Sleeping rough is extreme. There you are, lying on a hard pavement or in a shop doorway with, at best, a thin blanket protecting you from the cold and a piece of cardboard insulating you from the rising damp. You know it will disintegrate into a soggy porridge as soon as it begins to rain. Your isolation is profound. Yet frequently, if you are sleeping rough in central London, thousands of people will be swirling around you as they go about their business, walking on by.
Extreme things happen to those sleeping rough. They experience a range of truly remarkable responses to their predicament. Maz slept rough for a few years at London Bridge station in central London. She was seriously addicted to super-strength lager and heroin and had to beg through the day to keep both herself and her boyfriend supplied with these devastatingly damaging drugs, one illegal, the other not. Maz told me that one night she was approached by a smart man in a suit and given what is often referred to by the perpetrators of such acts as ‘a good kicking’. Waking up the next morning bruised and disorientated, she was horrified to find the man in the suit was bending over her. She tensed her body, assuming he had returned for desserts. To her astonishment he had come to apologise. ‘Sorry love, I thought you were a bloke’ he explained. Poor chap, there he was feeling guilty, assuming that the bundle he was kicking around the street was an old tramp and it turned out to be a women! How was he to know? So he returned to show that the age of chivalry is not yet dead. Such are the incomprehensible moral precepts to which some of our fellow citizens adhere.
Thankfully most of the people passing a rough sleeper in the streets don’t behave this way. In fact, many are appalled by the sight of someone sleeping rough. They ponder how such a thing can persist in a rich western democracy in the 21st century. Sometimes they see a person with a sign by them saying, ‘hungry and homeless, please spare some change’ and they drop a few coins into the cap next to it.
My colleagues from our street outreach teams which are out working every night with rough sleepers on the streets of central London frequently point out to me that most people begging are not rough sleepers, though some are living in hostels, squats or other impermanent accommodation. They are painfully aware that nearly all those who beg are seriously addicted to crack cocaine, heroin or alcohol and need the money from concerned members of the public to support this dependency.
Cheryl lives in a Thames Reach hostel where she is thriving. Formerly she lived on the streets near Charing Cross station and had a massive heroin problem. As a beggar, Cheryl was resourceful and persuasive. She had some advantages; the public has a soft spot for homeless women. Cheryl was able to cajole the public passing through Charing Cross station into handing her around £120 a day in spare change. She told me that the biggest single ‘drop’ she ever got was £1,500. Of the passer-by who gave her this windfall she says, ‘I think he must have got a year-end bonus. I couldn’t believe my luck. Of course, it was all gone in four days, spent on heroin for me and my three mates’. At this point in our conversation, Cheryl became a bit pensive and added, ‘I guess I am lucky to be alive’.
Indeed she is. A well known doctor who has been treating homeless drug users in central London for over 20 years told me that the average age of death of her heroin-dependent patients is 31. Looked at with dispassionate objectivity, I can only conclude that it’s incontrovertibly the case that the collective kindness of people giving money to people begging on the street is more damaging than the action of the thug who carried out the brutal kicking of Maz.
As in war, rough sleeping brings out the worst and the best in people. As a street outreach worker in London in the 1980s I met Dorothy Robinson every night on the Strand. She was a wizened, elderly woman who wore a bicycle helmet and her confused manner and deep suspicion of strangers indicated obvious mental health problems and a troubled past. Despite our best efforts, she would not accept our offers to come off of the streets and move into a hostel for the homeless. Slowly, inexorably, Dorothy’s physical health worsened, her face became encrusted with grime, her clothes became shabbier and her personal hygiene deteriorated. In desperation we considered requesting a mental health assessment to be undertaken with a view to having Dorothy ‘sectioned’ under the Mental Health Act and admitted to hospital against her will.
We weren’t the only people speaking to Dorothy on a nightly basis. A member of the public, Joy, was spending time with her, trying to understand what had brought Dorothy to the Strand and seeking a way of encouraging her indoors. Eventually the time came when Joy felt there was enough trust to be able to make her move. She helped Dorothy into the back of her car and drove her, ‘sitting there regally like the Queen’, over to a Thames Reach hostel where there was a single room and a warm bed.
That’s where Dorothy stayed for two years, first sleeping on the floor but eventually using the bed. Joy visited weekly and eventually Dorothy moved on to a care home where she lived in contentment until her death some five years ago. Joy stayed in touch with Dorothy at the care home. She continued to visit her weekly and remained a true friend and doughty advocate. I know all this because Joy rang me and invited me to Dorothy’s funeral where we remembered a life that was extended in length and dramatically heightened in quality by the actions of this determined and compassionate women who wasn’t prepared to see an eccentric lady in a crash helmet waste away and suffer a lonely death on one of London’s busiest streets.
Few of us can be Joys. She’s one of the hidden angels, a person so steeped in humility that she would be genuinely perplexed if you suggested that what she had done was in any way extraordinary. When the next Honours List is released with its usual quota of mediocrities receiving recognition for a lifetime of service to self-aggrandisement, Joy won’t be on it. She is special and we owe her a great deal. For her, walking on by was not an option.
Monday, 19 October 2009
Friday, 7 August 2009
My inspiration: Dennis Brown, traveller and intellectual
This week, a group of bright and energetic young people from a major auditing business visited one of our hostels. As part of their corporate social responsibility commitment the company wants to support Thames Reach. The hostel residents have all spent many years sleeping rough on the streets. Sitting in the garden, our visitors listen transfixed to Michael who has the battered visage and colourful life history that fascinates, shocks and appals. They are intrigued too by the staff - and puzzled. ‘What made you enter this line of work?’ they ask. These are good people, but the sub-text is indisputably: ‘Why would articulate, educated and capable people like you want to do this work when you could earn vastly greater sums of money and attain greater status in the corporate sector’? Then, predictably, they also ask me, ‘Who inspired you?’ I can feel the short-list being shoved in my direction. Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Mandela? After all, dramatic work with the poor requires a source of inspiration of iconic proportions. ‘It was Dennis Brown’ I mumble feeling, irrationally, that I am letting them down.
In 1980 I fled university clutching an Honours Degree in Modern History which turned out to be of no use to man or beast. I was attracted by an advert in New Society magazine offering the opportunity to live in a house with ten homeless people for which, in return, I would receive £9 a week wages and a room. I figured that the poor could benefit considerably from my intelligence and ready wit and that my presence would undoubtedly improve the quality of their wretched lives.
The house, situated in a tawdry quarter of West Kensington, was full of fascinating individuals including Ivy whose psychotic state meant that she was stalked by two ghost-like apparitions called Jack and Marge. And then there was Dennis Brown. Dennis wore a long brown overcoat, even on the hottest summer day and in the first few weeks of my stay needed crutches to get around. Attempting to enter a derelict building via a window left open on the second floor, he had unwittingly used a ladder with a broken rung, fallen and broken a leg.
I was pleased that Dennis quickly sized me up as an intellectual, and when I told him that my dissertation had been on the Nigerian trade union movement: 1939-51, the very abstruseness of which always gave me a thrill, I felt our relative positions had been clearly established.
Shortly after, Dennis asked me if I could discuss a book with him. I had occasionally dipped into Wilbur Smith and Harold Robbins so was confident that I could do low-brow without too much trouble. To my consternation, Dennis wished to discuss Bleak House by Charles Dickens. He wanted my view on whether I regarded the book as influential in achieving reform of the judicial system in the second half of the 19th century. I had to admit to him that I had not read Bleak House and was therefore nonplussed by his question. Dennis’ wrinkled brow illustrated his great disappointment and – worse – surprise at this significant gap in my education.
