NEWS
EVENTS
Outside In: A homeless man defies all expectations!
Amidst one of the busiest and loudest spots to sit, between the main entrance to a shopping centre and main road, which sees extremely frequent beeping pedestrians crossing and shouting Evening Standard sellers, Paul was calm and willing to talk to me.
He didn’t want to move somewhere quiet for the interview, instead beckoning me to sit beside him in this loud and busy spot.
To begin with, he chatted away without really asking me why I wanted to talk. He told me some of his recent frustrations with the council, and how some methods don’t help homeless people in the best way, like sorting out accommodation.
“They give me accommodation, right, and I wouldn’t be sitting here”
“You’ve got to come down at 7 o’clock every night for church service and every month you’ve got to do this computer course. Every so often they have night service and it’s like hang on, I wanna sleep”.
He told me a story of when he was moved on from where he was sitting by the council.
“One night I was sitting outside Morrisons… they said ‘what you doing you’re not allowed to beg,’ ‘sorry you gotta go you gotta leave’. I said I’m not begging. I don’t sit here with cups and notices, I’m not begging. But they chucked me out.”
I asked if this happens often. “No like these places are supposed to help ya. They take my details. One day it might happen just gotta like wait and see.”
“What do you wanna ask us then, how long have I been homeless? On and off 6 years”
He then began to address the questions I had been intrigued to ask. He had a lot to say, and I felt like I was getting to know him quickly. Something that surprised me was the way that even in this short conversation, he defeated many stereotypes that people assign to homeless people.
Sweeping statements like ‘all homeless people are beggars’ and ‘homeless people are drug users’ are narrowminded. Just listening to Paul showed that he, and many others, don't fit this generalisation.
Where do you sleep?
“See just down the road here there’s a little gap, near that arcade down there there’s a metal cage. I sleep there. I sometimes if I’m helping my friend, I do work for my friend now and again, I stay at his house. I only come here in the daytime, sat in the sun. Not all the time. If you’re sitting here all the time, people come along and get fed up of seeing you all the time. They’ll see you there and think nah.
“People come along, regulars buy me food. I’ve made friends at Burger King, friends at Subway, so if I want anything to eat or drink I just go Subway you know what I mean. I get respected because I show people respect back.
“A lot of these people round here like alcohol, drugs, end of the day if I get paid I smoke fags. If you look at some of these lot, their clothes are filthy dirty, they smell. I’m not like that. I take pride in myself. That’s it, you gotta look after yourself, gotta keep yourself clean
Do you ever ask people on the tube for money?
“Nah I don’t go on the tube. Yeah, I know that people going on with their oyster cards. I don’t do all that cos like I say I don’t ask people for money, you know what I mean. If I get anything it’s what people wanna give me. Basically, most of the people that give me money are like people from the churches.
“Two girls come down here with a video camera and they were doing a report for college. I answered all their questions, I did the filming and they went ‘do you want anything to eat’. I went ‘it’s up to you’. I said I wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee, black coffee. So they went and got me a black coffee, then the next thing they come up, they’d bought me a £30 gift voucher for Sainsbury’s [laughing]. I say you didn’t have to do that. So the next day like I went and bought my cigarettes, my food. It was alright.
“That’s to say though, you sit and ask, most people would not give ya. There's people sitting with little notes, cups. I’m just sitting here and hope for the best.
Do you get a lot of money then?
“Sometimes… sometimes not, you know what I mean. Like most, I’ve ever had is something like £100 - £50. And then you get like £5 or £10s. And like, I don’t expect it. If anyone gives you it, it’s up to them. They want to do it, you know what I mean, they say right… do you believe in Jesus? I don’t personally.
“Lots of people like churches that come up say like ‘I’ve been told to come and see you’, like ‘Jesus has sent me and told me to give you some money’. Well, if Jesus has told you that, well, there must be a Jesus [laughing]. As I say, good times, bad times. That's the way it goes.
Whats one of the good things that happens on the street?
“Uhhhhh… getting £100. Well, Christmas Eve right I got about £250 and I just went straight to a hotel, about 4 o’clock and booked up 4 nights in the hotel and stayed there.
What would you do with £100 now?
“What would I do with £100 now? Go straight down the road, jump in a minicab, go straight to the hotel, Romford Road where I normally go. I go there. Even if I get like £50 I go straight to the hotel, you know what I mean instead of sleeping down in my little metal cage up end.
