Keith Hart’s new ‘Hot Potato’

Has homelessness now become a growth industry, a vibrant and thriving business opportunity, where careers and job security are thought to be as important as the desire to help people out of the cycle of despair and deprivation, whilst at the same time tolerating, condoning and even positively encouraging the negative issues widely associated with the homeless?

Is the system also inadvertently – at best – also promoting and feeding those negative views?

How many agencies and service providers openly categorise homelessness into either alcohol or drugs abuse or having mental health problems – only recently has it been my experience the latter has been added – as being the criteria for being able to access resources and help for accommodation.

Just four years ago, having left a relationship in the middle of winter and sleeping rough in one of the cities parks, I visited Leicester City Council’s Housing Options.

In my interview I was asked whether or not I had a drink or drugs problem. On answering no, I was informed that there was nothing that the Leicester City Council was obligated to do for me. I volunteered truthfully that I was diagnosed with severe depression and was taking 40mg of Citalopram – an anti depressant – and that I considered myself to be in a vulnerable situation, sleeping rough and in need of help.

Shockingly to me that afternoon, I was told that mental health wasn’t a reason to be given help and I ‘was to make my own arrangements’.

Is this a familiar tale I wonder?

Why does a person have to be unemployed to be able to be recognised as being homeless? At approximately £360 per week per person in supported housing – paid by housing benefit – how can anybody even start to think about work and keeping a roof over their head?

How then is that genuinely helping anyone get their self esteem back and into mainstream life? Is it any wonder people fall into the cycle of despair described earlier? Does anyone within the system – in authority – truly care about the cause and effects of homelessness?

Have they not, a captive audience that is ever growing, that gives other members of society a reason to live that’s perhaps not the one we all imagine it to be.

Please let me know if this strikes a chord with you. Perhaps you are someone responsible for providing services in any kind of role within the system and you would like to add your point of view.

Send your views to – ‘The Hot Potato’ c/o Keith Hart – keithhart@hotmail.co.uk

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