Where do homeless go when they die?

By Nino Apakidze

Where do the homeless go when they die?

A story about the homeless members of our society, who are marginalized not only in life but also in death

The Valley Cemetery

This is the final shelter for the homeless of Tbilisi. The first body was buried in 1997 in the Valley Cemetery. There are more than 100 graves now.

When the person dies as homeless and the body cannot be identified, the corpse stays at the city morgue for a year. If no one claims the deceased, they are buried in the field cemetery, as the director of the graveyard, Koba Totikashvili explains.

All corpses are photographed and assigned a special number. As the watchmen of the cemetery recall, there are cases when people come to look for a deceased, and the lucky ones are moved to the public cemetery.

Check the location

Stories from the locals

Aristophanes, Watchman of the cemetery

"Most of the graves have just signs on them. Name and surname are recorded in documents. There were many cases when someone came to transfer the body for burial. They are using the grave code and checking the identity. Once it's confirmed, the corpse is reburied to the public cemetery."

In conversation with Aristophanes

"There is a place where amputee remains are buried. Jackals are digging it. Once it was carried out to the population."

Listen what does the watchman recall

Manana Burchuladze lives near the cemetery. She admits that her son has witnessed how dogs dig out the human corpse.

The general rules

For those, who were lucky to survive dogs and jackals, but not lucky enough to be claimed by relatives and transferred to the regular cemetery, several rules are supposed to be followed, established by law.

Ritual activities should include all kinds of services to honor the corpse before burial and to provide ritual, sanitary services, and the necessary infrastructure to immortalize the memory of the deceased.

Several aspects must be taken into consideration while arranging the territory. Including, allocation of zones, plots (sectors) for burial and the order of their use; Direction, dimensions, and amenities of exits and pedestrian paths; Placement of green plants.

The requirements are not met by any means.

The valley cemetery doesn’t have any structure, the graves are constructed chaotically, there is not enough space between them, and the depth of graves is often questionable. Considering the several cases when dogs dug up the corpses and carry them out to the population.

Check the Georgian legislation

The distance

The director of the valley cemetery, Koba Totikashvili says that the spaces between the graves are 0.6 cm. According to the rules of exploitation of graves, an area of up to 2.5 sq.m. should be calculated and allocated for each grave. The distance between the graves should not be less than 1 meter.

The budget

The director says: “I don’t know anything about the allocation of budget. I have nothing to do with it.”

As long as LTD “Hermes” is state-funded, Totikashvili was asked about the annual income and expenses of a company. According to the latest available data provided by "Hermes", it spends 3.2 million GEL on salaries and bonuses, and 157 thousand GEL on the maintenance of 55 cemeteries.

Koba Totikashvili about finances

(The administration building of the cemetery)

When it comes to unfairness and unreasonable allocation of state resources, Totikashvili and the LTD "Hermes," are not the only ones to blame. In every municipality of Georgia, the activities that are considered as a minimum to honor the dead (according to legislation) are rarely met in case of homeless deaths.

Juba is from Batumi. He was a teenager when he faced the hardships of losing the only available family member while facing the organizational obstacles of being poor and not having a home.

First time in front of death

Juba Bilikhodze

“I was 17 years old when my grandma died. We have been living together since my childhood. I never knew my father, my mom is an alcoholic, and my grandma raised me. We were renting a room in Batumi, in a house. When she died, it was my first experience of losing someone precious and meeting death. I didn’t know what the rules were. The landlord didn’t allow me to organize a burial service for her so that the neighbors and people who knew her could come and say goodbye. He immediately asked us to leave the place. I didn’t know where to take her. Someone offered me a church service, they said it is accepted that homeless dead can have the public requiem at church. The priest refused me. I didn’t have money. Then the catholic church of Batumi agreed. We organized her funeral. Now she is buried at the municipal cemetery of Batumi. Going there makes me feel depressed. But unlike the others, she has her name and surname on the sign."

The municipal cemetery of Batumi is located in Urekhi. Homeless people, who are buried there have no headstone. Mostly, only gender signs are displayed.

The Constitution of Georgia states “The State shall take care of human health care and social protection, ensuring the subsistence minimum and decent housing, and protecting the welfare of the family" (Article 5)

As stated by the existing law, the local municipalities are responsible to take care of the homeless, both in life and death. The Social Service agency should provide statistics around homeless people, which doesn’t happen.

The death of a homeless person is a public health matter, from a legal perspective local authorities have a responsibility to bury the dead. In a strictly legal sense, there is no obligation for providing a public funeral service.

There is no registry or tracking for the collection of names of homeless people who have passed away. Not to mention collecting the data about gender, age, race and ethnicity, cause of death, and housing status, which might work as prevention, if the state develops a policy of understanding the roots of the problem.

Major flaws in the legislation

The government plan

Registration of homeless

Why it doesn't work?

The attempt to track all homeless deaths through official records turned up to be vain. “It is impossible to determine the extent of homelessness in the country", said Mariam Janiashvili, a lawyer and researcher of the Social Justice Center of Georgia.

“First of all, housing status is not determined and every municipality has their own methodology to count the homeless, or some doesn’t have any. That’s the reason we can’t get the real data of the homeless and their deaths.”

Photo: Social justice center

Homelessness remains the unsettled issue for the most vulnerable members of our society, the poorest. In 2018, the Government of Georgia, under the Open Government Action Plan, undertook to develop a state policy on homelessness, to work on a strategy and action plan for the creation of adequate housing, which never happened.

As Janiashvili explains, "there is not even a proper definition of the issue, which makes it impossible to work on the strategy. The attempts of contributing to help the homeless are chaotic, extremely law and don’t guarantee help at all."

Since 2015, the government started registration of homeless people in the territory of Tbilisi Municipality to provide shelter. Janiashvili says that the system doesn’t work. “Even if homeless people manage to get registered as homeless, which has many not-clear requirements, the law states that registration of a homeless person does not give rise to an obligation to satisfy a person registered as a homeless person within any specified time.”

Check the legislation

According to Social Justice Center, 17.000 people have addressed the Tbilisi City Hall for registration as homeless.

Homeless people are adapted to the unfairness of life after death as well.

What happens before they die, and what are the possibilities to make it a little better, is something to be discussed and determined on a state level.