Part of the ritual of the house was the communal meal, produced in rotation by house members. My early effort, a mediocre sausage stew, had been described, brutally I felt, as ‘floating turds’. Dennis’ turn was next. As I trailed around the delicatessens of West London searching for the extensive range of ingredients he required, my resentment blossomed. However, there was no doubt that the resulting grilled honey lamb chops with rosemary and whole-grain mustard was a great success. How the residents chortled as they compared Dennis’ cooking with mine.
My humiliation was not yet complete. The coup de grace was delivered at the house meeting the following week. We were planning a group trip out and I had contacted Fulham Football Club for some free tickets. Dennis fixed me with a beady eye as he proposed instead that we attend a performance of Giselle. But first he would be interested in my critical analysis of Giselle. I squirmed like a worm upon a hook to turn the conversation but eventually had to admit that I had no idea whether Giselle was a ballet or an opera. Miserably I stared at the floor as, for the benefit of his fellow residents, Dennis launched into a brief description of one of the world’s most admired ballets currently playing, he noted, at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
Total defeat allowed me to settle into an amicable and respectful relationship with Dennis who henceforth acted as my mentor. Near the end of my time at the house he praised me for the stability I had brought, reflected in the improvement in Ivy’s mental health. My eyes filled with tears of gratitude. Passing by six months later, I popped in to see old friends. Dennis had predictably moved on once his leg had healed fully and we never met again.
We Chief Executives are terribly important. Rubbing shoulders with politicians, opinion-formers and celebrities and strutting around the corridors of power we have little difficulty in retaining a sense of worth. Even when we are mediocre there are acolytes who tell us we are marvellous. Sometimes it all gets too overwhelming: ‘You are brilliant' our egos shriek, 'they all want to follow you!’ And then, on a good day, the memory of Dennis Brown breaks through: the cold douche of reality bringing me to my senses, the reminder that humility is the greatest leadership quality of all.
In 1980 I fled university clutching an Honours Degree in Modern History which turned out to be of no use to man or beast. I was attracted by an advert in New Society magazine offering the opportunity to live in a house with ten homeless people for which, in return, I would receive £9 a week wages and a room. I figured that the poor could benefit considerably from my intelligence and ready wit and that my presence would undoubtedly improve the quality of their wretched lives.
The house, situated in a tawdry quarter of West Kensington, was full of fascinating individuals including Ivy whose psychotic state meant that she was stalked by two ghost-like apparitions called Jack and Marge. And then there was Dennis Brown. Dennis wore a long brown overcoat, even on the hottest summer day and in the first few weeks of my stay needed crutches to get around. Attempting to enter a derelict building via a window left open on the second floor, he had unwittingly used a ladder with a broken rung, fallen and broken a leg.
I was pleased that Dennis quickly sized me up as an intellectual, and when I told him that my dissertation had been on the Nigerian trade union movement: 1939-51, the very abstruseness of which always gave me a thrill, I felt our relative positions had been clearly established.
Shortly after, Dennis asked me if I could discuss a book with him. I had occasionally dipped into Wilbur Smith and Harold Robbins so was confident that I could do low-brow without too much trouble. To my consternation, Dennis wished to discuss Bleak House by Charles Dickens. He wanted my view on whether I regarded the book as influential in achieving reform of the judicial system in the second half of the 19th century. I had to admit to him that I had not read Bleak House and was therefore nonplussed by his question. Dennis’ wrinkled brow illustrated his great disappointment and – worse – surprise at this significant gap in my education.
Part of the ritual of the house was the communal meal, produced in rotation by house members. My early effort, a mediocre sausage stew, had been described, brutally I felt, as ‘floating turds’. Dennis’ turn was next. As I trailed around the delicatessens of West London searching for the extensive range of ingredients he required, my resentment blossomed. However, there was no doubt that the resulting grilled honey lamb chops with rosemary and whole-grain mustard was a great success. How the residents chortled as they compared Dennis’ cooking with mine.
My humiliation was not yet complete. The coup de grace was delivered at the house meeting the following week. We were planning a group trip out and I had contacted Fulham Football Club for some free tickets. Dennis fixed me with a beady eye as he proposed instead that we attend a performance of Giselle. But first he would be interested in my critical analysis of Giselle. I squirmed like a worm upon a hook to turn the conversation but eventually had to admit that I had no idea whether Giselle was a ballet or an opera. Miserably I stared at the floor as, for the benefit of his fellow residents, Dennis launched into a brief description of one of the world’s most admired ballets currently playing, he noted, at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
Total defeat allowed me to settle into an amicable and respectful relationship with Dennis who henceforth acted as my mentor. Near the end of my time at the house he praised me for the stability I had brought, reflected in the improvement in Ivy’s mental health. My eyes filled with tears of gratitude. Passing by six months later, I popped in to see old friends. Dennis had predictably moved on once his leg had healed fully and we never met again.
We Chief Executives are terribly important. Rubbing shoulders with politicians, opinion-formers and celebrities and strutting around the corridors of power we have little difficulty in retaining a sense of worth. Even when we are mediocre there are acolytes who tell us we are marvellous. Sometimes it all gets too overwhelming: ‘You are brilliant' our egos shriek, 'they all want to follow you!’ And then, on a good day, the memory of Dennis Brown breaks through: the cold douche of reality bringing me to my senses, the reminder that humility is the greatest leadership quality of all.
Tuesday, 28 July 2009
Something must be done - do charities have a collective responsibility for under-performing charities?
This article first appeared in New Philanthropy Capital’s Giving Insights newsletter, summer 2009
Chief executives from the charity sector are gathering for the spring conference. They discuss their varying responses to the recession, possibilities of new business, recent pronouncements from key government Ministers - and the abject performance of organisation X. When will it end, they sigh? Surely they can’t go on providing such abysmally poor services and get away with it? The majority view is that it reflects badly on all charities; something must be done.
But this is the same conversation that took place at the spring conference the year before. Nothing has been done about organisation X and there are plenty of entirely plausible reasons why the Chief Executives should leave the elephant in the room well alone.
After all, surely charities cannot be expected to regulate each other – isn’t that the job of official regulators such as the Charity Commission? Or what about the commissioners and funders that must surely be monitoring the work of organisation X? Besides, every organisation has services that under-perform for periods of time; we should be caution about being too critical about organisation X.
But in our heart if hearts, we know that organisation X has been under-performing for years. Every time the other charities advertise a job, applications from staff at organisation X are plentiful as good people seek to flee the dysfunctional vessel. Stories emerge with depressing regularity of endless, consistently mishandled re-structuring exercises and dubious staff management practices leading to frequent employment tribunals. Governance at organisation X is famously weak with the over-bearing executive in full control. He is the puppeteer pulling the strings and the cowed trustees dance to the tune laid down for them.
In truth, perhaps regulators and funders should be expected to investigate more, to ask harder questions and to dig beneath the information provided through monitoring reports and returns. But it must also be recognised that, even for the most diligent regulator or funder, there is inevitably territory where they don’t know what they don’t know.
There may be another more visceral, sub-conscious and dishonourable reason for a Chief Executive to avoid raising concerns about organisation X. Leading a charity brings with it many vicissitudes. There are days, months, years when the sun shines but also periods of abject bleakness when projects go wrong, trustee boards play up, funding is lost, mistakes are made and reputations are on the line. How comforting it can be for a chief executive to look across at organisation X and think that, despite everything, it could be worse. Doesn’t the group always need a failing member to provide the sustenance of schadenfreude?
