Conceição Faria is 76 years old, receives a retirement pension of €392 and pays €317 for a room in Benfica, Lisbon. This rent corresponds to about 81% of her pension, leaving her only €75 for all other expenses. According to her testimony to Renascença, she often cannot buy the medications prescribed by the doctor, preferring to go hungry rather than steal.
Natural from Funchal, Conceição grew up with eight siblings in a family with difficulties. She worked in crafts and hairdressers, and as a child she even asked for shoes in stores. Still a minor, she was taken to Lisbon on the Santa Maria ship with a fake identity document, promising her work in a beauty salon that did not exist. She only managed to escape that situation in 1969, first with help from the daughter of one of the women and then with the support of a police officer.
With the independence of Mozambique, she returned to Lisbon through the Airlift, but left again to live between Belgium and Spain for more than two decades. The definitive return happened in 1997, after a failed business deal in Andalusia. She found work in a hotel in downtown Lisbon and began accumulating jobs, coming to work from six in the morning until midnight in four different activities: cleaning, hotel, another job and metro.
She found a studio in the Galinheiras social neighborhood, where she lived for more than 20 years, but in 2022 the infiltrations worsened and it rained inside the housing. She accepted moving to Covilhã with an acquaintance, but was scammed and returned to Lisbon. She now lives in a room in Benfica, sharing a T6 with five elderly people, describing hygiene problems, only two functioning stove burners and situations of violence from one of the residents. With support from the Centro Social de Nossa Senhora do Amparo, she continues to look for a home of her own.
