There is little about the subject of homelessness which raises the spirit. The lives of homeless people are frequently bleak, often mundane; short on glamour. Consequently programmes about the homeless are rarely shown on prime-time TV. Instead they are shuffled off to the early morning or late night slot. Famous, Rich and Homeless, broadcast over two evenings in June at 9.00pm on BBC1 was the exception. It tracked the experiences of five celebrities as they faced the most extreme form of homelessness: rough sleeping. The celebrity guinea pigs were the journalist Rosie Boycott, the actor Bruce Jones of Coronation Street fame, the presenter Hardeep Singh Kohli and ex-tennis player Annabel Croft. There was a fifth celebrity, the Marquess of Blandford who, to universal derision, survived only a short time on the street before throwing in the towel and escaping to an up-market Chelsea hotel. The second of the programmes drew an impressive 4.9 million viewers. Over the last twenty years th...
From 1999-2018 I was CEO of homelessness charity Thames Reach. From 2018-20 I worked at MHCLG to deliver rough sleeping and homelessness programmes. This blog seeks to bring to life the complexities, dilemmas, set-backs and triumphs that are part of trying to help people escape homelessness. It aims to tell the stories of the inspirational people I have met in my work, many of whom have faced homelessness and from whom I have learnt a lot.