“It's called the Hartley hotel and I always stay there. That way you can have a shower, you don’t have to get out of there until 11, you get a full breakfast every morning. Just go there, have a bath, have a shower, sit down, I’d got fags, few cans of like energy drink and just sit there and watch TV and go to sleep. That’s it.
Will this be enough to get you that hotel for a few nights? [I gave Paul £100]
“You sure? Yeah. Thank you, what’s your name?”
I now realise very prejudicially that I had expected Paul to be overly thankful for this amount of money. I suppose I assumed someone in his position to have some kind of desperation. Paul totally surprised and made me realise my own premonitions about homeless people that I had never noticed in myself. Instead of expressing the slightly desperate gratitude I naively expected, he looked me in the eye and gave me this confident, self-assured glance. Maybe before this, he had reservations about me too.
Yet now, he wanted to get to know me, and open up about his life. From this point on I felt like we were friends. I responded with "My names Rose, but it's from all of us at the magazine."
“Right I’m Paul, and anytime you’re round here, say hello to me, yeah, and like, anything you wanna know, just ask me. I’ll tell you the truth. You gotta be straight, honest with people. When you lie… I tell you now, there’s a lot of people that take crack cocaine round here. Heroin, spice, yeah. All these ones with the oyster cards, half of them are drug addicts. And me, the only time I smoked weed was back when I was 18 right, and I’m 56 years old now!"
“You can go out and make a living. Like me right. I’ll sit here, but my mate, as soon as he’s got some work, soon as contract not cancelled. Gutting out old houses and refurbishing. As soon as he’s got work, that’s it mate I’m off. I’ll go and stay at his house. I’ll stay at his house for 6 months’ solid right. I used to get up in the morning, go caff get something to eat, go to work, come home from work, have a shower in his house, then I’d go down to the shed. He’s got a big shed right from that door to there. He made that, him and his son. It’s got a pool table, TV, even a toilet down there. The only thing he ain’t got in there is a shower.
But like I’ll go to my friend's shop, he’s got a second-hand shop, I’ll go down there. I’ll walk in just one of these things and I’m a different sort of person I get a lot of respect, I show people respect. I get a lot of respect from the police, they don’t hassle me. They come up like even the transport police ‘do you want a cup of tea, cup of coffee’. But as you see though, I’m not dirty, I keep myself clean, and that’s it. It's only now and again I have to sleep down there. But when I’m sleeping down there I don’t get disturbed. When I used to sleep here you get people coming along drunk throwing things at ya.
After our long chat sitting at the level of hundreds of commuter’s knees, being ignored by many, but chatted to by Pauls friends and acquaintances, of whom he has a good number, I realised that homeless people are just as diverse as anyone else.
You can’t group homeless people into one stereotypical box. Being homeless isn’t some club where everyone must meet a qualification or have similar interests. Homelessness occurs for infinite different reasons – no two people will have experienced the same struggle.
It could also happen to anyone, often occurring from unfortunate circumstances, out of their control. Paul wasn’t on the street because he deserved it, far from it. He was kind, appreciative of my time, and generous to offer to show me around the area I didn’t know so well. As he said, he gets respected, because he gives respect to others.
Just because someone appears to have few material items in their lives does not mean they are not enriched, fulfilled or at all happy. And it certainly doesn’t mean that they aren’t good people. Often people with the least are the most selfless, the most willing to help.
Of course, Paul faces many struggles, but his positivity shone as he spoke to me. He wasn’t grumbling, moaning or complaining. I could tell that things that others may take for granted, a lie in, the TV, a shower, bring happiness to his life.
Paul was so honest. In the past when he has found iPhones or iPads on the street he always hands them in to the police. He also told me he has seen people begging on the streets faking disabilities, and people pretending to collect for charities with no proof. When he saw this girl collecting for a fake charity he asked what charity it was. She said she hadn’t decided yet. He demanded she give the money to another genuinely homeless person or a genuine charity, or he would turn her into police.
Chatting with Paul also proved that money isn’t the only thing homeless people want. Like everyone else, they value human interaction and being treated like equals.
This is about one self-assured, streetwise and courageous homeless man. I asked him if he was strong and he replied yes, and I feel he meant this in more ways than just physical strength. Homeless people are not there to avoid, they should be acknowledged equal to anyone else. I am sure that chatting to any homeless person will prove this, and maybe this gap between homeless people and others can be narrowed, as we realise we aren’t different types of people at all.
