Homelessness, Asbos, Operation Encompass

Posted on March 17, 2014 by Kate B

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. Continue reading →

“They threatened sanctions because they couldn’t read my handwriting”

Posted on March 10, 2014 by Kate B

For about a month now, I’ve been spending time outside London jobcentres with the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group talking to people who are signing on about their experiences with JSA, sanctions and jobcentres. Last week, we went back to Kilburn. Recently at the jobcentre, we heard from one man who said he’d been sanctioned for several months. He was furious and screamed that he was “going to come back with a fucking hammer.”

I asked him if he wanted to talk about the sanction and he told me to fuck off. “Why the fuck would I want to talk about it?” he yelled as he disappeared towards the high street. Which was fair enough. I wouldn’t want to discuss a months-long sanction with some old blogger with a notebook. I’d want someone to fix the sanction. Who wouldn’t. I give you this as an example of the sort of fury and desperation that this vicious JSA sanctions regime generates and to put it to you that there’ll be more of it when conditions for JSA become even more demanding.

Doubtless, that’s the government’s plan – to push people on JSA and jobcentre staff to breaking point and then to sit back and enjoy the fallout. Personally, I can’t believe that people who are out of work are being targeted so viciously. It is not actually a crime to be unemployed. It can happen to anybody. The system ought to stop you from falling – not shove you until you do.

I hope some worthy or other out there is taking note of all of this. People are under serious stress here and someone needs to move on it. Stop cutting people’s money off. Stop it now.

At the most recent session, I spoke with:

Bruce*, a support workers in his 40s. He was furious because he’d actually found himself a job (not through the jobcentre), but had been signed off by the jobcentre a couple of months before he was due his first paycheck. He was still trying to sort out problems with fares and travel costs.

He said:

“[At my signing on appointment], they said “are you looking for work?” and I said “No, I’ve just got a job. They said “okay, we’ll sign you off then.” So they signed me off a couple of weeks before I was supposed to start work. This was at Christmas time. So I had no money for weeks and then I tried to explain to them that I was not going to get paid until the end of the month either. So I tried for a welfare assistance payment, but they said – “you’re not getting that, because you’re not signing on.” Then they stopped my housing benefit, because I wasn’t signing on and everything, so it was like – fantastic. They were giving me no help with my fares or nothing.

“Because I’ve been waiting for this job to sort out and waiting for my CRB checks to come through, they sent me on this stupid course at Wembley. It was just a two week thing – a waste of time. They teach you how to stick a piece of paper back together as a teamwork thing. I paid the fares myself. They said they’d reimburse me, but they lost the form and everything so I had to pay for it. It was a waste of my time going there. They said I’d get certificates for it. Waste of time. I said there’s no way I’m putting that on my CV. You’re having a laugh.

“I signed on for six months was made redundant. I moved up here [to London] thinking I’d get more work up here. It’s just been a nightmare really.

“Over that time, I borrowed with loans. Paying that back – it’s going to take another year or so to get out of it. They just like screwing you in to the wall. They don’t do anything when you get a job.

“They sent me on that stupid course and then promised me the work programme after it. You pay into this [system for help if you lose your job]. Some of the people in the jobcentre are all right, but as soon as you question them… they did threaten me with sanctions, because one of them couldn’t read my writing. They said – “that’s not good enough. If you do that again, we’ll sanction you.”

“I’m working and I still struggle. I had to ask if I could get paid in advance as soon as I started work.”

Next, I spoke to a woman who was in her 40s. We’ve met a number of times now. She used to be a factory worker and has signed on for several years. Last week, she was concerned about a letter that she had received which said that she must attend a meeting at the jobcentre in a week. The letter didn’t say what the meeting was about – just that she must attend and bring bank statements, and evidence of savings and earnings. She also had a letter which called her to training sessions with work programme provider Seetac. The sessions were for assertiveness training and things like that. It was a little difficult to see how she or anybody would fit a meaningful job search around all of that. She had folder stuffed full of paper.

She said:

“At the moment, I have to sign on every two weeks. If I wants to see my disability adviser, I have to come in for that as well. One time, I had an appointment with my disability adviser and one time I had to sign on two or three times in a couple of weeks. Now, I have to go to this work programme and this meeting.” She seemed bewildered.

*Name changed. I’m not putting names up at the moment in case people are sanctioned.