This, of course, is just not good enough. It would be intolerable for charity sector chief executives to set themselves up, either formally or informally, as an inquisitorial Star Chamber to pass judgement on their peers. Such an approach would be objectionable, unworkable and thankfully unnecessary. This is a sector which is well regulated and, in comparison with other areas of public life, refreshingly scandal-free. But either individually or collectively chief executives surely have a duty to have a quiet word to those who need to know – principally the regulator, when evidence emerges, building up sediment upon sediment, that suggests an organisation is behaving in a way that is damaging the reputation of the voluntary and community sector.
When an organisation is dysfunctional to this extent, the beneficiaries of the charity will invariably be receiving a service that is at best shoddy and at worst putting them at serious risk. This is the strongest incentive for taking such a step.
Instead what tends to happen is that, eventually, an internal whistle-blower takes the huge risk of contacting the regulator or a funder, an investigation duly follows and malpractice is exposed. At the next spring conference the chief executives gather. With a collective rolling of the eyes, they gravely discuss the deplorable situation that was allowed to persist for far too long at organisation X. We all knew something wasn’t right they say. Someone should have intervened earlier.
Chief executives from the charity sector are gathering for the spring conference. They discuss their varying responses to the recession, possibilities of new business, recent pronouncements from key government Ministers - and the abject performance of organisation X. When will it end, they sigh? Surely they can’t go on providing such abysmally poor services and get away with it? The majority view is that it reflects badly on all charities; something must be done.
But this is the same conversation that took place at the spring conference the year before. Nothing has been done about organisation X and there are plenty of entirely plausible reasons why the Chief Executives should leave the elephant in the room well alone.
After all, surely charities cannot be expected to regulate each other – isn’t that the job of official regulators such as the Charity Commission? Or what about the commissioners and funders that must surely be monitoring the work of organisation X? Besides, every organisation has services that under-perform for periods of time; we should be caution about being too critical about organisation X.
But in our heart if hearts, we know that organisation X has been under-performing for years. Every time the other charities advertise a job, applications from staff at organisation X are plentiful as good people seek to flee the dysfunctional vessel. Stories emerge with depressing regularity of endless, consistently mishandled re-structuring exercises and dubious staff management practices leading to frequent employment tribunals. Governance at organisation X is famously weak with the over-bearing executive in full control. He is the puppeteer pulling the strings and the cowed trustees dance to the tune laid down for them.
In truth, perhaps regulators and funders should be expected to investigate more, to ask harder questions and to dig beneath the information provided through monitoring reports and returns. But it must also be recognised that, even for the most diligent regulator or funder, there is inevitably territory where they don’t know what they don’t know.
There may be another more visceral, sub-conscious and dishonourable reason for a Chief Executive to avoid raising concerns about organisation X. Leading a charity brings with it many vicissitudes. There are days, months, years when the sun shines but also periods of abject bleakness when projects go wrong, trustee boards play up, funding is lost, mistakes are made and reputations are on the line. How comforting it can be for a chief executive to look across at organisation X and think that, despite everything, it could be worse. Doesn’t the group always need a failing member to provide the sustenance of schadenfreude?
This, of course, is just not good enough. It would be intolerable for charity sector chief executives to set themselves up, either formally or informally, as an inquisitorial Star Chamber to pass judgement on their peers. Such an approach would be objectionable, unworkable and thankfully unnecessary. This is a sector which is well regulated and, in comparison with other areas of public life, refreshingly scandal-free. But either individually or collectively chief executives surely have a duty to have a quiet word to those who need to know – principally the regulator, when evidence emerges, building up sediment upon sediment, that suggests an organisation is behaving in a way that is damaging the reputation of the voluntary and community sector.
When an organisation is dysfunctional to this extent, the beneficiaries of the charity will invariably be receiving a service that is at best shoddy and at worst putting them at serious risk. This is the strongest incentive for taking such a step.
Instead what tends to happen is that, eventually, an internal whistle-blower takes the huge risk of contacting the regulator or a funder, an investigation duly follows and malpractice is exposed. At the next spring conference the chief executives gather. With a collective rolling of the eyes, they gravely discuss the deplorable situation that was allowed to persist for far too long at organisation X. We all knew something wasn’t right they say. Someone should have intervened earlier.
Tuesday, 21 July 2009
Feeble, Wretched and Hopeless
There is little about the subject of homelessness which raises the spirit. The lives of homeless people are frequently bleak, often mundane; short on glamour. Consequently programmes about the homeless are rarely shown on prime-time TV. Instead they are shuffled off to the early morning or late night slot. Famous, Rich and Homeless, broadcast over two evenings in June at 9.00pm on BBC1 was the exception. It tracked the experiences of five celebrities as they faced the most extreme form of homelessness: rough sleeping. The celebrity guinea pigs were the journalist Rosie Boycott, the actor Bruce Jones of Coronation Street fame, the presenter Hardeep Singh Kohli and ex-tennis player Annabel Croft. There was a fifth celebrity, the Marquess of Blandford who, to universal derision, survived only a short time on the street before throwing in the towel and escaping to an up-market Chelsea hotel. The second of the programmes drew an impressive 4.9 million viewers.
Over the last twenty years the portrayal of rough sleeping, whether through the medium of television or newspaper features has stuck to a rigid and stultifying format in which the following combination is a standard, undeviating requirement. Firstly, the story must emphasise the sheer horror of rough sleeping. Scenes of deprivation and suffering are de rigueur. Secondly, on this foundation must be built the notion that there is no way out. The system is broken, nothing has changed since the time of Orwell, possibly even of Dickens. Finally, the homeless people, brutalised by an uncaring society must be seen as damaged, passive victims with whom we can sympathise and feel solidarity.
The programme-makers who produced Famous, Rich and Homeless adhered to this orthodoxy with impressive resoluteness. Throughout these two compelling programmes they judiciously skirted the various disobliging truths that sought to undermine this portrayal. They were assisted in their efforts by the programme’s expert ‘talking head’ John Bird, the outspoken co-founder of the Big Issue who is not afraid to wears his opinions on his sleeve. These include the view that too much money goes to emergency, sticking plaster services instead of into prevention and that the homeless who refuse help on the street are unwell and, if necessary, should be compelled against their will to leave the street and taken to a place of safety.
In the first programme, the sheer horror of sleeping rough was brought home forcefully to the viewing public. The shaken celebrities were asked to spend six long days and nights on the streets of London, trying to survive as a genuine rough sleeper would be expected to. After three days help arrived when they were teamed up with ‘buddies’, each of whom had a lengthy experience of sleeping rough. The developing relationship between celebrity and homeless person provided some gripping television. At the end of each day, talking to camera, there would be a heartfelt soliloquy from the celebrity describing the bleakness of their experience, how they quickly became invisible to ‘normal’ people and hadn’t managed to eat properly, change their clothes or take a shower.
From the position of organisations working with rough sleepers in London like my own, the kindest take on this carefully crafted portrait of suffering and destitution is that it is unthinkingly misleading. A less generous view would be that it is wilfully manipulative. Within a quarter mile of the sites selected as places to bed down by our scattered celebrities are some excellent day centres for the homeless, including the Passage in Victoria, Connection at St Martin’s at Trafalgar Square and London Embankment Mission at Waterloo. These are places where homeless men and women can not only get a hot meal, shower and change of clothes but also housing advice and help in getting off the street. But spruced up celebrities discovering routes away from rough sleeping are available and that responses to homeless people in 2009 are frequently both humane and practical was not what the programme makers had in mind when they set their destination in advance of this voyage of discovery.
