Imagine if your bank account was a paper cup. Nowhere particularly safe to keep your money – just the pockets in whatever you happen to be wearing. You don’t have a bank account. All you have is what you can fit in that cup. The coins – the ‘wallet shrapnel’ – that people passing by ditch into your cup, or hand to you – which for the most part is made up the coins which they don’t need – since they don’t need pennies to pay for what they want. Some of the most frequent users of those machines which allow you to turn your loose change into a voucher for a supermarket or claim the cash in higher denomination currency are the homeless. Self checkouts make it easier to pay with coins of all denominations - but not everywhere has them. As society becomes increasingly reliant on card payments and contactless payment the ability to pay becomes harder for those who have no choice but to rely on cash. They are primarily those on the fringe of an already fringe group – the rough sleepers. Homelessness comes in many forms – in some studies the largest proportion are the so-called ‘hidden homeless’ – people living in temporary accommodation (including me at this time), people sofa-surfing with friends week to week, people living in hostels (of which there aren’t enough). No-one wants to sleep rough, and no-one wants to beg. Many will do anything to avoid sleeping rough and this is open to exploitation - especially of younger homeless people exploited by others for sex in exchange for somewhere to sleep. The world of the homeless is not one you can really understand until you’ve either spent time with the community, or been part of it. A friend of mine, now in a hostel after 5 years of sleeping rough, summed it up as “We live on the same planet, but a different dimension – the two rarely co-exist.”
Rough sleepers often congregate together both during the day – but also at night. Pitches and places are the closest thing a rough sleeper gets to somewhere to call home. Sometimes they’ll form loose alliances staying in the same pitch for safety in numbers. Others deliberate avoid contact, fearful of danger. Every homeless person I know has been ill treated in some way or another – many in ways too graphic to describe here. I’ll sum it up in one of the unwritten rules of sleeping rough – Never Zip Your Sleeping Bag All The Way Up. If you’re wondering why you only have to hear the story of a homeless man who was dragged along a high street while trapped in his bag, being kicked like a football by a group of drunk men. And there have been worse cases – which have resulted in death.
This is a world that exists in the same towns and cities you do – but as my friend says, until you’re part of it – you never know. And you never know how easy it is to end up as homeless. There’s a label, sometimes shared ironically, when homeless people talked, which is given by Local Authorities. ‘Intentionally Homeless’ / ‘Voluntarily Homeless’’. The criteria for this label are simple – if you didn’t do everything you physically, legally, financially could to stay in your previous home – then you can be classed as having made yourself homeless. In some cases this includes things like not going to court, in some cases even if you can’t afford it. Until a recent change doubled the buffer zone – you could not access support from Local Authority’s Preventing Homelessness workers until you were 28 days away from having to leave your home or being evicted. In a case I know of, a friend ran away from her abusive partner – who had hospitalised her more than one – and was told she needed to ‘work on her relationship with her partner’ – otherwise she would be classed as Intentionally Homeless. So the choice was – stay and be abused, or leave and try and get yourself off the street. And once you’re there you’re hit by a system so complicated it would make the ghost of Franz Kafka rise to complain at the association of his name with it. For example – applying for any benefit, including the housing register requires an address. Yes, you read that correctly – you need an address to apply for council housing.
Being homeless is expensive - everything comes at premier, and with nowhere to store things you have to rely on what you can carry. The poor hygiene of the homeless is a common insult – but the cause it the lack of access to places to wash. Public toilets can be minimal in many places and for many they are not safe spaces to spend any length of time in. And remember you only have what you can physically carry – unless its on you it could disappear in seconds. For some homeless – it is easier – for example several people I know chose to keep up their gym membership so they could go and shower in peace. Amongst the rough sleepers I know many try to get enough together to get a night in a cheap hotel so they can shower and feel clean. You have no access to cheap utilities so in this age when hygiene is a key part of infection control they are more at risk in all ways – and medical care is virtually non-existent.
A few years ago a homeless friend of mine had a persistent throat infection. Wanting to help I checked whether the glands in his neck we inflamed. They were – but I felt something else – an unusual lump. I urged him to get examined at the Walk In centre. He was. He was given more medication for this throat infection – but the doctor didn’t examine the outside of his neck. He had to beg to get the money to pay for the prescription. Six months later he was hospitalised – I walked the streets trying to find him where I heard from another homeless person he was in hospital and bluntly ‘He’s dying’. I visited him. He had throat cancer. Years on the street had left him permanently malnourished. He died two months later. Homelessness kills and in a pandemic the rough sleepers have no where safe to isolate, and minimal access to care. And their lives could depend on the kindness of others. A few coins maybe – but in the increasingly cash-free world which is being accelerated by this lockdown – food, and other support – definitely.