Previous transcripts:

First story from outside the jobcentre: Kilburn
Second story from outside the jobcentre: Neasden
Third story from outside the jobcentre: Marylebone

Focus E15: stories so far #iwd2014

Posted on March 8, 2014 by Kate B

At the end of this post is a list of the stories I’ve done so far on the Focus E15 mothers’ campaign for social housing for all. Will be adding another tomorrow – namely, a report from the West Ham Labour International Women’s Day event where MP Lyn Brown kept screeching that I was “exploitative” because I was filming the Focus E15 mothers. The mothers, meanwhile, kept saying that they wanted me to keep filming them because they needed to have a record of this interface with their MP – because nothing else seems to hold people in power to account.

Interesting day. More on it soon.

Update Sunday March 9:

Here’s some video from the part yesterday when MP Lyn Brown kept screeching that I was “exploitative” because I was filming the Focus E15 women. “Exploitative! Exploitative!” she kept shouting as she put her hand over the camera. “Exploitative! I think we both know what I mean,”she told me. Actually, I didn’t. I really didn’t. I still have no idea and we never got to discuss it, because Brown kept shouting “exploitative! Exploitative!” and her Spad-type person kept holding a notebook up in my face. Then, the Spad person tried to box me in for a while, to tell me that Brown was actually a wonderful woman who made a great contribution. I really wanted a drink. Meanwhile the Focus E15 women told me to please keep filming them. They often ask me to film them, because, they say, they need those records to hold politicians to account. This point can’t be made often enough. As Sam Middleton, one of the Focus E15 mothers said to me yesterday (you’ll see her talking about this in the video from 0:45): “If Lyn Brown feels exploited, that’s her business, but I’m not being funny – we’re all adults here. If I want to be filmed, that’s for me. Private conversations get us nowhere. That’s the only time we’re heard, is when we’re filmed. So.”

This is important. The video and that statement should tell you all you need to know about the faith people have in the political class. It also tells you all you need to know about the political class’ belief that it can and should control people’s responses to austerity. I don’t know if Brown noticed that other people were filming and photographing our exchange on their phones. I don’t know Brown at all. I would have asked her some questions and talked to her if there’d been any way to get a word in. But there wasn’t, which was doubtless the point. That’s the local political scene for you these days. People either bar you from public meetings, which Newham council did a fortnight ago, or they yell and physically try to stop you recording the scene. I can’t see how this works to anyone’s advantage. Even MPs must know that they’re onto a hiding. They look like twats when they carry on like this and they can’t even get their rare vaguely pertinent messages across while they’re trying to shut things down. There was mention yesterday, for example, of Brown finding washing machines for the women who don’t have them in their flats (will be watching to see if she does), but the big moment was lost on me because I was being swatted away with a notebook. Still – on we go. “Exploitative” is actually one of the better names I’ve been called in the last few years. It’s certainly a refreshing change from Cunt.

Control is the thing. These people want to control something that they can’t. They want to control the austerity narrative until the people on the arse end of it go away, or are dispatched out of sight via the benefit cap, or sent out of boroughs on Asbos if they’re homeless, or whatever. But the fact that people can’t house themselves is not going to go away. Neither is the fact that the Focus E15 women, like most people who are on benefits, have been left to fight for basics like housing on their own. For months now, these women – who were all homeless and living in the temporary Focus E15 hostel with their small children – have fought Newham council for social housing. Newham had told the women they’d be sent to live miles out of London and away from the families who’d provide free childcare when the women went into training and work. After months of campaigning, some of the women have been placed in private sector rents in the area. The tenancies are largely short-term and insecure. The women are perfectly aware that in as little as a year’s time (it’s less now for some), they’ll be right back at the beginning – trying to hang onto private rentals that they can’t afford and fighting removal from London and their free childcare.

These women are certainly on their own as far as meaningful political support goes. And that is their point. They’ve got as far as they have, because they’ve made a noise about it. Their campaign for secure social housing goes on. They continue to run it alone. They’re young and they’re on benefits and nobody wants to know. I could ask why local politicians don’t turn out in droves on Saturday to help these women leaflet Stratford about the housing crisis from their Broadway stall. I could ask why local councillors and MPs didn’t all join the women when they tried to deliver their petition for social housing to Boris Johnson last month. The Focus E15 mothers are making a straightforward point. They’re demanding decent social housing for everybody and saying that the private rental sector is impossibly grim and unaffordable. You’d think persons of moment would want to get behind that banner. But they don’t. They want these women to shut up and get out.

Happy International Women’s Day anyway. Mine certainly spoke volumes.

