Homelessness shames us all
This piece was originally written in 2012 but has been updated as a result of today’s shocking Shelter figures which suggest 250,000 people in England are now homeless.
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My granddad always used to buy a Big Issue when he was alive. I’d always wondered why that charity was important to him but now I get it. I get it big time.
The City of London is home to some incredibly wealthy people. People who earn sums of money that I can’t even count to. It is home to bankers, brokers, big buildings and Italian suits. It is also home to Nathan. Sorry, scrap that, it was home to Nathan.
Nathan was a Big Issue Vendor. Now for those of you who don’t know what The Big Issue is — it is a great publication founded by John Bird. It is a hand up and not a hand out. The street vendors buy the magazines for £1.25 and then sell them for £2.50 — they keep the difference and are empowered to spend it on what they want.
Back in 2012 Nathan had a pitch outside a Starbucks near the Bank of England. Nathan was abandoned by his parents when he was three. They’d had enough. They fucked off and left him. They left a three year old in a house by himself. For four days Nathan screamed and screamed…and screamed, until finally his screams were heard.
Nathan was put through foster care and by the time Nathan was sixteen he had been through nine different foster homes. Nathan endured four cracked ribs, a collapsed lung and a broken nose. Playing football? Nope. He suffered these injuries from the very people who promised to be his guardians.
Aged sixteen, Nathan ran. He ran as far as he could. No education to speak of, no family and no money and truth be told little to no hope. Ask yourself, where were you at sixteen? What did your worries consist of? Did your worries include where your next meal was coming from? Or where you were going to sleep that night?
Every child deserves the right to be loved, to love and to dream. Nathan was never loved. He was never allowed the chance to love. His life was survival. His dreams consisted of survival. He could not afford to dream bigger than that because if he did it would just be a reminder of just how stark his reality was. So at sixteen, Nathan, found himself alone, again, in a new city — London.
He begged for money, he got into drugs, he got into alcohol. Who the fuck can blame him? These things offered him an escape, an escape from his shocking reality.
Whenever someone refuses to give money to a homeless person they often cite the reason that they’re ‘only going to spend it on booze or drugs’. This, in my opinion, is not a good enough reason not to hand over that money. People who live in absolute poverty can be deeply unhappy people. If for one moment a sip of lager or the smoking of a joint makes them happy then so be it. Who are we to judge? We can’t begin to understand how they must feel. If this makes them happy for the briefest of moments then good. Yes I would prefer them to buy a tea, or to save it for a hot meal but when I hand over that money I am telling them to go do whatever it is that can make their day just that little bit more bearable. I then hope that they can find the courage and the wisdom, to see that drugs and alcohol are not the answers to their problems.
The Big Issue is a wonderful charity because not only does it make those on the streets entrepreneurs it also gives these guys a purpose, and more importantly than any of that, it gives them a bit of hope. Hope that is generated when people not only give them money but give them their time. Time is a commodity we are all blessed with. There’s simply no excuse to ignore these people, to walk with your head down and pretend they don’t exist. You can’t get rid of poverty by giving people money. Nor can you quit poverty. But you can give people your time and as a by product of this give them a sense of worth.
Ask yourself how often you walk past a vendor or a homeless person in the street. It takes a minute of your day to change that person’s day completely. A ‘Good Morning’, a ‘how are you’ or a couple of teas and a chat and suddenly that person’s day is immeasurably better. Your day is made better by random acts of kindness so surely so is theirs. Remember, a rich man is just a poor man with money.
A rich man is just a poor man with money.
How do I know that my granddad was right? Why am I writing this blog post? I went to Starbucks back in February 2012, by the Bank of England to see Nathan but he was not there. I walked 500 yards to the next vendor and I asked him “Hey, do you know where Nathan is — the guy who works outside of Starbucks”, his response will haunt me forever “He froze to death last night”…
We are now in 2016, it is unacceptable that this happens. There are countless reasons why someone is homeless. There are those that think some deserve it. Even if this is true, which I will always argue against, it is indisputably wrong that a seventeen year old boy froze to death in one of the richest cities in the world.
There are many things we do well but I am afraid looking after those that are vulnerable is something that requires great work. Nathan didn’t need our money. He needed our time. He needed our love. He needed hope. I was told he froze to death but I am absolutely convinced that Nathan just gave up. Nathan froze to death in a city whose riches knows no bounds. But more importantly, he froze to death in a packed city all alone. If I am right, and he did give up, who the fuck can blame him.
Nathan froze to death in a city whose riches knows no bounds
‘The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied…but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.’
Shame on all of us…
