: someone lived in the street for several years, someone – for several days. Someone has a place to live, but it is dangerous to be there. There is no single homelessness scenario, each case is different. One lives in the Shelter for as long as it is necessary to solve a particular case. Sometimes it is several weeks, but more often it is from several months to six months. For example, the average length of stay of the wards in Nochlezhka’s Shelter for the Homeless in St. Petersburg is 4-5 months. There are two men’s rooms and one women’s room in the Shelter. Two-three spots in the Shelter are reserved for clients with a long-term guidance plan. In such cases, a person is faced with a problem that will take a year or more to be solved: for example, replacing a Soviet passport with a Russian one, registering a disability, obtaining citizenship. In other cases, the period of stay of clients is usually from several months to six months.

Employment project

One of the most frequent requests from the wards of the Shelter is job search. A social worker helps to find suitable vacancies, prepare for an interview and write a CV. Nochlezhka also has an employment programme, where partner companies provide jobs for our clients. Sometimes one does not need the help of a social worker, but needs resources: Internet, a computer, a phone. In this case, the ward is looking for vacancies on his or her own in a specially equipped office provided by Nochlezhka.

Photos: Katya Zykova and other volunteers of Nochlezhka