List of articles on Focus E15 to date:

Open Democracy article: Why is middle class feminism so disinterested in women hit by austerity? (interviews with the Focus E15 mothers on their campaign to date)

Newham council runs out of meeting to avoid Focus E15 mothers’ protest

Focus E15 mothers take their petition for social housing to Boris at City Hall

Focus E15 mothers’ battle for social housing: an update

Young mothers occupy Newham council housing offices to demand social housing

Rubbish, mice and mould – good enough for young mums without money

Put this on a banknote: young mothers without money abandoned by the political class

“I’m 62 and they threaten me with sanctions.” More stories from the jobcentre

Posted on March 2, 2014 by Kate B

Over the last few weeks, I’ve spent time outside jobcentres with the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group talking with people who are on JSA about their experiences. We’ve been talking about sanctions, about the realities of trying to find work with jobcentres (a month in and I have yet to speak to anyone who has) and about having to fall into line on all fronts or risk having your benefits cut. Am posting transcripts from those discussions here as I work on a bigger project.

Last week, we went to the Lisson Grove jobcentre at Marylebone – a jobcentre that quite a few people we’ve spoken to seem to dislike intensely. Once again, we talked to people who were tired, angry and sick of the whole JSA regime. Don’t forget that the only crime people have committed here is being unemployed. Anyone could end up in that situation.

This is what happens if you do:

We began by speaking at length with one man who had been sanctioned for some months. He really wasn’t sure why this had happened. English wasn’t his first language and he was struggling to understand the story that he’d been told, or the steps he should take to get his sanction lifted. He said that the jobcentre said that something had happened to his records when he moved from one part of London to another. He showed us payslips from his most recent job – he seemed to have been working on and off in light industry. Now without income, he was relying on family to survive.

“It’s embarrassing to me,” he kept saying. “I have to go to my sister-in-law for food and for somewhere to sleep. I have no food, no light, no electricity. I don’t like that I have to rely on her.” He stayed and talked with us for quite a while. People offered to go back into the jobcentre with him, to try and find out more about his situation. He seemed completely stuck. A lot of people we talk to outside jobcentres seem completely stuck. They say their problems aren’t being resolved at all.

We’ve talked to plenty of people who are furious about that. At Lisson Grove, I talked to Penny*, aged 62. She was angry all right. She said that she’d worked in the voluntary sector until August last year, when she was made redundant, because of budget cuts. She was particularly angry about being told by the jobcentre that she wasn’t trying hard enough to find work.

She said:

“Some of us in our previous lives actually taught jobsearch. We actually took people through to the point of appointment, so [it’s very hard] to come here and be told “why are you late, you’re not doing proper jobsearch, that’s why you haven’t got a job,” when you’re 62 years of age. I’m being told this by people who are half my age. I’m being told that if ever I arrive late, they are going to cut the whole of my benefits. Continue reading →

Protest today: stop criminalisation of sex workers. Safety first.

Posted on February 26, 2014 by Kate B

From the English Collective of Prostitutes:

Protest today against raids, evictions of sex workers and criminalisation.
Walkers Court, Soho
Wednesday 26 February, 11am-12pm

A motion by MEP Mary Honeyball to criminalise sex workers’ clients is being voted on in Europe today – Wednesday 26 February.

Lobby your MEP TODAY – Information from the International Committee for the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe here and model letter here:

Additionally, on 3 March, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Prostitution reports and is likely to recommend criminalisation of clients.

Criminalising clients will not stop prostitution, nor will it stop the criminalisation of women. But it will make it more dangerous and stigmatising for sex workers.

Mass police raids last December against sex workers in Soho have thrown scores of women out of the relative safety of their flats. Premises were closed using laws promoted by Labour women ministers in the name of “gender equality”[i]. But where was the feminist outrage when women were dragged handcuffed in their underwear onto the streets? False claims about trafficking have been used to justify the crackdown. If the police get away with attacking sex workers in Soho who have such strong and visible support, then arrests and illegality against those of us who work on the street will escalate.

Cuts, benefit sanctions, rising poverty and homelessness have forced more women, particularly mothers, into prostitution. Do feminist politicians have a thought for how we’ll feed our children if they further criminalise prostitution?

Sex workers are fighting the Soho closures. One appeal has been won but other flats remain closed. Local people have rallied to support because they fear the closures are to make way for the gentrification of historic Soho.

Consenting sex is not a crime; we demand the decriminalisation of prostitution. New Zealand decriminalised in 2003 and sex workers report feeling safer and more able to demand their rights. Why not here?

London #Atos demo. This is not extreme.

Posted on February 23, 2014 by Kate B

Having noted that Atos is playing the victim card as it looks to exit the work capability contract, I thought I’d start posting some video from last week’s protest outside Atos HQ in London’s Triton square. You know – so that people can see how things last week went, etc.

