How Does it Feel to be Homeless?
Thought for the Fortnight
This post is a little different than my usual.
Since the beginning of this year, I have enabled subscribers to pay for this newsletter if they wish – and have given all payments thereby received to a homeless shelter here in London. I chose this particular charity because my son – an academic in his professional life – volunteers there. It sounds like a good place.
Aside from initial correspondence, I have had no communication from them – not even thanks for my monthly donations. I was a bit annoyed by this fact until it hit me that it meant that they were keeping administration costs to the absolute minimum. The right choice. Their income goes where it counts.
But since that time, I have been thinking about writing a post about the homeless. Usually, such writings offer a description of a number of people who fall into that category. Indeed, you can find exactly that on the website of the shelter.
I would like to do something different. Some time ago, I was listening to a podcast by Val McDermid, who – aside from being one of the most celebrated crime writers in Scotland – is involved with Shelter, another homeless charity. She expressed so brilliantly how it must feel to be homeless that I wrote and asked if I could use her words, suitably attributed. She gave me full permission.
Numbers of homeless
Val McDermid starts with some statistics and their meaning:
A couple of months ago, I read the following staggering statistic. One person in every 200 in England and Wales is homeless – either sleeping rough or living in temporary accommodation. In London the proportion is even higher: one in 53.
If we classified homelessness as an illness – because it’s like an illness, in terms of the devastation it causes in the lives of those who suffer from it – there would be a public outcry. It would be the lead story on the news. Headlines every day – “Still no cure for killer disease.”
She then talks about our attitudes:
For most people it’s a problem that’s easy to ignore. It’s easy to dismiss people living on the pavements begging or busking badly. They’re not like us. They’re junkies. They’re the ones that have failed – not us. And that lets us off the hook. That excuses us from looking beyond the obvious.
And that’s where we fail. Because the rough sleepers we pass on our way to work or to the pub or to the theatre are only the visible tip of the iceberg.
Homelessness goes far beyond people living on the street. You can be homeless with a roof over your head, but if it’s not a safe and secure and appropriate roof, then you’re suffering from the same disease.
You can be defined as homeless if you are: sleeping on the streets, sofa-surfing with friends or family, staying in a hostel or bed and breakfast hotel, living in overcrowded conditions, living in fear of violence in your home, living in the sort of appalling conditions that have a profound impact on your health or living in a house that is not suitable for you because you are sick or disabled.
How it feels to be homeless
And then she uses her powerful imagination:
Every day I sit down at the keyboard and think myself into other people’s shoes. I set myself the challenge of thinking what it would be like to fall into one of those groups.
I say ‘challenge’, because I’ve never stood on the cliff edge of not knowing where I was going to sleep that night. I’ve been lucky. I’ve been skint. I was a hard-up student, a poor trainee journalist, a broke baby writer, coppering up every month to pay the bills. But my life was never so precarious that I had nowhere to lay my head.
So I went for a walk round the city and tried to imagine what it would look like through the eyes of someone who had nothing and nowhere.
You see the city in a very different way.
Where can I sit down?
Where can I go to keep warm?
Where can I pee?
How can I get new glasses?
Where can I go when it’s raining?
Where can I wash?
Who will talk to me?
How long can I sit in McDonald’s with the cheapest burger?
How can I stop hurting?
Will I ever see my kids again?
Are that bunch of drunks going to give me a doing?
Will someone steal my stuff if I go to sleep?
A couple of hours of that and I felt exhausted and drained. And I knew I could make it stop any time I wanted to.
She does bring it home.
My own experience
And finally, I want to add my experience of one man. There used to be a homeless man in my neighbourhood, age 60+, black, probably once good-looking. He had a quick intelligence and a wonderful smile. Always cheerful. He hung around outside the local supermarket and sometimes I would buy him something from there. More often, I brought him homemade soup – he once told me that every time he saw me, he felt hungry. I also gave him small amounts of cash.
Over two years ago, I told him I was about to turn 80. The next day, I was walking down my street and heard someone running after me. It was this man, with a dozen red roses in his arms. He had bought them from the supermarket with his very valuable cash. I was incredibly touched.
We chatted quite often. He had told me he was writing a memoir and I believed it. I once met him in the middle of winter, when it was very cold and wet. I sympathised with him living outdoors in such conditions and he said "But you know what the worst of it is? I haven't written a word for three weeks!"
The words of a true writer.
Some months ago, he wasn’t there. Weeks went past and I didn’t see him and I began to fear the worst. But one day he was back – and explained. He had come down with pneumonia, had found himself in the local hospital and nearly died. But someone at the hospital realised he needed help, found him a place in sheltered housing and arranged for him to get the right benefits.
What an excellent outcome.
I don’t see him so much anymore, but there is always a big smile when I do.
Afternote: When I first announced that I was going to set up a system for paid subscriptions, that all payments would go to this homeless shelter and that there would be no paywall – so no change whatsoever for free subscribers - over 30 people immediately ‘unsubscribed’. The very mention of money had sent them away.
I have never urged anyone to upgrade their subscription and do not intend to do so in the future (aside from the buttons provided by Substack). We all have different financial situations and different views about how to spend out hard-earned income. And I love the fact that you are here as a reader at all. But if, having read this piece, you are inclined to make a small donation to this charity via a paid subscription, I will be enormously grateful.
Over to you: Do you have family or friends who are homeless, widely defined? Do you have any experience with local homeless people? I would love to hear about it.
I recently retired from nearly 20 years of pastoral ministry to the homeless, working out of a shelter in a large N. American city. The thing that always struck me was the beauty in, and of, each person. Each had a story. Each were once small with dreams not much different from mine. The “lines” that divided us were often very thin. It took immense grace, resilience and bravery to meet their days: much more than is required of many of us.
One time, close to Christmas, I walked out of the shelter to cross the street to the post office. It should have taken no more than 10 minutes but it was twice that for all the times I was stopped, greeted and hugged happy holiday wishes.
That evening, as I waited in a small knot of people for an elevator to reach my apartment in what was considered a “luxury” condo, no one said a word to one another. Then I remembered when you have nothing, you give yourself.
I have a bit of experience with homeless folks in Austin, TX. I work downtown, ride my bike to and from work when the weather cooperates, and have run into the same folks sometimes for years. My husband and I befriend and help out those we're able to. My favorite surprise was a gentlemen who lived on the streets in a quiet neighborhood in downtown Austin, lots of historic homes, and my office building was there. I was there early every day and would see him from time to time. I introduced myself, he did the same. Turns out he read and studied Hebrew in his younger days (he was around 70 when I met him), was an avid reader, loved Fig Newtons, and was happy with his current housing condition. He had a girlfriend, his mom was still alive and would visit him on his birthday and take him out for lunch. Whenever I would give him something to eat or wear, he would always ask me if I minded if he shared with his girlfriend and his friends. He figured out how to live down there, and it worked for him. There are others I've met and helped that deteriorated quickly with drugs and alcohol. I learned how things work downtown from a landscaper friend who hired homeless guys to work for him. The challenge there was that if the men wanted a bed in one of the shelters for a night, they had to be at the shelter at 5, which cut their work day short, and that didn't work for the landscaper. He said the best thing he could recommend, is always look them in the eye and say hello, based on what his hired men told him. I think that's good advice, too.