Ending homelessness

‘ Ex-services personnel make up 25% of the rough sleeping population’ stated a business leader to me at a recent event with what a colleague caustically referred to later as ‘the unerring certainty of the terminally ignorant’.  His pronouncement came to mind as I was reading the latest CHAIN annual rough sleeping figures for London   which show that 9% of the rough sleeping population were formerly in the armed services; 3% in the UK armed services and 6% in the armed services of other countries. I spend an inordinate amount of time talking to groups and individuals about rough sleeping and invariably the conversation will coalesce around two questions: who and why? Around both swirl myths and misconceptions. The antidote to the plausible but unsubstantiated anecdote upon which, distressingly, policy decisions are occasionally based is the CHAIN report and data which is unique in terms of the richness of the information and its reliability. The data is compile...

The Bullshit Detector The Bullshit Detector being an occasional investigation into stories associated with homelessness and social exclusion, with a view to establishing their accuracy and veracity The July 2013 Bullshit Detector ‘Up to 9,000 British heroes who served Queen and country are homeless after leaving the military’ What’s the story? On 21 st July 2013 the Sunday Mirror ran a two-page campaign ‘exclusive’ on the plight of British services personnel leaving the armed forces. The piece was highly critical of the government, claiming the situation has got much worst under the Coalition and, in an accompanying leader, comparing the UK situation unfavourably with that in the United States .   The article centred on two key statistics. Firstly that 1 in 10 rough sleepers ‘across the UK’ had been in the armed forces, with the clear implication being that these are British ex-services personnel who ‘fought on the frontline but now sleep in...

  Big Fred’s funeral. Ragged singing arises from the small congregation of people gathered to pay respects and remember his 51 years of life. Some, unable to recognise the words in the hymn book, mime along, mouths agape, goldfish-like. There is the familiar mix of people; those who lived with him on the streets and in hostels alongside support staff from various organisations. Later we speak with wry affection, masking the unspoken frustration, about his obstinate refusal to move away from the streets, until his collapsing health gave him no choice.   Not an easy man was Big Fred, prone to incandescent rages when he would rip his shirt off in absurd display of grandiose exhibitionism.   Occasionally Fred would talk bitterly about living with foster-parents who resorted to tying him to a chair with a piece of clothes-line when he misbehaved. We remembered this when, yet again, his destructive behaviour led him to be evicted from a hostel and he landed back on the s...