Homelessness in London.

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Homelessness  in  London.

There  is  a  little  old  lady  who  is  often  to  be  seen  in  the  Camden/Kentish  Town  area.No  matter  what  the  weather  is,  she  roams  around  in  several  layers  of  clothing,  including  a  tatty  overcoat.  She  pushes  around  a  supermarket  trolley  which  is  overladen  with  all  her  worldly  belongings.  These  seem  to  consist  of  piles  of  old  newspapers  and  bits  of  cardboard,  in  addition  to  a  few  tattered  clothes  in  plastic  bags.  Judging  from  her  behaviour,  one  can  surmise  that  she  suffers  from  some  form  of  mental  problem.

     Like  Sisyphus  of  old,  she  seems  destined  to  keep  pushing  a  load  which  never  gets    any  lighter...

    This  is  one  of  the  many  faces  of  homelessness  in  London—the  richest  city  in  the  world's  fourth  or  fifth  biggest  economy...

     At  around  midnight,  near  Trafalgar  Square,  you  can  always  see  a  long  queue  of  homeless  people  waiting  to  receive  a  cup  of  warm    soup  and  a  sandwich  from  some  of  the  charities  which   try  to  make  them  as  comfortable  as  possible.  The  queue  opposite  Charing  Cross  Station  is  sometimes  a  long  one...

    Although  there  are  hostels  for  the  homeless  available  in  many  parts  of  London,    some  people  detest  them  because  of  the  tension  and  frustration  which  they  often  encounter  there.  Some  of  the   older  people  who  have  been  living  on  the  streets  for  a  long  time  become  fatalistic,  and  see  no  way  out  of  their  situation.  Often,  when  they  try  to  get  jobs  they  are  rejected  outright,  either  because  of  their   appearance,  or  because  they  do  not  have  a  fixed  address  or  bank  account....Very  often,  they  can  not  obtain  either  of  those  without  a  steady  job...

       Others  try  to  obtain    casual  jobs  in  the  catering  industry,  but  they  find  that  their  labour  is  only  required  for  one  or  two  days,  or  even  only  for  a few  hours.   After  that,  they  are  back  where  they  began...

    The  problem  stems  largely  from  the  lack  of  affordable  municipal  housing. When  Mrs. Thatcher  decided  to  force  the  local  councils    to  sell  off  a  large  portion  of  their    housing  stock,  she  stipulated  that  the  resulting    receipts  were  to  be  “frozen”,  and  not  to  be  used  to  build    more  publicly-  owned  houses.   The  theory  was  that  “private”  was  good,  and  “public”  housing  was  “Socialist”,  therefore   bad.   The  result,  even  two  decades  later,  is  a  dire  shortage  of  housing    in  a  crowded  capital.

      Anyone  who  goes  out  in  Central  London  at  night  will  encounter  the  homeless,  many  of  whom  will  be  pleading  for    spare  change.  My    policy  is  never  to  give  to  those  who  look  as  if    they  are  drunk----you  will  just  be  feeding  their  alcoholism,  thereby  aggravating  their  situation.

    It  is  far  better  to  buy  a   copy  of  “The  Big  Issue”,  a  paper  which  is  devoted  entirely  to  helping  the  homeless.  It  is  sold  by  homeless  people,  and  they  receive  around  half  the  sale  price.  This  gives  them  a  sense  of  self-worth,  and,  incidentally,  it  is  a  good  read.