Urbans discarded: discussing the homeless population complexity and the challenge for public health policies

Abstract

The adult homelessness is focused in the scope of the health and of social intervention intending to set up subsidies to the implementation of health public policies to this population. The conceptualization of this population and its relation with social exclusion, the city, the underground economies, globalization, strategies and the survival circuits, are inserted in a context of opposition to the social mechanisms that put them apart from society and breaks the family links. It is also related to institutional practices. The precariousness and unhealthiness from the streets results in a cumulative vulnerability which demands intervention and treatment according to a specific health condition, challenging the general concepts of universal access, integrality and equity of national health policies.