To keep up this pretence required some drastic editing. The week after the programme was transmitted I met the Chief Executive of a homeless day centre at a function and asked him why the celebrities weren’t encouraged to use his day centre. His answer was that they were, and one of them had. A distraught Annabel Croft attended his day centre and a considerable amount of time was spent by a day centre staff member consoling her and offering options so that she, and her two companions, could leave the street. This inconvenient interaction did not make the final cut.
Theme two, that the homeless are trapped by an uncaring system, bolstered by the casual disregard of the public, is heavily dependent on portraying rough sleepers as forgotten and ignored. ‘Our hidden shame’ whispered a reflective Rosie Boycott. The reality is that in London and many other cities outreach teams are out working with rough sleepers every night of the year, making contact and helping them get off of the street. So it was of no surprise to me that Thames Reach’s team which covers Waterloo should quickly come across Annabel Croft and her companions sleeping rough in the vicinity of Waterloo station. On approaching Annabel the outreach worker was disconcerted to find that there was an entourage which included a crew with fluffy microphones and other filming paraphernalia. It was clear that Annabel didn’t need our help.
Nor did the two rough sleepers with her, both of whom were well know to street outreach teams working in central London. The viewing public would be forgiven for thinking that these two individuals had suffered many weeks on the street and were desperate to escape the indignities of sleeping rough on sodden cardboard, under thin blankets. In fact, one already had a place in emergency accommodation and the other had been made frequent offers of services and accommodation over a number of months which he had rejected.
In the second programme, that part of the pre-conceived structural edifice of Famous, Rich and Homeless which required services available to the homeless to be depicted as either non-existent or inadequate began to totter. Put another way, a very large cat was struggling to get out of the bag and had to be forcibly restrained. Firstly, Annabel’s commendable efforts to help one of her companions come off of the street foundered when it was confirmed by the police that he was well known to outreach teams, had been given considerable assistance in the past and was aware of the services available and how to access them.
Then, in ominous tones, John Bird informed the gathered group of celebrities that they were about to face an experience that could be even more challenging than sleeping on the street: they were going to stay in hostels for the homeless. John has a particular view on hostels. He considers that many are dangerous places where people with drink and drug problems are thrown together, producing chaos and mayhem. In our conversations on this subject, he often refers to them as ‘hostiles’. And it is true that hostels represent a basic, short-term solution; an urgent response to the extreme situation of sleeping rough. Tentatively, our celebrities arrived at the various hostels where they had been promised a bed. All seemed grateful for the decent, comfortable, single rooms they were allocated where they could rest, eat and get cleaned up and relieved to meet the concerned and supportive staff in charge.
And what about the homeless themselves? The interactions between the celebrities and their homeless companions were frequently enlightening. The warmth that developed between some was genuine and moving. The damaged lives were illuminated. The grinding battle with alcohol and drug addiction laid bare, the desperate craving for human contact exposed and the broken family relationships explained. Yet there was nothing in Famous, Rich and Homeless that offered any serious hope that homeless people can successfully escape sleeping rough, tackle debilitating alcohol and drug problems, find employment, build loving relationships, get their lives back together again. Thus, Bruce Jones finds himself in a hostel for alcoholics. He likes them but is understandably horrified by the hopelessness of their situation. ‘This is a suicide hostel, they are here to die’ he memorably bellows.
79 of Thames Reach’s salaried workforce are former homeless people, indistinguishable now from the rest of the staff group except when they choose to let others know about their experience of homelessness, when they become inspirational role models for those on the journey away from homelessness and addiction or wrestling with poor mental health. Many were once on the street fighting their demons, living hand-to-mouth. But they sure ain’t now.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Famous, Rich and Homeless kept everyone happy. The BBC can claim that they had shone a light on an area of life in 21st Century Britain that is usually ignored. The programme-makers can point to the evidence that almost five million people tracked the celebrities as they faced destitution on the street. The celebrities themselves, throwing themselves into the arms of their loved ones as they leave the nightmare of ten days of homelessness behind them will have enough dinner party anecdotes to last a whole year. The public response was almost entirely favourable, so homelessness charities can expect an increase in donations. A reminder that public giving relies less on an understanding of what charities do and more on a visceral need to give as a form of expiation.
The losers, I fear, are the homeless. They deserved a programme that would shatter the prevailing orthodoxy. One showing something which I am privileged to witness, week in and week out; namely, how men and women, against the odds, can escape the grimmest situations through their own determination and resourcefulness. Rich, Famous and Homeless was, emphatically, not this programme.
Over the last twenty years the portrayal of rough sleeping, whether through the medium of television or newspaper features has stuck to a rigid and stultifying format in which the following combination is a standard, undeviating requirement. Firstly, the story must emphasise the sheer horror of rough sleeping. Scenes of deprivation and suffering are de rigueur. Secondly, on this foundation must be built the notion that there is no way out. The system is broken, nothing has changed since the time of Orwell, possibly even of Dickens. Finally, the homeless people, brutalised by an uncaring society must be seen as damaged, passive victims with whom we can sympathise and feel solidarity.
The programme-makers who produced Famous, Rich and Homeless adhered to this orthodoxy with impressive resoluteness. Throughout these two compelling programmes they judiciously skirted the various disobliging truths that sought to undermine this portrayal. They were assisted in their efforts by the programme’s expert ‘talking head’ John Bird, the outspoken co-founder of the Big Issue who is not afraid to wears his opinions on his sleeve. These include the view that too much money goes to emergency, sticking plaster services instead of into prevention and that the homeless who refuse help on the street are unwell and, if necessary, should be compelled against their will to leave the street and taken to a place of safety.
In the first programme, the sheer horror of sleeping rough was brought home forcefully to the viewing public. The shaken celebrities were asked to spend six long days and nights on the streets of London, trying to survive as a genuine rough sleeper would be expected to. After three days help arrived when they were teamed up with ‘buddies’, each of whom had a lengthy experience of sleeping rough. The developing relationship between celebrity and homeless person provided some gripping television. At the end of each day, talking to camera, there would be a heartfelt soliloquy from the celebrity describing the bleakness of their experience, how they quickly became invisible to ‘normal’ people and hadn’t managed to eat properly, change their clothes or take a shower.
From the position of organisations working with rough sleepers in London like my own, the kindest take on this carefully crafted portrait of suffering and destitution is that it is unthinkingly misleading. A less generous view would be that it is wilfully manipulative. Within a quarter mile of the sites selected as places to bed down by our scattered celebrities are some excellent day centres for the homeless, including the Passage in Victoria, Connection at St Martin’s at Trafalgar Square and London Embankment Mission at Waterloo. These are places where homeless men and women can not only get a hot meal, shower and change of clothes but also housing advice and help in getting off the street. But spruced up celebrities discovering routes away from rough sleeping are available and that responses to homeless people in 2009 are frequently both humane and practical was not what the programme makers had in mind when they set their destination in advance of this voyage of discovery.
To keep up this pretence required some drastic editing. The week after the programme was transmitted I met the Chief Executive of a homeless day centre at a function and asked him why the celebrities weren’t encouraged to use his day centre. His answer was that they were, and one of them had. A distraught Annabel Croft attended his day centre and a considerable amount of time was spent by a day centre staff member consoling her and offering options so that she, and her two companions, could leave the street. This inconvenient interaction did not make the final cut.
