Interviews: Life On the Streets

As part of this section focussing on homelessness, we spoke to two homeless occupiers about the reality of life on the streets and what society should be doing to tackle the problem.

The Occupied Times: How long have you been homeless?

Kay: Well this is the second time I became homeless but this time I’ve chosen to become homeless because I just did not like the circumstances in which I found myself in after having been homeless for the first time.

Herman: I’ve been homeless for roughly the last three years. I also had an earlier period when I was much younger, in my teens which lasted about a year or two, with lots of moving about.

OT: What led to you first becoming homeless?

K: That was unlawful eviction, a conflict between myself and my landlady. We did not get on well so she gave me a notice to quit, I took her to court and although she lost the case, I went for a weekend and when I came back she changed the locks and everything so I found myself out and the case is still continuing in court.

H: That was, like, family problems, you know. Growing up, teenager and all that business. You know, just finding a way.

OT: Are the services provided for homeless people in the UK adequate?

K: It depends. It depends on the individual, I suppose. I think people who simply wish to have a place to stay or to live, they don’t have any other requirement,  it may be okay for them but I think my demand maybe exceeded, a little bit, just having a place because most of my work I do at home. I cannot spend let’s say… 16 hrs if I’m working, doing the things I do, in a box, in one room. No, I need much more than that. Especially, one big problem is that most of the things I do is music and I’ve had this problem most of the time I’ve been to places because I’ve had to control my level of noise, especially when I’m playing guitar so it became very difficult for me to find suitable accommodation where I won’t disturb my neighbours. But for a person who just requires a place where they can eat, sleep, have a shower that will do but that’s not for me.

H: Well, I’m not sure. There is some service there that is quite useful and the extent of the services provided I don’t know. But I’m more concerned about the attitude of the establishment towards homelessness.

OT: Have you ever had any problems accessing basic services like the NHS or benefits when you haven’t had a permanent address?

K: I don’t think that is a problem, especially now. I think most of the homeless centres they help people with that so every centre they have social workers who actually deal with the job centres, with the housing benefit on behalf of the homeless people so I don’t think that is a problem at all but my problem I don’t want that kind of thing anymore because they’re just too restricting for me. I’ve always been a musician, music producer and practicing law- I started practicing law when I lost my business because I wasn’t satisfied with the services that solicitors were providing me with so I decided to go litigant-in-person.  So when you sign a jobseeker’s agreement you must state your professional status which in my case is musician, music producer and legal executive- three job titles- they all imply that I’m self-employed. Department of Work and Pension regulation states that you have to be available for work, they verify that you’ve been looking for work and that you should accept work when it is offered to you. But after six months the jobseeker’s agreement is no longer valid and you have to change to something else. I’ve been playing music since I was 16, I even refused higher education because I knew I wanted to be creating music for my whole life. I came to Britain for that purpose because I grew up in France. So, all the time I’ve been in Britain I’ve been doing that, producing music, getting involved with bands, and things like that and when I lost my business my jobseeker’s agreement included that, so after two years they told me I couldn’t carry on as ‘self-employed’ and must find a job.  I said “no.”  I’m still in the process claiming damages in court. I hope that I’ll win and then I can continue to do what I’ve always wanted to do all my life. There is no compromise. So I stopped claiming any benefit of any kind.

H: Not really but what I did find was that I wasn’t aware of a lot of the services that was available and that is quite important because if you’re not aware of it, you just don’t bother about it you know…you just go on existing. When you think that if you’d known about it maybe it might have changed something about your circumstances.

OT: In your experience, how are homeless people treated by the police and the authorities?

K: It depends, it depends. I think it takes both sides. As far as I’m concerned I’ve never had any problem with the police because if the police find me on the street I don’t look suspect so it depends on the individual and I believe that some individuals antagonise the police actually and they get in trouble. Obviously there may be cases [of police misconduct] but I have not come across a police officer who was aggressive. In fact most of the police officers who have found me on the street have been kind of friendly. Being homeless, after a while I think you just become pissed off and you get to a stage where you don’t trust anybody, they can become antagonistic, they just lose it and they are trapped. I’ve never had any problem with the police or authorities, they just keep telling me I can’t set up my tent but I just kept moving my tent. I started in Westminster, then I moved to Chelsea & Kensington and they move me and then I came here [Occupy LSX at St Paul’s.]  I’ve never had any problem if you just do what they ask you to do and you respect the authorities I don’t think you’ll have any problem whatsoever.

