This is the first in a series of posts which feature conversations with people who are street homeless.

This series was inspired, if that’s the word, by Operation Encompass – the Metropolitan police-local council-UK Border Agency “partnership” to “combat begging and rough sleeping across six London boroughs.” Brilliant. They weren’t doing this by building more homes, or anything useful like that. They were doing it by – among other charming initiatives – hitting rough sleepers with Asbo warnings and telling people that they had to accept “help”. A few things appeared in local papers about this earlier this year – charities expressed concern about the operation “aggressively targeting and potentially criminalising some of the most vulnerable people in society” – and then things went quiet. I’ve asked the Met for an update – if it still going as Operation Encompass (the Met’s original press release said “activity” would be “ongoing“) and/or who is doing what and where. You can use Asbos to ban people from certain areas, see. This means that Asbos could be used by politicians to clear streets of people who might not, say, impress the bigshot property investors that council leaders have been hanging out with in Cannes, etc. These things need to be watched.

They’re not pretty. Boroughs like Newham seemed to be running their own Encompasses (I’d ask Newham where things are at there as well, except that the council refuses to talk to me). Only a month ago, we had mayor Robin Wales in the Newham Recorder boasting about cracking down on rough sleepers in the Stratford centre. (Wales, incidentally, seems to have been at last week’s property fair in Cannes. I do keep seeing the same faces at the moment). In his column, Wales said that rough sleepers who refused the council’s offers of “assistance” could not expect to continue to sleep on Newham streets. “I realise that this is a tough message,” Wales said, “and that some people will be instinctively unhappy with it.”

I was unhappy with it. I was very unhappy with it. The part that made me especially unhappy was the nasty, vengeful note in those statements – the “people with problems are not entitled, so they’ll damn well take what they’re given, or else,” line that informs so much of today’s political discourse. There was nothing in Wales’ article about the many reasons why people might be sleeping rough. There was nothing about the fallout from this government’s dreadful social security “reforms.” There was just a magnificent oversimplification of the reasons for homelessess and justification, if you can call it that, for lording it over rough sleepers. There was a real nastiness there.

You find that nastiness everywhere in political discourse on housing, of course. You find it, for instance, in this discussion with Hastings council leader Jeremy Birch, who told me that upgraded estates in his borough would not be open to people on benefits. People like the Focus E15 mothers hear it all the time, too. So do I when I’m out with them. For example: More than one Labour worthy at this women’s event last week asked me if I really thought that the Focus E15 mothers deserved the local social housing that they’ve been campaigning so hard for. Did I really think that would be the best thing for them? The concern seemed to be that housing the Focus E15 mothers securely would awaken the dreaded, so-called sense of entitlement in them. I found this extraordinary and extraordinarily patronising. It seems that young women who think they should have somewhere to live are now considered grossly pushy and grabby. Of course – no mention was made at this luvvies event of the startling sense of entitlement that the well-appointed have. Nobody asked me what I thought about Kate Middleton’s sense of entitlement when it comes to housing, or Nadhim Zahawi’s sense of entitlement when it comes to getting the taxpayer to pay to house his horses in heated stables, or MPs’ sense of entitlement when it comes to flipping and selling homes, etc. The political class never mentions those people. Their big concern in life is that everyday punters are on the make.

Anyway. Rough sleeping. Let’s talk about rough sleeping and the authorities’ eagerness to remove rough sleepers from town centres so that, presumably, investors and developers can’t see them. Let’s talk about the reasons why people end up homeless in London and the reasons why they keep returning to London, even as people try to get rid of them.

Let’s talk with Roy F, who is 45 (will add some audio of this discussion with him in the next few days when I’ve uploaded it).

I meet Roy outside City Hall. He says that he has mild learning disabilities, some mental health problems and a serious drinking problem. He slept by City Hall the night before, behind the hoardings at the back of the building. He has all his gear with him – a dirty duvet which is rolled up tightly with a piece of rope, and a bag. He has about six beers in his bag. He says he’s originally from Manchester and lived mostly recently in Clacton-on-Sea. He does not know what I mean by Operation Encompass or Asbo orders. He just says that he keeps coming back to London, no matter how many times he’s sent out. It’s all pretty easy to understand: he comes to London, because it is bigger and there are more people around, which means there are more people who are in a position to help him out with food, clothes and money. When you can’t settle and are struggling with mental health problems and addiction, those things really count. You chase those things. You seek them out. Roy says that support workers keep buying him tickets back to Clacton-on-Sea. He moves to London for a while – three times last year – and then support groups buy him tickets back to Clacton-on-Sea.

This is what Roy had to say:

“Some places are easier. I came over here [to London] about three times last year. People might come over and talk to me. Some people come up and give me money. I wasn’t begging for it. They just come up and give me stuff. Some people might be kind. Some people see you with this kind of stuff [the rolled-up duvet and the bag] and they walk away. I don’t mind talking to them. I think – fair enough. That’s my way. I don’t trust them. Never trust anyone you don’t know. People might screw you over.