Theme two, that the homeless are trapped by an uncaring system, bolstered by the casual disregard of the public, is heavily dependent on portraying rough sleepers as forgotten and ignored. ‘Our hidden shame’ whispered a reflective Rosie Boycott. The reality is that in London and many other cities outreach teams are out working with rough sleepers every night of the year, making contact and helping them get off of the street. So it was of no surprise to me that Thames Reach’s team which covers Waterloo should quickly come across Annabel Croft and her companions sleeping rough in the vicinity of Waterloo station. On approaching Annabel the outreach worker was disconcerted to find that there was an entourage which included a crew with fluffy microphones and other filming paraphernalia. It was clear that Annabel didn’t need our help.
Nor did the two rough sleepers with her, both of whom were well know to street outreach teams working in central London. The viewing public would be forgiven for thinking that these two individuals had suffered many weeks on the street and were desperate to escape the indignities of sleeping rough on sodden cardboard, under thin blankets. In fact, one already had a place in emergency accommodation and the other had been made frequent offers of services and accommodation over a number of months which he had rejected.
In the second programme, that part of the pre-conceived structural edifice of Famous, Rich and Homeless which required services available to the homeless to be depicted as either non-existent or inadequate began to totter. Put another way, a very large cat was struggling to get out of the bag and had to be forcibly restrained. Firstly, Annabel’s commendable efforts to help one of her companions come off of the street foundered when it was confirmed by the police that he was well known to outreach teams, had been given considerable assistance in the past and was aware of the services available and how to access them.
Then, in ominous tones, John Bird informed the gathered group of celebrities that they were about to face an experience that could be even more challenging than sleeping on the street: they were going to stay in hostels for the homeless. John has a particular view on hostels. He considers that many are dangerous places where people with drink and drug problems are thrown together, producing chaos and mayhem. In our conversations on this subject, he often refers to them as ‘hostiles’. And it is true that hostels represent a basic, short-term solution; an urgent response to the extreme situation of sleeping rough. Tentatively, our celebrities arrived at the various hostels where they had been promised a bed. All seemed grateful for the decent, comfortable, single rooms they were allocated where they could rest, eat and get cleaned up and relieved to meet the concerned and supportive staff in charge.
And what about the homeless themselves? The interactions between the celebrities and their homeless companions were frequently enlightening. The warmth that developed between some was genuine and moving. The damaged lives were illuminated. The grinding battle with alcohol and drug addiction laid bare, the desperate craving for human contact exposed and the broken family relationships explained. Yet there was nothing in Famous, Rich and Homeless that offered any serious hope that homeless people can successfully escape sleeping rough, tackle debilitating alcohol and drug problems, find employment, build loving relationships, get their lives back together again. Thus, Bruce Jones finds himself in a hostel for alcoholics. He likes them but is understandably horrified by the hopelessness of their situation. ‘This is a suicide hostel, they are here to die’ he memorably bellows.
79 of Thames Reach’s salaried workforce are former homeless people, indistinguishable now from the rest of the staff group except when they choose to let others know about their experience of homelessness, when they become inspirational role models for those on the journey away from homelessness and addiction or wrestling with poor mental health. Many were once on the street fighting their demons, living hand-to-mouth. But they sure ain’t now.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Famous, Rich and Homeless kept everyone happy. The BBC can claim that they had shone a light on an area of life in 21st Century Britain that is usually ignored. The programme-makers can point to the evidence that almost five million people tracked the celebrities as they faced destitution on the street. The celebrities themselves, throwing themselves into the arms of their loved ones as they leave the nightmare of ten days of homelessness behind them will have enough dinner party anecdotes to last a whole year. The public response was almost entirely favourable, so homelessness charities can expect an increase in donations. A reminder that public giving relies less on an understanding of what charities do and more on a visceral need to give as a form of expiation.
The losers, I fear, are the homeless. They deserved a programme that would shatter the prevailing orthodoxy. One showing something which I am privileged to witness, week in and week out; namely, how men and women, against the odds, can escape the grimmest situations through their own determination and resourcefulness. Rich, Famous and Homeless was, emphatically, not this programme.
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
Stephen's Funeral
Funerals of homeless people are frequently harrowing. I have attended too many: around three a year for the last 29 years. There is the gnawing anxiety about the size of the congregation. Will there be enough people in attendance to give them a decent send off? My worst funeral was Ken Hobart’s. When I arrived at the crematorium it quickly became apparent that I would be the only one to pay him last respects. Ken had fought with the British army during the Second World War in the Far East. It was highly likely that some of his comrades were still alive but it seems that for years before his death he was long gone and forgotten.
Unlike many homeless people he had no inclination to talk about the war, at least not to me. He was an affable man who had drifted into rough sleeping via Salvation Army hostels and boarding houses in the 1960s and 1970s. At least at the time of his death in 1994 we had managed to find Ken a small bedsit where, with a degree of comfort, he had lived out his last seven years. But to depart this mortal coil with only a care worker to wave you off is sickening and somehow I took this unacceptable departure as a personal failure.
Stephen Glanville’s funeral two week’s ago was a different affair altogether, but still one that brought its stresses. Stephen had died a month before but his body lay un-cremated while the authorities sought to trace his two sisters who were known to be still alive. I avoid using the term ‘next of kin’ because Stephen was adamant that his Thames Reach support worker Jane was his next of kin. Somewhere back in the recesses of time Stephen had undergone a massive rupture with his family and had been consistent in wanting nothing more to do with them. The sisters were traced. The silence was deafening. Whatever had gone before was not now about to be laid to rest by death.
So we gathered on a warm June morning at West Norwood Crematorium, a gaggle of apprehensive friends whispering nervously, eager to get on with it. A thoughtful, compassionate Minister spoke to us in advance to find out about the strange and turbulent life of Stephen. He wanted to keep the service simply with a few words said by a close friend rather than the full funeral paraphernalia. And so it was – and we were grateful.
I first met Stephen in 1984 as a street outreach worker at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, frequently referred to at the time as ‘Cardboard City’. Stephen was in his late-20s and part of the hard core group of rough sleepers who constructed elaborate ‘bashes’ from cardboard boxes in the small park. He was a troubled man who frequently pretended he had swallowed pills with the intention of killing himself or was heading off to hang himself from a convenient beam in a derelict building. This drama was usually placed by the various care staff who sought to help Stephen in the category of ‘attention seeking’ or ‘a cry for help’, according to how exasperated we were feeling about him at the time. Eventually, as happens with even the most chaotic and long-term rough sleeper, Stephen came off the streets, first moving into a hostel and later to a self-contained flat where he received support from a team specialising in helping people with mental health problems.
The suicide threats continued unabated, and in order to keep the level of menace high, he felt it necessary to concoct increasingly elaborate forms of suicide. Typically an inebriated Stephen would call a support worker at 2.00am to inform them that he had swallowed razorblades and had locked himself in his flat where he awaited a ghastly finale. The support worker would then call the police and meet them at the flat where Stephen, predictably, would refuse entry. Next, the door would be unceremoniously booted in by the police. We could not take the risk that Stephen might be, for once, telling the truth.
Around 1998 Stephen’s life changed. He stumbled across something called a Loving Relationship. If there is one thing that, in my experience, can improve beyond recognition the life of a homeless person it is this particular Holy Grail, sought by many but found by just a few. Stephen’s life became inextricably entwined with that of Max, a mature man of the old school with a cut glass accent, spruce and dapper, possessing the most extraordinary patience and resilience. There followed what I regard as Stephen’s Golden Age, during which time he was purposefully engaged in various activities including a local campaign to prevent the area in the front of his home from being a bus terminus. Most fundamentally, the child-like need for constant attention reduced. All this ended with Max’s death in 2004.
