#TheStreetPeople | Helpless, Hapless and Homeless
For some reason this last week has been full of philosophical discussions about Street People. The situation is, of course, not just particular to Johannesburg or, for that matter, South Africa.
So I thought, instead of doing another tale of woe, I would have a look at the main topic of discussion which, because of some of the icy weather we have been having, has been about homelessness.
In the early 1980s, I was living in London having what is now called a Gap Year. One
morning, while walking to the underground, I spotted some graffiti that read: “The Housing Shortage is just a rumour put out by people who have nowhere to live”.
For some reason it stuck with me. I enjoyed the perverse logic and just maybe, who knows, a subliminal seed was planted.
So what does being homeless mean? Wikipedia gives the following definition: “Homelessness is the circumstance when people are without a permanent dwelling, such
as a house or apartment. People who are homeless are most often unable to acquire and maintain regular, safe, secure and adequate housing.”
Homelessness is a global problem. Virtually every country in the world has people living rough in their cities. I mean, if nannying people and protecting them from themselves ever becomes an Olympic event, Australia will certainly finish on the podium. But, that said,
even they have homeless people – an estimated 105 000 of them in 2011.
And China? In the same year it was estimated they had 2 600 000 people living outdoors or in makeshift shelters. Difficult to imagine but, in 2016, even an efficient, organised country like Germany had an estimated 52 000 of them. The Scandinavian countries have them;
but not very many. In 2016, Norway estimated there were close on 4 000 people sleeping out.
And South Africa? One of the supposed jewels of the African continent?
Well, if being homeless ever becomes an event, we too will be podium finishers at the Olympics.
In 2007, it was estimated there were a mind-numbing, seven million homeless people in the country. Only Nigeria is in our league with their 24.4 million.
Lastly, just because the Football World Cup is now on in Russia, I thought I would mention they havean estimated five million homeless people; still some way off us.
These days you find impoverished people on the streets everywhere in South Africa. In many respects they are a permanent feature on the visual track of our cities.
So where do they come from; how did they get to where we find them?
The situation was eloquently summed up a while back on CapeTownMagazine.com as: “Adults who migrate from the rural areas to the big city, in the hopes of finding better paid work, soon realise the cities are overflowing with unskilled workers, and end up begging in the streets to survive. Children run away from home to escape abuse or because there simply isn’t enough money to feed everyone.
The reasons that lead people to fending for themselves on the street are as versatile as the people themselves.”
Ahead of the royal wedding in May in England, a question arose when the Conservative leader of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead council, urged Thames Valley police to use their powers to clear the area around Windsor Castle of its expanding population of homeless people.
The issue, Simon Dudley’s, (the politician’s) letter to the police raised was, to what extent is homelessness a matter of choice? He argued: “Many adults begging in Windsor are not in fact homeless and, if they are homeless, they are choosing to reject all support services … In the case of homelessness amongst this group, it is therefore a voluntary choice.”
Dudley’s comments were criticised by charities working with the homeless and by the prime minister, Theresa May, who is MP for Maidenhead. So how valid is his claim that some homeless people prefer a life on the streets, sleeping rough and begging, to some form of sheltered alternative? I think looking at the situation here, it doesn’t hold much water, as we have such limited or non-existent support services, our street people don’t really have a choice.
However, during the debate that ensued pursuant to his insistence homelessness was a choice for many, one point stood out for me. And that was: could many of the street people who make the choice to be homeless be doing it for reasons other than they prefer living out doors?
David Gemmell
Could they be making that choice because the alternative, the support, was a bigger problem than sleeping rough? For example, a woman may prefer the relative safety of a partner on the streets, to the risk of intimidation in a hostel, and very few emergency hostels accommodate couples (in the UK).
Which means many homeless people are made homeless by loss of accommodation and the inaccessibility of alternatives; but many others become or remain homeless because those alternatives pose a far greater threat to their well-being than a park bench or a shop doorway.
So for anyone to promote the view homeless people choose to be homeless is immensely damaging to them and to those who work tirelessly to offer them humane choices.
(To digress from homelessness for a second. I also think that some people’s view that a lot of street people prefer begging to working because they make more money begging, is
equally damaging. It makes people who could offer work think twice.
I have been doing this series for nigh on a year now, and I have yet to find a single street person who would choose begging over being employed.)
But back to South Africa. The question arises, how can us more fortunate “homed” citizens best assist homeless street people?
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The Knitter: This week I had coffee with Michelle. I haven’t seen her for a while and was keen to get her news. Unfortunately, it wasn’t all good. It appears two men have been trying to hijack the property she and her husband are staying on.
They keep turning up with photocopied letters purporting to be from various authorities, ordering them to vacate the premises as they, the men, have now bought them.
The owner of the property says she hasn’t sold it and has no idea what they are on about.
When Michelle said she would call the police, one of the two ran away with his mate shouting after him: “Don’t run - you’ll ruin everything.”
Further to those irritations, the other day she found a three-legged cat, which sadly had to be put down. Her cat population has now reduced to 12 from over 20.
She also found a Pug which they successfully returned to its owner, who happily gave Michelle R100 for her efforts.
She then told me a lovely story of how a local Blairgowrie schoolchild had a cup-cake sale at school for her, asked for a wish list from Michelle, fulfilled it and gave her a lump sum of cash.
I asked what was on the list.
“Flora margarine, Future Life cereal, Nespray milk powder, coffee and peanut butter crunch and cat food.” That all our needs were so simple.
Michelle tells me she has been teaching an old lady to knit, “ because she is so good to the poor people in the neighbourhood”
I asked her if she needed anything. “Wool,” she said, “and needles. I want to teach the Blairgowrie kids to knit to say thank-you to them.” I sometimes wonder if she is aware she is the one who needs help; yet is spending her time being concerned about old ladies, cats and schoolkids.