Today is my birthday. The 4th November. Strangely enough when I worked in a night shelter in Bedford there were two rough sleepers there who shared the same birthday as me.
One was Joseph*, formally a train driver on the old BedPan line until someone committed suicide in front of his train. He would sometimes stay in the night shelter but really he was a social misfit. Cafes would refuse him entry and he slept rough in random places. He taught me a great deal about the prejudice shown when someone looks unkempt.
I never knew very much about Martin* but I regularly found him rough sleeping in a disused railway shed. One particular night I remember finding him asleep with snow on his sleeping bag. I think we managed to get him to stay at the shelter about four times in the eight years I worked there – every other night he slept rough! He taught me so much about respecting someone’s choice to rough sleep.
They shared my birthday and despite their appearances had a significant impact on my life as I learnt about rough sleeping issues and the ways to find a solution.
Another significant time was when I was 17 and I had a part time job working for a sports firm selling trainers and running stuff at the London Marathon Exhibition. For four days, thousands of runners collected their numbers and then they bought souvenir T-shirts etc. I stayed at the Horseguards Hotel and to get to the exhibition I crossed Hungerford Bridge along with thousands of commuters. Everyone was in a rush except the people who seemed to spend their whole day living on the steps of the bridge. It was as if they were invisible. To add to my sense of injustice, the General Election was held during these four days and it felt like no one was speaking on behalf of these people. I had a sense then that I would like to come to London to help rough sleepers. Twelve years later I made it.
So in 2019 do rough sleepers have a voice in the general election? With politics being dominated by the single issue of Europe, it means that the criminal justice system, benefits, mental health, disability issues to name a few are getting little or no mention. The obvious reality is that vulnerable people don’t have anything like the voice that they should have.
However investment in rough sleeping is currently on an upward curve. This is because over the past 10 years numbers of rough sleepers have increased significantly so the government have released lots of money through local authorities to organisations at the coal face of rough sleeping to try and solve the problem. In Lewisham this means we now have a night shelter that operates all year round, increase in supported housing for chaotic RS, a designated rough sleepers co-ordinator and new Lewisham Council staff working to help RS. There is even some money to help RS who currently have no recourse to public funds. With that level of investment the numbers should go down but so far that has not happened.
As a group of organisations in the borough we have a list of active rough sleepers and we are better than ever at getting people off the street but why do the numbers remain high?
The assumption has to be that someone/something up stream is causing more people to fall into the "rough sleeping" river, and at a faster rate then we can pull them out! So let's look back upstream at the causes and we can see the following:
Relationship breakdown and addiction issues remain a root cause
But additionally the following have become major issues for those most vulnerable:
Affordability of housing
Problems with Universal Credit benefit
Huge gaps in the mental health system
Under funding to youth services
So as I mark another birthday, I am still learning how to address the needs of those who find themselves without a home. Decisions made in government always have a direct bearing on the poorest lives, but the question has to be asked... is anyone listening?
*names have NOT been changed