Homeless people frequently die prematurely and, at 52, Stephen was no exception. As with so many, it was the drink that got him. The signs were not auspicious when he moved from drinking in company at the local pub to consuming cans of super strength White Lightning cider in his flat, mostly alone. Nothing could pull him out of this fatal tail-spin. I last saw him at Kings College hospital in South London. A mask was clamped to his face to assist his breathing and he had turned the familiar, stomach-turning, yellow-brown of the drinker whose liver has packed up for good.
We stumble out of the crematorium into the June sunshine, the most motley of crews; Thames Reach staff, homeless friends, the people from the pub and neighbours who knew him simply as a friendly, eccentric, local personality. Each of us carries our own thoughts, pondering this complex, frequently frustrating character. A turbulent profusion of memories tumble over each other. We are gripped by feelings of loss, bewilderment, relief and guilt. Some remember how, after a disturbed night full of tension and worry after another threatened suicide drama they had fantasised about gripping him by the throat to press remorselessly on that fragile windpipe, letting the life drain slowly from the body…..
But here, finally, in the comfort of the pub where Stephen was a regular the stories are full of warmth and affection, the babble of conversation swells and peaks. Then, slowly, we sink back into our seats, strangely replete, finding consolation in the certainty that the world will be a poorer place without him.
Jeremy Swain 30th June 2009
Unlike many homeless people he had no inclination to talk about the war, at least not to me. He was an affable man who had drifted into rough sleeping via Salvation Army hostels and boarding houses in the 1960s and 1970s. At least at the time of his death in 1994 we had managed to find Ken a small bedsit where, with a degree of comfort, he had lived out his last seven years. But to depart this mortal coil with only a care worker to wave you off is sickening and somehow I took this unacceptable departure as a personal failure.
Stephen Glanville’s funeral two week’s ago was a different affair altogether, but still one that brought its stresses. Stephen had died a month before but his body lay un-cremated while the authorities sought to trace his two sisters who were known to be still alive. I avoid using the term ‘next of kin’ because Stephen was adamant that his Thames Reach support worker Jane was his next of kin. Somewhere back in the recesses of time Stephen had undergone a massive rupture with his family and had been consistent in wanting nothing more to do with them. The sisters were traced. The silence was deafening. Whatever had gone before was not now about to be laid to rest by death.
So we gathered on a warm June morning at West Norwood Crematorium, a gaggle of apprehensive friends whispering nervously, eager to get on with it. A thoughtful, compassionate Minister spoke to us in advance to find out about the strange and turbulent life of Stephen. He wanted to keep the service simply with a few words said by a close friend rather than the full funeral paraphernalia. And so it was – and we were grateful.
I first met Stephen in 1984 as a street outreach worker at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, frequently referred to at the time as ‘Cardboard City’. Stephen was in his late-20s and part of the hard core group of rough sleepers who constructed elaborate ‘bashes’ from cardboard boxes in the small park. He was a troubled man who frequently pretended he had swallowed pills with the intention of killing himself or was heading off to hang himself from a convenient beam in a derelict building. This drama was usually placed by the various care staff who sought to help Stephen in the category of ‘attention seeking’ or ‘a cry for help’, according to how exasperated we were feeling about him at the time. Eventually, as happens with even the most chaotic and long-term rough sleeper, Stephen came off the streets, first moving into a hostel and later to a self-contained flat where he received support from a team specialising in helping people with mental health problems.
The suicide threats continued unabated, and in order to keep the level of menace high, he felt it necessary to concoct increasingly elaborate forms of suicide. Typically an inebriated Stephen would call a support worker at 2.00am to inform them that he had swallowed razorblades and had locked himself in his flat where he awaited a ghastly finale. The support worker would then call the police and meet them at the flat where Stephen, predictably, would refuse entry. Next, the door would be unceremoniously booted in by the police. We could not take the risk that Stephen might be, for once, telling the truth.
Around 1998 Stephen’s life changed. He stumbled across something called a Loving Relationship. If there is one thing that, in my experience, can improve beyond recognition the life of a homeless person it is this particular Holy Grail, sought by many but found by just a few. Stephen’s life became inextricably entwined with that of Max, a mature man of the old school with a cut glass accent, spruce and dapper, possessing the most extraordinary patience and resilience. There followed what I regard as Stephen’s Golden Age, during which time he was purposefully engaged in various activities including a local campaign to prevent the area in the front of his home from being a bus terminus. Most fundamentally, the child-like need for constant attention reduced. All this ended with Max’s death in 2004.
Homeless people frequently die prematurely and, at 52, Stephen was no exception. As with so many, it was the drink that got him. The signs were not auspicious when he moved from drinking in company at the local pub to consuming cans of super strength White Lightning cider in his flat, mostly alone. Nothing could pull him out of this fatal tail-spin. I last saw him at Kings College hospital in South London. A mask was clamped to his face to assist his breathing and he had turned the familiar, stomach-turning, yellow-brown of the drinker whose liver has packed up for good.
We stumble out of the crematorium into the June sunshine, the most motley of crews; Thames Reach staff, homeless friends, the people from the pub and neighbours who knew him simply as a friendly, eccentric, local personality. Each of us carries our own thoughts, pondering this complex, frequently frustrating character. A turbulent profusion of memories tumble over each other. We are gripped by feelings of loss, bewilderment, relief and guilt. Some remember how, after a disturbed night full of tension and worry after another threatened suicide drama they had fantasised about gripping him by the throat to press remorselessly on that fragile windpipe, letting the life drain slowly from the body…..
But here, finally, in the comfort of the pub where Stephen was a regular the stories are full of warmth and affection, the babble of conversation swells and peaks. Then, slowly, we sink back into our seats, strangely replete, finding consolation in the certainty that the world will be a poorer place without him.
Jeremy Swain 30th June 2009
Wednesday, 3 June 2009
Please, I beg of you, let me give you something for nothing
Most days we are rung at Thames Reach by somebody who wants to help the homeless; it is really rather gratifying. Media bods come with propositions intended to shed fresh light on ‘The Plight of the Homeless’. The Big Idea often involves them sleeping rough on the street to give a ‘down and dirty’ account of what it is like to be a rough sleeper. Quite often they are genuinely unaware that a proposal of this type is put to us at least once a month. Sometimes the call is from a designer with a new invention to pilot, such as a collapsible tent for rough sleepers or a particularly warm body bag to keep them snug during those winter nights. As the vast majority of rough sleepers aspire to a bricks and mortar solution rather than a life under canvas or in a sleeping bag, we tend to give them short shrift. Some approaches are from, to be frank, cranks.
On this particular morning I seem to have been reached by a Premier League crank. The conversation went as follows:
‘Mr Swain, my name is Mr Paley and I want to give my house to the homeless for five years’
That’s very kind of you Mr Paley, what will this cost us?
‘Nothing’.
‘I’m sorry Mr Paley, I’m not with you’.
‘Mr Swain, I want eight homeless people to live in my house free of charge’.
‘Mr Paley, I appreciate your interest but most homeless people would prefer not to share a bedroom; I can’t see this working’.
‘My house has eight bedrooms Mr Swain, please come and take a look, your ex-Treasurer Terry Hitchcock has told me about your organisation and I want to help you.’
‘OK Mr Paley, perhaps we could meet at your house next week….’
Dispiritingly, the Treasurer’s name was correct. To preserve good relations with a former Board member I now had to embark on something called a Wild Goose Chase.
