Spare a penny? Spare a thought

Brighton has a high population of rough sleepers. Why? Literally because we’re ‘the end of the line,’ in train track terms that is. That and Brighton’s a pretty pleasant place to be. Sounds stupid? It’s actually true: People end up in Brighton. They drift from place to place until they run out of new places to drift to. Brighton and Hove City Council put the number of rough sleepers at 10. Emmaus (Brighton & Hove homelessness charity) put the number closer to 50. A walk along Western Road at night reveals a good dozen or so. Then think of the number of times you’re walking along and you hear ‘Big Issue Please’ only to look down to see the guy with the dog huddled under a blanket. Do you just keep walking?

Talking to various friends and people from work I was shocked to hear they didn’t know how the Big Issue works. It’s simple: The magazine costs the person you buy it from 70p. You pay £1.50 thus giving them 80p. But I’m not writing this article to educate you about the Big Issue. I want to talk about The Big Issue – homelessness.

Picture the scene: A few weeks ago I was standing in the street talking to a homeless person who I knew from the night shelter where I work. He was waiting to see if there was a bed for him. He was talking about his kids, how he’d had everything, how he’d lost it all. A young guy came up to me and asked “are you alright there?” I admit it took me a second or so to register why a stranger was asking me such a question. But of course there I was, a young girl, standing talking to a scruffy character who was swaying from side to side. “I’m fine” I replied. “Sure?” he asked. “Yes” I said maybe a little too frostily and off he went but not before looking the homeless guy up and down. And that annoyed me. The guy I was talking to didn’t get a bed that night. I saw him the next day drinking down by St Peter’s Church. Two days later I passed him again. Last week I saw him at the Soup Run on the seafront.

A couple of years ago if you were to have said ‘homeless’ to me, my mind would have conjured up images of a guy huddled in his sleeping bag in a shop doorway, or groups of shabbily dressed men drinking in the middle of the day. I would have pictured a slightly smelly, staggering man in the street and thought drugs, debt, alcohol – that’s why you’re in that state. In short, I probably believed they were victims of their own actions.

But now, two years on, after having worked with the homeless, I’m ashamed that I ever thought that. I’m ashamed that I never considered each person as an individual but preferred to lump them all under one umbrella and label them ‘homeless’ – a group that is outside of society, whose members do not have access to shelter, food and healthcare like we do. This is a group that society, when snuggled up in bed at night, when drinking a cup of tea or when out with friends at the weekend, pretends does not exist. But these people do exist and behind every one of their faces is a story.

Some people become homeless after loosing their jobs – they can’t pay their rent and are eventually evicted. Maybe they stay in a bed-sit until their money runs out when, having been unable to find another job, they are forced onto the streets. Others become homeless after being released from prison – they are vulnerable as they are unused to society, they struggle to function, and with nowhere to go can fall easily back into old habits.

I’ve met and interacted with a lot of homeless people. Some of them with substance misuse issues, some with mental health issues, some who are ex-offenders. But a lot of them haven’t been in prison, they don’t use drugs and there is no history of mental illness. They talk about the time when they were in Portugal, the time they spent living in America, when they went travelling round Africa and I used to catch myself thinking ‘hang on a minute, how can you have travelled – you’re homeless!’ But those who, for whatever reason, find themselves on the streets were, at one point maybe not that long ago, like you and me – a fully integrated member of society. But now they talk of the shame of wandering the city and how it feels like everyone is looking at them, that everyone knows they are homeless. They speak of the fear of having to sleep outside at night, they speak of the biting cold, the long days of just passing the time. How easy it would have been to have given in to the alcohol or drugs so readily available in an attempt to forget, to forget that they are homeless, to forget that they belong to a group that society does not recognise.

So next Friday when you’re out having 3 or 4 drinks, make it 2 or 3 instead. Then the next time you hear ‘Big Issue Please’ stop and buy a copy. It’s quite an interesting read.