Inequalities and Social Exclusion among Homeless People: A Brazilian Study

Objective: Analyze the factors that form the basis of the ruptures separating homeless people from their social support networks, as well as to understand everyday living. Method: Qualitative ethnographic study, data collection consisted of open interviews about life stories and participants were 15 homeless people. Results: Participants were born in households whose past generations had already integrated areas of social vulnerability and poverty. Family relations were marked by violence and disintegration. The daily lives of these individuals included proximity to violence and crime, the presence of inequities and lack of access to decent living standards with the predominance of early death caused by murder, injuries, infectious and sexually transmitted diseases. Conclusions: the instability of public policy, social assistance and health programs targeting this population and the tendency to medicate a problem that transcends the clinical setting, presenting as a result of social determinants that are historically constructed in contemporary society. Descriptors: social vulnerability, poverty, social inequalities, social determinants of health, alcoholism, street drugs