The address was in an extremely posh part of South London. The house had wrought iron gates, a gravel drive and a blue plaque on the side bearing notice that a famous military figure had lived, and died, in the house. Mr Paley was diffidently polite and accompanied me on the journey around his house which, in my terms, was a mansion. He explained that his wife had spotted the house from the road and fallen in love with it. He had bought it and never lived in it. These things happen. Perhaps he would sell it one day, but in the meantime he wanted the homeless to benefit. There were chandeliers in most rooms, antique furniture scattered throughout, crisp bed linen and deep carpets. At various points Mr Paley had to attend to his mobile. Then his face became grimly serious and large sums were tersely bandied about before, with an apology, he returned his attention to me.
Of course, I knew it wouldn’t work. I pictured eight unsupervised homeless people in this most beautiful of houses. Swinging from the chandeliers was just one of many possible exploits that could be visualised with little difficulty.
Back at the office it occurred to us that there was a way through it. With Mr Paley’s permission, we could let the house commercially and use the income stream to fund one of our employment projects. Mr Paley expressed quiet approval and our legal representatives set about putting in place an appropriate agreement.
Some three weeks later Mr Paley rang again.
‘I’m sorry Mr Swain but my neighbour has unexpectedly made me an offer on the house which I have decided to accept.’
It was a blow, but these things happen and I had already told myself that it was always too good to be true. But Mr Paley had another surprise in store.
‘I don’t go back on my word Mr Swain, so I would therefore be most grateful if you could give me a figure commensurate to the amount of money you would have received should you have let my house commercially over a period of five years’.
The next conversation felt, by some way, the hardest. A colleague diligently contacted a number of estate agents and, as they say, did the math. The figure she arrived at was £163,000 – and that was at the bottom end. I’ve done the fund-raising course and know the theory around making the pitch: don’t prevaricate, boldly name your figure, first speaks loses. But I still can’t do it without a nervous stammer and a feeling that I am an impertinent charlatan. It went thus:
‘Mr Paley, we are entirely honourable at Thames Reach and this really is the figure though it seems very high to me and I quite understand if…..’
Mr Paley was quick to put me out of my misery.
‘Mr Swain, I have two things to say; firstly I know that everyone working with homeless people is honourable’ (Dear Reader: I can see the thought bubble above your head: it says, this man is clever, but he has led a sheltered life). Secondly, would you be prepared for me to pay you in two instalments?’
My magnanimity knew no bounds and I graciously accepted the two payments arrangement.
There was one further meeting with Mr Paley to finalise the agreement. Earnestly I explained to him that we would give him regular updates on the service his money was supporting which we should be delighted to take him to visit. How about, I prattled, a formal report on progress every six months and perhaps some pictures of participants? It wasn’t working. He was showing signs of exasperation and suddenly expostulated:
‘Mr Swain, this morning I was meeting with young men and women in my company who think that being given a bonus of £30,000 on top of a very substantial salary is a derisory acknowledgement of their worth – please, I beg of you, let me give you something for nothing!’
We both felt shaken by his outburst and I left shortly after. We shook hands self-consciously and I have never met him again.
Over the last few years Mr Paley’s money has helped hundreds of homeless men and women increase their confidence and self-esteem, develop new skills and increase their employability. Many of them are now in work; some with Thames Reach. Mr Paley receives a yearly letter from Thames Reach but remains resolutely detached.
We can only hope that in these times when greed unencumbered by conscience seems in the ascendancy, leading to the subsidisation of duck houses, servants’ quarters and non-existent mortgages that there may be similar gestures from other enigmatic angels with a strange desire that flies defiantly in the face of the zeitgeist. Namely, without fuss or fanfare, to be able to give something for nothing.
Jeremy Swain June 2009
On this particular morning I seem to have been reached by a Premier League crank. The conversation went as follows:
‘Mr Swain, my name is Mr Paley and I want to give my house to the homeless for five years’
That’s very kind of you Mr Paley, what will this cost us?
‘Nothing’.
‘I’m sorry Mr Paley, I’m not with you’.
‘Mr Swain, I want eight homeless people to live in my house free of charge’.
‘Mr Paley, I appreciate your interest but most homeless people would prefer not to share a bedroom; I can’t see this working’.
‘My house has eight bedrooms Mr Swain, please come and take a look, your ex-Treasurer Terry Hitchcock has told me about your organisation and I want to help you.’
‘OK Mr Paley, perhaps we could meet at your house next week….’
Dispiritingly, the Treasurer’s name was correct. To preserve good relations with a former Board member I now had to embark on something called a Wild Goose Chase.
The address was in an extremely posh part of South London. The house had wrought iron gates, a gravel drive and a blue plaque on the side bearing notice that a famous military figure had lived, and died, in the house. Mr Paley was diffidently polite and accompanied me on the journey around his house which, in my terms, was a mansion. He explained that his wife had spotted the house from the road and fallen in love with it. He had bought it and never lived in it. These things happen. Perhaps he would sell it one day, but in the meantime he wanted the homeless to benefit. There were chandeliers in most rooms, antique furniture scattered throughout, crisp bed linen and deep carpets. At various points Mr Paley had to attend to his mobile. Then his face became grimly serious and large sums were tersely bandied about before, with an apology, he returned his attention to me.
Of course, I knew it wouldn’t work. I pictured eight unsupervised homeless people in this most beautiful of houses. Swinging from the chandeliers was just one of many possible exploits that could be visualised with little difficulty.
Back at the office it occurred to us that there was a way through it. With Mr Paley’s permission, we could let the house commercially and use the income stream to fund one of our employment projects. Mr Paley expressed quiet approval and our legal representatives set about putting in place an appropriate agreement.
Some three weeks later Mr Paley rang again.
‘I’m sorry Mr Swain but my neighbour has unexpectedly made me an offer on the house which I have decided to accept.’
It was a blow, but these things happen and I had already told myself that it was always too good to be true. But Mr Paley had another surprise in store.
‘I don’t go back on my word Mr Swain, so I would therefore be most grateful if you could give me a figure commensurate to the amount of money you would have received should you have let my house commercially over a period of five years’.
The next conversation felt, by some way, the hardest. A colleague diligently contacted a number of estate agents and, as they say, did the math. The figure she arrived at was £163,000 – and that was at the bottom end. I’ve done the fund-raising course and know the theory around making the pitch: don’t prevaricate, boldly name your figure, first speaks loses. But I still can’t do it without a nervous stammer and a feeling that I am an impertinent charlatan. It went thus:
‘Mr Paley, we are entirely honourable at Thames Reach and this really is the figure though it seems very high to me and I quite understand if…..’
Mr Paley was quick to put me out of my misery.
‘Mr Swain, I have two things to say; firstly I know that everyone working with homeless people is honourable’ (Dear Reader: I can see the thought bubble above your head: it says, this man is clever, but he has led a sheltered life). Secondly, would you be prepared for me to pay you in two instalments?’
My magnanimity knew no bounds and I graciously accepted the two payments arrangement.
There was one further meeting with Mr Paley to finalise the agreement. Earnestly I explained to him that we would give him regular updates on the service his money was supporting which we should be delighted to take him to visit. How about, I prattled, a formal report on progress every six months and perhaps some pictures of participants? It wasn’t working. He was showing signs of exasperation and suddenly expostulated:
‘Mr Swain, this morning I was meeting with young men and women in my company who think that being given a bonus of £30,000 on top of a very substantial salary is a derisory acknowledgement of their worth – please, I beg of you, let me give you something for nothing!’
We both felt shaken by his outburst and I left shortly after. We shook hands self-consciously and I have never met him again.
Over the last few years Mr Paley’s money has helped hundreds of homeless men and women increase their confidence and self-esteem, develop new skills and increase their employability. Many of them are now in work; some with Thames Reach. Mr Paley receives a yearly letter from Thames Reach but remains resolutely detached.
