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Yesterday, I found myself taking a complete stranger shopping, so I could buy her a new outfit. It all started on a rare trip to Southampton centre. I was struck by the large number of homeless people, hanging around with nothing to do. A result of years of austerity maybe?...
Then I spotted a couple of council enforcers with plastic sacks, about to bag up and, presumably, throw away, someone's bedding, some food, and other assorted possessions. I looked on in horror but wasn't sure what to do and was slow to act. Luckily, someone else wasn't....
He asked them what they were doing and then sat down on the pile of possessions and stared into the distance. After a minute, they walked away. A woman joined the man. I went over and told him how glad I was that he'd taken action, and he said that it was common practice...
He and his girlfriend had had all their bedding and possessions, including a bag with all her clothes in, taken that morning, when they'd gone to get a drink. We chatted about how difficult it was, I mentioned an organisation that might be able to help and we said goodbye.
I knew straight away that a chat wasn't enough. I don't have lots of money. I was made redundant a few months ago have been putting my efforts into a community website that currently generates zero income. But I clearly have a hell of a lot more money than them, a home, security.
So I went back, and asked the woman if she wanted to go with me and I'd buy her a new outfit. She was a bit confused at first, understandably, but we went off together to a bargain shop and wandered round, picking up a top, trousers, underwear and a bag to put it in...
We chatted, about her two girls who she hasn't seen in more than two years, how vulnerable she feels sleeping rough, how difficult it is to keep clean when you're on the streets. Our public spaces have been commercialised. There are almost no public toilets. They're all private..
And private places don't welcome people like her in to brush their teeth or wash their faces. So we finished our shop and hugged goodbye and I left with a hope that I'd helped and a crushing sense of how little I'd really done....
I know these aren't original thoughts, but I feel tormented by the knowledge that we do not treat homeless people as part of society. We treat them as outside of it, as something we need to be protected from, whose needs don't need to be catered for...
As a society, we need to take our share of responsibility for creating this problem and our share of responsibility for fixing it. There are some amazing people in Southampton, from some of the religious groups and volunteers who feed and clothe our homeless...
But it shouldn't be down to kindhearted volunteers, small charities who are trying to wring the last drops out of grants, desperately overstretched hostels etc. Why is our municipal attitude to a pile of bedding that it should be thrown away? Why isn't it what can we do to help?
Why isn't it why's this person here? How can we help them be safe? How can we break this cycle, for this person and as a society? Why don't we offer people somewhere to store their bedrolls, not dump the things that other generous citizens have donated to them in the first place?
The homeless people in Southampton precinct are the tip of an iceberg of poverty that is growing in our society and destroying it. And the way to deal with it bloody well isn't to move people along and chuck their scant possessions in the bin.
I think I've finished ranting. I can't be 100% sure.
