Anders Maqe lives in a tent outside a Salvation Army building in Nuuk, capital of Greenland. Homelessness is an increasingly visible problem in this city of 20,000 people. 'It’s hard to live like this. I really need a house.'Photography by Malik Brøns/The Globe and Mail
The blue and red pup tent pokes up from the snow just behind the Salvation Army building on a busy intersection in downtown Nuuk.
The flimsy shelter has been home to Anders Maqe for nearly two years. Inside he keeps his few possessions: a radio, a flashlight, a mat, some blankets, clothes and a collection of candles to ward off the subzero temperatures.
His life fell apart a couple of years ago when he lost his father and suffered a hand injury. Then he got into a fight that put him in jail for six months. When he got out, he’d been evicted from his apartment and fired from his job with the city’s finance department.
He’s 57 and trying to find work so he can get off benefits, which pay him around 6,000 Danish kroner ($1,200) a month. That’s nowhere near enough to afford an apartment in Nuuk, where monthly rent is around 16,000 kroner ($3,200) and subsidized housing is so scarce the wait time is 15 years.
“It’s hard to live like this,” he said. “I really need a house.”
By some estimates, around 200 people are unhoused in Nuuk, a city of 20,000. But the actual figure is at least double because of the hidden homeless – people who live temporarily with friends or relatives.
Experts say Greenland’s capital is grappling with a host of issues including the fallout from rapid expansion and the legacy of colonialism. As global jockeying over the island’s vast mineral wealth intensifies and investment ramps up, the number of people unable to find a home is expected to grow even higher. “It’s a big problem,” said Salvation Army leader Nathanael Munch. When the organization came to Nuuk 12 years ago, “most people actually didn’t really think that there were homeless people in Greenland,” he added. “Everyone’s aware of it now. It’s visible.”
At the Salvation Army, Nathanaël Münch oversees increasingly busy services to give food and warmth to unhoused Greenlanders.
The Salvation Army runs a soup kitchen five days a week. It regularly serves up to 110 people; eight years ago the turnout was around 40. Demand has been running so high lately that the church has added breakfast three days a week to its regular five-day lunch offering.
For many of Nuuk’s resident’s, the city is booming and full of opportunity.
Go almost anywhere and you’ll see construction cranes, new apartment buildings and major projects such as the recently opened airport, which will soon connect Nuuk to New York, London and other major cities.
There are plans to expand the University of Greenland campus and open a 1,200-square-metre data centre. A subdivision of 1,200 apartments is going up in an undeveloped area near the city, called Qinngorput.
City officials are planning for Nuuk’s population to hit 30,000 by 2030 – roughly double what it was in 2016. If the target is met, more than half of Greenland’s population will live in the capital.
Nuuk’s growth has drawn people from far-off towns and villages. There are no roads connecting settlements on the island, so the only way to get to the city is by airplane or boat. Many of the new arrivals are unskilled and find themselves squeezed out of the job market, and unable to rent a flat.
The housing shortage has been exacerbated by Greenland’s long-standing practice of providing accommodation to government employees, including teachers, nurses, police officers and many civil servants. They have to pay rent, but as long as they remain in their position for up to seven years, they can keep the apartment, even if they switch jobs. Private companies have also bought dozens of units for staff.
With so many apartments snapped up by employers, there aren’t many affordable flats left for low-skilled workers.
The Nuuk residents who rely on the Salvation Army's services are at the mercy of decades-old forces that have kept housing scarce in Greenland, which Denmark ruled as a colony for more than 200 years.
Decades of urbanization by Danish officials have also caused social problems that experts say have contributed to the rise in homelessness.
Nuuk’s downtown is dominated by nine apartment blocks built in the 1960s for Inuit forced to relocate from villages the government closed. The idea was to modernize the island and assimilate its Inuit population into Danish culture and practices. But the policy clashed with their traditional way of life, and many families struggled in the cramped flats and unfamiliar surroundings.
“One of the things that colonization has done to Greenland is centralization and individualization,” said Steven Arnfjord, a professor of social work at the University of Greenland. “And that sort of totally disrupts the indigenous way of life. Now the individual is the common denominator, and that is messing up a lot of things.”
City officials have made moves recently to address the housing shortage. Last summer the municipality bought 42 shipping containers to turn into subsidized flats, with rents around 2,000 kroner ($400) a month. The city has also opened a small public housing project where people will be able to rent a room for 18 months while they look for work and receive social support.
Those actions are a good first step, said Dr. Arnfjord, but much more needs to be done. “We need to maintain focus on this area. We are looking at long-term homelessness and that’s a real problem. It’s like chronic poverty. It’s very, very hard to get rid of.”
Kujallerpaat, a municipally run shelter for young people, is one of several steps Nuuk has taken to address homelessness.
Svend Jensen, a resident of Kujallerpaat, is on a waiting list for housing and has found it hard to make plans for his life without a home.
Svend Jensen is among those in Nuuk who wonder whether they will ever find a home.
He’s been living at the Kujallerpaat shelter just outside downtown for more than a year. He came to Nuuk with his father in the 1980s from Sisimiut, about 330 kilometres north of the capital. He didn’t finish school but eventually found work as an ambulance driver and in construction.
When his father died two years ago of cancer, Mr. Jensen, 42, went into a deep depression and started drinking. He lost his job and got kicked out of his apartment. He also had an accident on a construction site that left him in a coma for three days.
He’s trying to clean himself up, and with the money he receives from the government because of his work injury he might be able to afford a flat – if he can find one.
“It’s really hard because the waiting list is really long,” he said. “I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m living for one day after another. I don’t plan my life.”