“You see what I’m getting at. In the last 25 years, I’ve been screwed over so many times by so many different people. It’s fairly hard for me to trust someone.

“I’ve been sleeping rough for the last six months. I had a house – a decent place. I could come and go as I wanted.

“I’ve been in London for six months. I had to leave the house [in Clacton-on-Sea] because me and the landlord had a dispute over the money. All he wants is money, money, money. He’s money mad. But before I left Clacton-on-Sea, I went to the council and they said I’m in credit [with housing benefit]. I’m in credit. When I first moved in there, the rent was like £425 a month. Then I went to see this woman and she said I’m in credit for over two-and-a-half quid. But I had enough of that. I told my sister about it and I told me friends about it and I just had enough of it – the area, the house, the building. The building is not very good. Before I moved into that flat, a guy died. Two guys died – one in my room and one next door to my room. So I thought – I’ve had enough now and I wanted to get out of there. I’d been there about at least three-and-a-half years.

“Drop-in centres here – if you are living on the streets for a while and you want to go back to where you came from, they put the money up to go back. Like a train fare to get back to where you came from. I did it about three times last year. First time, I went to St Martin in the Fields. The second time I went, I was trying to hang myself and then I went to the Royal Hospital and they took me back to Clacton-on-Sea. Then I went back home and the third time, I didn’t try to kill myself. I stayed about a week and somebody sent me back to Clacton-on-Sea. I didn’t pay to go back. They offered to pay for me to go back. But at least I like it in London.

“When I was depressed, I was drinking [he is still drinking]. I had something like this [he points to the rope around his bag] and I tried to hang myself. I did it in front of a church in London and two women saw me. They phoned the police and they come down. [In hospital], I was checked over and I was all right. They put me on the 12^th floor next to the window. I said – are you crazy? I tried to hang myself and you put me on the 12^th floor next to the window.

“Mental health is a problem, I’ve got learning difficulties. I found it hard at school. When I came out of school, I went into painting and decorating and working on machinery. When I was working on machinery, I started that at about 16 or 17. When you’re drinking so much, it affects you. Also, I have epileptic fits. It runs in the family and it’s on my Mum’s side. When I’m drinking, I need to take it easy if I have a blackout.

“I feel like drinking when I’m outside. When I’m outside, I’m likely to drink more and eat less. You drink because it warms you up inside. It’s better than food. It makes you feel great. It can be lively. I won’t drink whiskey or vodka or anything. I couldn’t do that, but I do like Carling and Stella and I’d drink Special Brew, but that’s pretty hard. It’s about nine percent. I can drink Special Brew, but four cans and no more. Carling, you can have that. It will get you pissed, but not that quickly.

“Some people give me money to get food or clothing. I got this [his heavy jacket] for nothing. I went over there [towards Bermondsey] before Christmas. These two people came up to me and gave me food and money. They gave me this coat. When I came over here before Christmas, it was raining really badly – panning it down. Someone came up to me and said “are you hungry?” and just gave me food. I wasn’t like begging for it. It’s depends which area you’ve got to. They might be nice to you and they might not.

“I wouldn’t mind a place over here [in London]. You can do what you want over here. It’s massive. It’s very hard to get a house, though. You need money in your hand like a deposit. When I had a deposit – I had to get it off a loan shark, but I paid it all off. I went to my brother in law so that I could pay it back.

“I had two benefits. The jobcentre stopped one of them. I’m useless at filling in forms, me. They are hard. I’d rather get someone else to do it. They stopped my benefit about three weeks ago. It was about £140 every fortnight. They stopped that one, because you can only have that for a year. The form was for employment and support allowance. I’m waiting to know if I’ll ever get any money off the jobcentre or not. My brother in law helps out a bit. He’s quite good. I try to have keyworkers. I used to have one of them and then they stopped that. When I moved to Clacton-on-Sea, they was trying to get me a keyworker, but they won’t do it. Because I live on my own and I can do things by myself, it’s very hard to get stuff like that. That’s why I’ve been going to Open Road and things like that, for people with drug problems and alcohol problems.

“It’s very hard to find a hostel [in London]. If you’ve been over here for six months – then possibly. You’ve got to live here for a little while first.

“The weather changes every single day. I don’t like the sun. I like the rain and the snow. When it gets boiling up, then I have to stay in the shade all the time [because he doesn’t want to remove or lose his jacket]. My mum put me in the sun when I was younger. There was sunlight beaming on me and I didn’t like it. I tried to stay out of the sun as much as I can.”

I asked Roy for a phone number, but he said he didn’t have a phone. I gave him my number and details. Later that day, he rang from an unknown number and left me a message. He was drunk and seemed to be in a sort of panic. I haven’t been able to find him – he might have been sent back to Clacton-on-Sea again? He was sleeping around City Hall and Bermondsey.

More soon.