We always welcome an opportunity for people to engage with the issues that surround homelessness and rough sleeping. It is crucial, if we are ever to really change the failings in our systems, that we create a helpful dialogue to help all members of our communities understand the reasons why people end up being homeless.
Sadly, we are still seeing very lazy attitudes being expressed by some local media outlets.
An article in a local paper over the weekend (we will not name it as do not wish to further share the details), opened with the line;
‘Police have difficult act balancing needs of sleepers against business owners' wish to see back of them’.
The article went on to discuss a number of rough sleepers by name, something which could endanger the lives of the rough sleepers. This kind of disregard for the rights of people living on the streets has to change if we are to encourage more tolerant attitudes from the wider public.
‘Not all of them were so accommodating as the first one. ***** and ***** were blissfully curled up in their sleeping bags and not pleased to be aroused from their slumbers at 9.30am.’
Describing someone whose circumstances have led them to sleeping on the streets in this way; ‘a distinctly ratty ***** pulled her pet pouch from her sleeping bag and stalked off while ***** joked that if he was brought a bag of heroin he would happily go wherever he was directed’ is very disappointing. This description was followed by ‘Sometimes it’s hard to understand where the supporters get their patience and stamina from.’
Presumably the journalist means support workers by the term ‘supporters’. Patience and stamina are things which are needed, but the insinuation that someone who is living on the streets is simply a problem needing to be solved, an irritation, is a very depressing one.
‘And it’s a hard balance for the police and agencies to balance the needs of sleepers against those of hard-pressed businessmen and women trying to make a living.’
The comparison we are presumably being encouraged to make here, is the one between a rough sleeper and someone who has a home, a job, a family, a coherent and self-sustaining existence. The suggestion that someone who is unable to try to make a living in the way that society expects is in some way to blame, runs strongly throughout the article.
We hope that the more time spent by multiple services working toward a common goal of ending homelessness, the more of an understanding will be reached about how people end up in that situation in the first place. It is not easy being homeless. People who sleep rough do not have a comfortable easy existence. To continue to perpetuate this myth through lazy and blaming reporting, is to continue to be a part of the problem. A solution surely lies in a more thoughtful response, one which is considerate of those who are coping with severely traumatic events and problems.
The people we work closely with suffer extreme trauma, and have had to cope with some horrific violence, abuse, or mental illness in their life, which has contributed to the place they now find themselves in. To dismiss them as just not trying hard enough, as not wanting to work, or just being something that annoys the business classes, is very dangerous.
Do we want to go down the road of criminalising homeless people? Or do we want to think about what someone might be using heroin for?
It makes you wonder how readers manage to find the patience and stamina to tolerate such upside-down thinking about the most vulnerable people in our society.