We can only hope that in these times when greed unencumbered by conscience seems in the ascendancy, leading to the subsidisation of duck houses, servants’ quarters and non-existent mortgages that there may be similar gestures from other enigmatic angels with a strange desire that flies defiantly in the face of the zeitgeist. Namely, without fuss or fanfare, to be able to give something for nothing.
Jeremy Swain June 2009
Wednesday, 27 May 2009
I'll cut my throat for you
There were six rough sleepers at the old Eurostar terminal at Waterloo when we got there at 6.30am on Thursday morning. The group included a Lithuanian carpenter who had got drunk in London and missed his train back to Bognor Regis as well as two Poles who conversed intently with my colleague, a Thames Reach outreach worker who is fluent in Polish, Russian, Ukrainian and English. The only female in the group was a young woman – let’s call her Chloe – who swore profusely and good-humouredly at the men sleeping rough around her. Chloe’s wrist was bandaged up and her story was this: She had fallen out with her boyfriend Pete the night before and ‘split’ with him. The break-up had led Chloe to cut her wrist using a shard of glass. The Accident and Emergency department at nearby St Thomas’ Hospital had duly bandaged it up and, being unwilling to stay there overnight, she had returned to the street to sleep rough. It seemed as if her action was both a cry for help and an attempt to create a graphic symbol to reflect the trauma of the break-up which could be displayed to those around her. Chloe seemed to be around 19 years old. She was unmoved by our efforts to encourage her to return to the family home in Surrey. ‘My parents know where I am. I ring them all the time. I will go back in a few days’.
The conversation moved on to Pete, variously described by Chloe as an ‘arsehole’ ‘head-banger’ and someone she never wanted to set eyes on again. She told us that Pete had gone one step further than her and cut his throat because he was so distraught about the breakup. Well versed in the embellishment and hyperbole that frequently accompanies street stories, we thought the tale of this extreme step implausible.
After a determined but ultimately unsuccessful attempt by my outreach colleague to encourage one of the group to consider a place in a detoxification centre where they could come off of the drink we moved on to the Webber Street day centre for the homeless run by the London Embankment Mission. The centre was full; a disparate group of people living on the margins – on the streets, in hostels, in squats - were eating breakfast and sorting their belongings in preparation for the day ahead. It included older men with the weary demeanour and watchful scepticism of the long-term homeless, a table of eastern Europeans and a younger group attracted by the showers at the centre, the use of which was controlled through the distribution of numbered tickets: ‘The shower is now available for ticket-holder 258’
I was chatting with the admirably committed and knowledgeably manager of the centre when I noticed that Chloe had arrived and was tucking into an impressive breakfast, clearly enjoying the company and with a flush to her face that suggested the first drinks of the day had already been consumed. There was an edginess about the interactions at the centre that I remembered well from my time as an outreach worker. The sudden raised voices and flare-ups between individuals which subsided as quickly as they arose, with the staff hovering and watchful, ready to intervene if the verbal abuse should descend to physical violence.
The centre was emptying when Pete arrived. He stood before Chloe and raised his eyes to the ceiling, exposing his throat along which the sutures were bunched in a horizontal line, making it appear that he was wearing some kind of futuristic implanted necklace. Chloe’s reaction was a mixture of triumph and disdain. She screamed at him, calling him a nutter for cutting his throat, telling him to get out of her life. But at the same time, there was awe in her expression, even pride. It said: I am so important to you that you have ripped open your throat with a piece of glass. As we walked away from Webber Street, Chloe and Pete were in a tight embrace.
I’m not sure that the morning on the street with my impressive outreach colleague gave me any new insights into rough sleeping. The rough sleeping population around Waterloo is a tenth of the size that it was when I was an outreach worker in the 1980s. The Scots and the Irish have been replaced in part by Poles, Lithuanians and other central and eastern Europeans, though they make up no more than 20% of the rough sleeping population in London overall which is still made up largely of indigenous white males between 25 and 55. Many lives are blighted by the ubiquitous super-strength lagers and ciders that society complacently accepts as part and parcel of 21st century existence.
What I was reminded of is the dangerous ambivalence towards life on the street that people like Chloe exhibit. Incomprehensible though it may be, there is an addictive thrill for some in living rough. But like all addictions it can, at least temporarily, mask the reality – the grime, grinding monotony and casual violence of street life. And this can lead to a young woman becoming over time, in the tortured vernacular of the homelessness sector, an ‘entrenched’ rough sleeper.
We have asked the police to keep a watchful eye on the Eurostar group over the next few nights and will be redoubling our efforts to re-connect Chloe with her family.
The conversation moved on to Pete, variously described by Chloe as an ‘arsehole’ ‘head-banger’ and someone she never wanted to set eyes on again. She told us that Pete had gone one step further than her and cut his throat because he was so distraught about the breakup. Well versed in the embellishment and hyperbole that frequently accompanies street stories, we thought the tale of this extreme step implausible.
After a determined but ultimately unsuccessful attempt by my outreach colleague to encourage one of the group to consider a place in a detoxification centre where they could come off of the drink we moved on to the Webber Street day centre for the homeless run by the London Embankment Mission. The centre was full; a disparate group of people living on the margins – on the streets, in hostels, in squats - were eating breakfast and sorting their belongings in preparation for the day ahead. It included older men with the weary demeanour and watchful scepticism of the long-term homeless, a table of eastern Europeans and a younger group attracted by the showers at the centre, the use of which was controlled through the distribution of numbered tickets: ‘The shower is now available for ticket-holder 258’
I was chatting with the admirably committed and knowledgeably manager of the centre when I noticed that Chloe had arrived and was tucking into an impressive breakfast, clearly enjoying the company and with a flush to her face that suggested the first drinks of the day had already been consumed. There was an edginess about the interactions at the centre that I remembered well from my time as an outreach worker. The sudden raised voices and flare-ups between individuals which subsided as quickly as they arose, with the staff hovering and watchful, ready to intervene if the verbal abuse should descend to physical violence.
The centre was emptying when Pete arrived. He stood before Chloe and raised his eyes to the ceiling, exposing his throat along which the sutures were bunched in a horizontal line, making it appear that he was wearing some kind of futuristic implanted necklace. Chloe’s reaction was a mixture of triumph and disdain. She screamed at him, calling him a nutter for cutting his throat, telling him to get out of her life. But at the same time, there was awe in her expression, even pride. It said: I am so important to you that you have ripped open your throat with a piece of glass. As we walked away from Webber Street, Chloe and Pete were in a tight embrace.
I’m not sure that the morning on the street with my impressive outreach colleague gave me any new insights into rough sleeping. The rough sleeping population around Waterloo is a tenth of the size that it was when I was an outreach worker in the 1980s. The Scots and the Irish have been replaced in part by Poles, Lithuanians and other central and eastern Europeans, though they make up no more than 20% of the rough sleeping population in London overall which is still made up largely of indigenous white males between 25 and 55. Many lives are blighted by the ubiquitous super-strength lagers and ciders that society complacently accepts as part and parcel of 21st century existence.
What I was reminded of is the dangerous ambivalence towards life on the street that people like Chloe exhibit. Incomprehensible though it may be, there is an addictive thrill for some in living rough. But like all addictions it can, at least temporarily, mask the reality – the grime, grinding monotony and casual violence of street life. And this can lead to a young woman becoming over time, in the tortured vernacular of the homelessness sector, an ‘entrenched’ rough sleeper.
We have asked the police to keep a watchful eye on the Eurostar group over the next few nights and will be redoubling our efforts to re-connect Chloe with her family.
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