Monday morning after the Royal Wedding I left my flat to head off for work to find someone sleeping rough in the corridor. The lock on the outside door of our building doesn't always catch properly despite, or perhaps because of, seemingly endless repairs, and frankly I'm surprised that something like this hasn't happened before.
I'm also surprised at how much it bothered me. 7.20 am (when I should have left by 7.10) is no time to try and wake someone up and argue them out of a building, so on my own and with no idea how aggressive this man might be, I didn't. He'd managed to vomit at the top of the front stairs where he was sleeping (the smell of dettol on the carpet has now faded, the smell of sick has not) and the back stairs (tiled so easier to clean at least) which made nobody feel any happier.
More than anything though it's the feeling of uncertainty I now have coming and going from the building. I want to feel safe between flat door and street door, not find myself in an enclosed space with an unknown quantity. Another neighbour had apparently called the police the night before to get this guy removed, but they were to busy to do anything - which isn't encouraging either.
The other side of this is that for the last 18 months the number of rough sleepers, beggars, and general con artists around town has been noticeably increasing. The latter are those reasonably well dressed, super friendly individuals who regularly claim to have lost car park/bus/train tickets and are in need of money to get home. The same faces come back every few months. My street is far from the train station, a bus stop, or the kind if car park you need a ticket to get out of and they really piss me off.
The number of beggars in the streets has exploded, pretty much every corner, and every cash point has someone pitched outside it - some clearly more genuinely in need than others, and over all so many that any charitable impulse is overwhelmed.
A far more worrying thing though is the general increase in rough sleepers though. All through the winter, even when it was really cold I was walking past people every morning on my way to work. The stretch that has suitable doorways is about a quarter of a mile, and up to a couple of years ago I might expect to see 1, maybe 2, people. In the last week I've counted as many as 9. Some are more or less permanent fixtures, others come and go. This is just one street in a city, when I change my route I see other bodies in other doorways
To my eyes this is a crisis point; to many people are falling through the cracks. I don't have any answers, or much hope that things are going to improve soon. I don't like thinking about what might happen if they get worse, but it's hard to avoid doing so when this is what I see every morning.
That is really upsetting. I understand that one of the reasons may be that the local councils are shutting homeless hostels due to cutbacks. I personally would be up for paying a local "precept" (additional council tax charge) to house the homeless. But as my next-door neighbour considered cancelling her garden waste bin charge this year (optional) because £45 a year is too much, I don't think this would go down well. On the other hand, members of her church run a voluntary homeless shelter in five local churches, using donated duvets and food, and allowing the church as an overnight shelter.
ReplyDeleteIt is upsetting. When I come home after a late finish at work I see different charities and other groups (at least one of local Mosqueis very active in reaching out and providing food). On the other hand there have been a couple of cases recently when homeless people have had their sleeping bags and other belongings set fire to in the day (by teenager kids both times I think). A friend who volunteers at a food bank was telling me they had a man who had walked 14 miles to them in the hope of something to eat because he couldn't get anything closer to him. He'd then have had to walk back. Teacher friends have had children in their classes so hungry they're eating the blue tack off the walls. I feel like it should be a much bigger scandal than it is, but there are no easy, or cheap, answers to fixing a situation like this, and it doesn't seem to be a priority at the moment.
ReplyDeleteGod, your post and the comments here are shocking. I know that the recession and austerity have bitten hard, but Britain is still a comparatively wealthy society and that there are people without food to eat or roofs over their heads is heart-breaking but also scandalous. It is also scary to feel that your building is not as secure as you'd believed. I hope that lock has been properly repaired now.
ReplyDeleteOf course many of us can help, though not all, and it's great that religious communities are stepping in. But this is a social problem that surely the government should be addressing? I am so sad that it is failing. I fear you're right that it isn't a priority.
It's a problem that for a lot of people, and certainly for a lot of better off people (if you live in a village, or a suburb, drive to work, any of the other things that keep you out of town centres) is probably more or less invisible still. There's what I know from seeing in the streets as I walk through town, and from dealing with the police and shoplifters and sort of take for granted, then there are the things that teachers are seeing, or that social workers will tell you. Matter of fact stuff to them about the rise of neglect cases which really shock me. But the constantly surprising things about it are how quickly it becomes normal, and how little it's being talked about for something that ought to be a national scandal. There's a trickle of media articles but nothing like the outrage you might expect. I guess collectively there's been a willingness to ignore some of these issues - which I can understand, but it also feels like it's getting to the point where it will be impossible to ignore.
DeleteYour observations are needed. Sometimes I think here in Shetland we are isolated from the reality of the level of poverty in this country, although there is a now a food bank even here. I don't go "sooth" that often now a days, when I do I am shocked at the quantity of folk in doorways, and how young some are. When I first went away (1970s) there were a few, but things appear to be worse not better. Not a country heading in the right direction. Such a complex problem with no single solution. But, free at point of use, healthcare and education and affordable housing are a good start for giving folk hope and social mobility. I am part of a generation fortunate to be able to pursue education without accumulating debt.
ReplyDeleteIt's easier to see things like this in a city where you're more likely to get concentrated pockets of poverty, where the homeless congregate, and where beggars are common. In the 20 or so years I've lived and worked here I've never seen it like this before though. Front line services seem to be at breaking point, funding is still being cut, and the gap between haves and have nots is getting wider. If this is the price of austerity it's unacceptably high for me.
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