H: Umm, I don’t really know about how they’re treated by the police. I haven’t had any sort of run-ins with them myself. I think that the authorities could actually do more for homeless people.

OT: How about your dealings with the public?

K: Most of the public have already a preconceived idea and I think that comes from the homeless people they have met before and so when they see a homeless person they already have an idea of what that person may be. In the summer, there is no problem sleeping in the park or in public places, it’s warm. I was very surprised with Islington, for example, because I’ve stayed in the Angel a lot. Islington people have a strange attitude towards homeless people. They don’t like to approach you. They provoke you with the way they look at you and talk to you. They have this idea that ‘Oh, you are homeless so you are a bad person.’ I was very surprised when I started to hang around in Chelsea because when I sat in the park there people would come and drop me £5 and £10 notes. Chelsea is a very wealthy area, you would expect these people to be the kind who wouldn’t even want to smell you! But they were most helpful compared to people in the Angel. I think many people are hesitant about how you [a homeless person] will react.

H: It was different. Some people treated you good and others wouldn’t even give you the time of day, especially if you smelled a bit sometimes. I had one occasion where maybe I didn’t have a shower for a couple of days or something and basically you could see they were turning up their noses at me. And another day, I was walking down the road and I was stopped by one of these…what do you call them? Joggers…she didn’t believe I was homeless. She said, ‘Oh you look so clean’ and I’m going ‘Well actually I am, I got nowhere to live’ [laughs heartily.] So it’s different how they treat you and sometimes it depends on your appearance and your attitude.

OT: What more do you think should be done by society about homeless in general?

K: Well, this is why I’m here at Occupy. From the speeches you’ve heard today [at the Occupy LSX homelessness talk-out] the common factor is this prejudgement and preconception of what homelessness is because homelessness extends to more than just having no home. I’ll give you an example, at the present moment there are night shelters operating. They started at the end of November and will run until probably the end of March or April. So most homeless people are now circulating all over London, to churches [who run the night shelters] in every borough. So there are a large number of homeless people who don’t or won’t use this service, including me, because there is a strict time you have to be in these places and spaces are limited. But I feel restricted by these places and I know that many homeless prefer to be completely free and don’t want to subject themselves to this kind of regime.

H: Well, I don’t think homelessness is really necessary. There’s no point. There’s enough buildings around for people to actually live in and one of the main problems I think is that the cost of property i.e rent is far too expensive. If it was a lot cheaper then I don’t think we’d have this problem. But homelessness in itself, because it’s such a large issue, people who find themselves in this position aren’t a specific type. They’re all sorts of different people and everyone has different needs. What we’ve got to look at is the organisations that are providing these services for the homeless people. Are they providing the services that are actually fitting for those individuals? And how much are the people using the services benefitting from that? One of the things I’m concerned about is when I see some people being banned from some day centres, how do they manage? If they’re banned where do they go? What happens after that? How much support do they really get?

OT: What would people have been banned for?

H: Organisations have rules, they have codes of conduct. I’m a great believer in freedom of speech and freedom of the individual so if somebody is restricted in what they say and how they behave, taking into account that you have to behave in a certain manner which shows respect to other people around you in the vicinity where you are i.e. staff and other service users. You must show respect otherwise if you don’t do that you got a problem, you know? Basically, I don’t like restrictive rules where a person cannot express themselves as they’d like to because they fear that if they actually say what they feel then they might be banned or stopped from using the services of that organisation.

OT: How do you think the potential eviction of Occupy LSX would impact the homeless community at the camp?

K: Well, someone has provided us with a list of sites and places which we can takeover but at Occupy we have a problem. These sites require homeless people at Occupy LSX to organise themselves as a community project in order to be able to enter transactions and negotiations with the authorities- local authorities or the government. But at Occupy we are not an organisation, this is a movement of ideas. So this incompatibility, you know if we set up this community project there will have to be rules which we live by, a code of conduct but in Occupy there is no hierarchy. The project is available but we need an organisation. We cannot speak on behalf of Occupy unless we have GA consensus but we can support it in any way we feel possible. There’s no restriction on us creating an organisation which can work with the Occupy Movement, and we’d have a physical site where activists or anybody can continue with the activities but it will also provide those homeless people with permanent or semi-permanent residence. So those are the next steps.