These protests are peaceful and people have a perfect right to hold them. The work capability assessment is absolutely toxic and that point needs to be made good and loud. As it has been. Campaigners have done vital work over the past few years to make that clear, and to make Atos’ position untenable. That has been the real success. Other campaigns will take note. As more and more public services are privatised, people will know that they can target a company and tarnish it to the point where it has to leave. That is a result. Continue reading →

Why is middle class feminism so disinterested in women hit by austerity?

Posted on February 22, 2014 by Kate B

Open Democracy article by me on the group of homelesss young Stratford mothers who have been battling for places to live. These women and their children have been living in Focus E15, a dirty temporary hostel – for years in some cases. They dare to demand something better and they’ve managed to push Newham council to an extent. Theirs has been an extrarodinary fight – and one that is relevant to all of us who must rent. Housing is a crisis issue for most people, unless they’re rich. Yet a campaign to get a face on a banknote is considered monumentally more important than this grassroots campaign by the political class. I’m guessing it’s considered monumentally more important by people who don’t have to worry about finding a place to live.

“Nobody wanted to make an argument for the rights of young single mothers in the anti-welfare era. Media coverage of the women’s problems was intermittent at best. It was certainly intermittent in comparison with reporting of other recent “women’s” campaigns. I think here, as I usually do, of the extraordinary coverage and endless twitter broadcasting gifted to middle-class feminism’s campaign to have Jane Austen’s face printed on a banknote – banknotes that low-income women in Jasmin’s situation struggled mightily to get their hands on from one day to the next. The banknote campaign – and the opportunistic MPs who supported it, like Stella Creasy – was everywhere in the news last year. It never stopped. Women and children who were directly affected by austerity were nowhere. Standing out in the rain with the women at their stall on Saturdays, it was hard not to long for the day when the likes of the young Focus E15 women were thought worthy of blanket, banknote-type coverage for months and months on end. I suspect that day is a long way off. These women are not politically useful to anyone. Labour won’t back them. Labour won’t fight the welfare corner. It also guns for people who say it should. Just after I began to publish stories about the Focus E15 mothers on my blog, Newham council sent a snooty email to say that officers would no longer communicate with me, because I was reflecting the council’s position unfairly.”

Read the rest here.

More #JSA stories from jobcentres: “It’s impossible. You’re trapped.”

Posted on February 17, 2014 by Kate B

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been attending leafleting sessions outside jobcentres with the Kilburn Unemployed Workers’ Group and talking to people on JSA about their experiences as they sign on. We’ve been talking to people about sanctions, about being spoken down to by staff and having to walk on eggshells or risk being sanctioned, about relying on the jobcentre for JSA payments between short-term, low-paid jobs and about pointless work programme courses. I’ve posted some transcripts from today’s discussions below.

This morning, we were outside the Neasden jobcentre. It was freezing cold and there was a nasty, biting wind and a number of people we spoke to looked cold and shaky because they were not dressed warmly enough for the weather. I know we hear a great deal about life on JSA being a rort and people on benefits enjoying TV and cigarettes and long days lying around in the sun and all the rest of it, but it never looks that great when I see it. People talk about having to go weeks without money and being forced to grovel and fawn to staff to avoid being sanctioned, and about the terror of putting the card into the cash machine and finding that no money comes out because you’ve been sanctioned after all. And in this rubbish weather, they look cold.

This is the punishment you get these days for the crime of being unemployed and not rich. You are utterly powerless. You’re on the receiving end of everything. You have to put up with everyone’s crap. Of course – things are very different if you’re rich and connected. Life generally is very different if you’re rich and connected. Very different. If you’re Chris Huhne, for example, you get your media-class buddies to give you a column at the Guardian when you leave prison. If you’re Maria Miller, you help yourself to £90k from the taxpayer and claim that little earner was totally above board. If you’re Nadhim Zahawi, you charge the taxpayer to heat your horses’ stables. These people genuinely believe that it’s the rest of us who are out of line. That’s the part that really gets me.

Most of the people we spoke to this morning were forced to collect JSA between low-paid and insecure jobs, or to subsidise low-paid and insecure jobs – something that ought to concern everyone who relies on a wage to pay the bills. One of the women, Noreen, talked about finding work on “lucky days.” She meant that she found work by herself on days when her luck was in and she managed to talk to the right people, not because there was any system in place to help her. Pity she doesn’t have as many lucky days as Chris Huhne.

