36 M.S.S. v. BELGIUM AND GREECE JUDGMENT reported that no one told them that they should inform the authorities that they had nowhere to live, which is a prerequisite for the authorities to try to find them some form of accommodation. 169. Those persons who have no family or relations in Greece and cannot afford to pay rent just sleep on the streets. As a result, many homeless asylum-seekers, mainly single men but also families, have illegally occupied public spaces, like the makeshift camp in Patras, which was evacuated and torn down in July 2009, or the old appeal court and certain parks in Athens. 170. Many of those interviewed reported a permanent state of fear of being attacked and robbed, and of complete destitution generated by their situation (difficulty in finding food, no access to sanitary facilities, etc.). 171. Generally, the people concerned depend for their subsistence on civil society, the Red Cross and some religious institutions. 172. Having a “pink card” does not seem to be of any benefit in obtaining assistance from the State and there are major bureaucratic obstacles to obtaining a temporary work permit. For example, to obtain a tax number the applicant has to prove that he has a permanent place of residence, which effectively excludes the homeless from the employment market. In addition, the health authorities do not appear to be aware of their obligations to provide asylum-seekers with free medical treatment or of the additional health risks faced by these people. In November 2008, Human Rights Watch reported: “Asylum-seekers of all nationalities who manage to obtain and maintain their [pink] cards have little hope of receiving support from the government during the often protracted time their claims are pending. The homeless and destitute among them often lack housing accommodation and other basic forms of social assistance, in part, because Greece only has reception centre spaces for 770 of the most needy and vulnerable asylum-seekers. Although three of the ten reception centres are reserved for unaccompanied children, Human Rights Watch met unaccompanied children, among others, who were living in the streets, parks, and in abandoned buildings because of a lack of accommodations and other social services. A 15-year-old Nigerian boy registered with the police, but at the time Human Rights Watch interviewed him was living on the street with no assistance whatsoever: ‘I still don’t have a place for me to live. The lawyers gave me an appointment to have a place to live. Now I sleep out on the streets. I don’t live anywhere. I have cold in my body. I don’t feel safe. I walk around until after 1 or 2 a.m. and then I find a park to sleep in.’ The Norwegian Organisation for Asylum Seekers (NOAS), the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, and [the] Greek Helsinki Monitor reported jointly in April 2008 on accommodations and social conditions awaiting Dublin II returnees to Greece, finding the number of actual places available to such destitute asylum-seekers to be ‘negligible’ and the conditions of the few accommodation centres ‘deplorable’. They observed: ‘The large majority of asylum-seekers remain completely without social assistance with regard to accommodation and/or other forms of social assistance. Greece is in practice a country where asylum-seekers and refugees are almost entirely left to their own devices.’”