Arnar Gunnar Hjálmtýsson, the director of the Betra líf halfway house, has not given up on the operation of the house and aims to reopen it. “I’m a terribly stubborn man,” says Arnar Gunnar, who is the new guest on Spjallid med Frosta Logasyn, which airs on the Brotkast podcast.
After a fire broke out at Vatnagörður halfway house earlier this month, Arnar was criticized for running a predatory installation for one of society’s weakest groups and that the house is also a Dangerous death trap due to insufficient fire protection. Arnar completely dismisses this and says the discussion is very wrong.
Worthy of note was DV’s detailed coverage over the weekend, which covered the fire and the controversial story of Betra Líf.
Non-profit
Arnar says he does not run the halfway house for profit, as the rent he charges is enough to cover the costs of running the building. He says that when deciding on the rental price, he decided to always try to be a little cheaper than other similar halfway houses, and he stuck to that. Arnar says that from the start he asked for help from the local authorities in the capital region for the operation so that he could have a 24-hour team there, but he did not receive it. He himself, together with his son and his girlfriend, volunteered there for the entire period of operation of the house.
Of the fire that occurred earlier this month, Arnar says suggestions from the fire department to improve fire prevention would not have changed the incident. It would be arson, and the improvements in question could never have avoided it.
No worse than being an active homeless drug addict
Arnar says there is no worse social situation in Iceland than being an active homeless drug addict. That’s why he decided at the time to accept people who hadn’t gotten sober, as long as the person applied for treatment. He decided this when he started noticing that no one was helping these people, who were both weak and had no houses to sell. Arnar says that from the beginning he felt a lot of prejudice towards these clients, including from the Kópavogur social service, who were his neighbors when he ran a house for this group at Fannborg in Kópavogur.
He recalls that according to the United Nations Convention on Human Rights, of which Iceland is a member, every society undertakes to provide housing for all its citizens. Arnar says the right of homeless addicts to have a roof over their heads should be greater than the right of people who don’t want this group near them. However, this does not seem to be the case here in Iceland.
Here you can see an excerpt from the episode, but the entire episode is accessible on brotkast.is
Arnar Gunnar Hjálmtýsson A Better Life