Continue reading →

Tell your MP to attend the #WOWdebate: 27 February 11.30am

Posted on February 17, 2014 by Kate B

From DPAC:

The WOW petition debate which has been supported by John McDonnell MP will take place on Thursday 27 February 2014 around 11.30 am at the House of Commons chamber. The WOW petition calls for a cumulative impact assessment of the impact of the government’s welfare reform changes on sick and disabled people.

Please contact your MP to ask them to attend this important debate. You can find your MP’s email details at www.parliament.uk. You can also write to your local MP (find the details by using the Write to your MP tool), tell them what the petition is about and ask them to attend the debate. Or you can email your MP using this automated tool to help you compile and send the email.

You may want to remind your MP that as we are approaching an election in the not too distant future, you will be monitoring to see whether they attend or not on your behalf.

Template letter to send (mainly taken from WOW): Continue reading →

Shutting homelessness hostels, then slapping Asbos on rough sleepers. Brilliant.

Posted on February 12, 2014 by Kate B

In the Guardian today, there’s a story about cuts to supported housing – the hostels and housing used and needed by people who’d otherwise be on the streets.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the loss of this accommodation will mean more people must sleep on the streets:

“Nottinghamshire county council will vote later this month on proposed cuts that will, according to Framework (the Nottinghamshire-based housing association mentioned in the Guardian aticle), result in almost all the homeless and housing support services across the county closing down. As Nottinghamshire’s hostels, and specialist housing support services are decommissioned over the next three years, around 6000 vulnerable clients currently supported by Framework each year – rough sleepers, care-leavers, ex-offenders, addicts and people with complex mental health problems who are not receiving NHS care – will be cast adrift.”

Isn’t that great.

I want to make a further point – that once all those people are cast adrift and forced to sleep rough, they’ll find themselves targeted by the very authorities who shut their hostels. That’s because councils and coppers are going on the offensive as far as rough sleepers are concerned.

Last week, I posted this story about Newham council’s latest gig: slapping Asbo warnings on rough sleepers in Stratford and then bragging about this brand of toughlove. Mayor Robin Wales wrote an entirely charmless piece in the Newham Recorder about his crackdown on rough sleepers round the Stratford Centre. As part of a programme that the council winningly (not) referred to as “a rude awakening for rough sleepers”, the council had handed out Asbo warnings to 28 people who were sleeping out around the mall. The council was being “helped” in this endeavour by the police, the UK Border Agency and Thames Reach.

As I wrote last week, there was a nasty, punitive thread running through Wales’ column. It hit exactly the Clean Up or Piss Off pitch that the likes of Edwina Currie keep aiming for.

“There’s a rough sleeping problem around Stratford centre, Wales said, because there was “easy access to waste food and cardboard,” (he sounded like he was talking about the things that attract rodents in that bit). Rough sleepers who “refuse offers of assistance from us or our partners cannot expect to continue to sleep on our streets,” the mayor said. They could expect Asbos if they tried, it seemed. The council was “offering support to those who will accept it and enforcing the law where necessary,” Wales informed us. “I realise that this is a tough message,” he went on to say, “and that some people will be instinctively unhappy with it.”

Indeed. A lot of us were very unhappy with it. We’re getting unhappier by the day, too. Hitting rough sleepers with Asbos as their accommodation is removed and social housing disappears, and then trying to style that as an example of great local government leadership is an amazingly crappy endeavour. I’ve had word this week too that the mother and baby unit accommodation for homeless young parents at Focus E15 in Newham will definitely close when all current tenants are rehoused. My point here: perhaps keeping that sort of accommodation open would be more of an answer to rough sleeping than issuing rough sleepers with Asbos. The same will surely apply in Nottinghamshire once they’re closed hostels there. What would I know, I suppose.

Meanwhile, campaigners are gearing up to fight Operation Encompass, the Met’s latest wheeze against rough sleepers:

“The Metropolitan Police Service has joined forces with Camden, Croydon, Islington, Lambeth, Southwark and Westminster together with UK Border Force, local authorities and other partner agencies to combat begging and rough sleeping across the six London boroughs.”

I’ll be following that one closely. A lot of us are keen to find out exactly how you combat rough sleeping while closing the places where people might sleep. Throwing the book at people seems to be one of the plans. “Support will be offered through support services and making arrests where offences are identified,” the Met informs us in its Operation Encompass press release. Which is interesting. Who knew that arresting people who were trying to shelter from the rain under cardboard was a key route to fixing homelessness. As I say, I would have thought that one of the best ways to fix homelessness would be to find people decent and secure supported housing, rather than shutting that housing down, but now I’m just repeating myself. So – I guess the official take is that it is better for all to hit rough sleepers with an Asbo and push them into someone else’s borough. Or something.