Ending homelessness

Last week I attended a ‘round table’ discussion with the Employment Minister Esther McVey. Around the inconveniently long rectangular table were familiar faces - other chief executives and civil servants from the Department for Work and Pensions. The minister responded thoughtfully to proposals about how job centres and agencies could work together more effectively. From some colleagues in the room there was unrestrained frustration that we had been here before and little had changed.  I left the meeting in a pensive mood, unconvinced that we had got our messages home. There was a depressing familiarity about the construction of our case and the tone in which it was delivered. Despite some constructive suggestions, our stance centred on the dual assertions that things are as dreadful as they have ever been and that much of what is happening is beyond our capacity to affect. There are times when it feels that acknowledging a government policy is working effectively is an unfor...

‘Shirker’ is an interesting word. A shirker is someone who avoids doing work, originating from the German word s churke , meaning rogue. That, according to some politicians, is what you are if you are not a striver. My colleague Iunus was a rogue. He had an expensive heroin and crack habit and shoplifted three times a day along Oxford Street to sate it. He specialised in stealing women’s lingerie. Easy to wrap up in a ball and insert along the arms of your jacket. He was good at it too and at his peak (or nadir) he stole to order, following precise instructions on size. He puffs out his cheeks and shakes his head with shame as he remembers that life. If you shoplift with that regularity there is a price to pay and Iunus has been to prison on more than 20 occasions with a maximum stay of four months. He moved through the classic recidivist cycle – short sentence, little discharge preparation, out on the streets on release, early renewal of relationship with his dealer, a few months...

A woman from the Sunday Times rings. Her voice possesses those quintessentially middle class inflections of the broadsheet journalist. ‘Have you perchance come across a banker sleeping rough?’ she asks. ‘After all, the cuts are hitting us all. Homelessness doesn’t discriminate – anyone can become homeless’. We have been here before and a familiar ritual ensues. I walk down three floors to talk with our Street Rescue Team which works on the streets with rough sleepers. ‘Any bankers out there yet’ I ask. ‘Afraid not’ I’m told. ‘We’re working with a lot of people who have done casual work in bars, an ex-security guard and a guy who used to be a roofer, and a shed-load of people who have been unemployed all their life, but we’re fresh out of bankers and are not expecting a new stock in any time soon’. Rueful smiles all round. It made me reflect again on the assertion, frequently made, that anyone can become homeless. If only we could genuinely claim that homelessness is indeed an exper...