I’ve met a number of people recently who don’t seem to have any housing or income to speak of. More needs to be said about this, so here we go.
I’ve been spending time in Oldham recently, at drop-in lunches and afternoons talking with people who are in and out of street homelessness. Am transcribing longer interviews which should be posted in the next couple of weeks.
Here’s an excerpt from one conversation.
James, 49, is staying with Vance, 43. James says he has no income. He’s not signing on for benefits, because he thinks there’s a problem with his national insurance contributions not being up-to-date from his working days (“you know. Your stamp when you work all your life,” James says). His relationship ended and he had nowhere to live (“relationship breakdown” James and Vance say when I ask about the reasons why people become and stay homeless).
Vance, who was homeless for a long time himself, was recently placed in a flat in Oldham. James, as I say, is staying at Vance’s place. He sleeps on the couch. This sharing arrangement came about a few months ago after Vance found James lying on the concrete landing along from Vance’s flat. James was sleeping on the freezing ground.
Vance told James to go into his flat.
Vance: “[James] was sleeping outside on the landing. I can’t see that, because I’ve been homeless meself…I did if for years. Absolutely years. I slept on the streets, but I got sick of sleeping on the streets, so I bought a tent. I lived in a tent for five year. It is very cold and wet… and with snow. You can’t sleep. You put your tent anywhere you can.”
James: “Where Vance lives, it is a high rise flat. He find me on the top of it on the concrete floor sprawled out, sleeping. He come out of his flat. I’m on the floor on the concrete. Vance said to me: “go in my place.” He had a friend with him. He said go in there and knock on the door.”
I asked James how he managed for money and food, because he had no money coming in. “Foodbanks and begging,” he said.
So.
I don’t want to make this situation, or these guys, sound pathetic. They are not. They are onto it and hilarious, she says, patronising. They have their issues. Who doesn’t. We’ve hung out a few times and we’ll hang out some more.
I just want to make the point again that there are a lot of people around who do not always have the basics for living.
Too-complex and horribly invasive benefit application systems are often part of it (“it’s a rigmarole” James says when I ask about benefits and housing assessments). Struggles to get into housing and even basic shelter is also part of it (I go into that in my longer post). A political class which insists on punishing people at this point is also part of it.
I personally don’t care how people spend their lives, or who is considered deserving or not deserving. All that counts is that you live in a time and a place where people sleep out in the cold, for whatever reasons. Wonder how that plays in a northern winter.