Where I find myself operating there is a policy whereby the homeless are supported by those in authority by them being afforded the 'statutory minimum' provision. What this really means is that the town considers itself to have no homeless and should any of these awful people arrive, they are given the fare to one of the large cities north or south of us, so that they can be hosteled.
When discussing this with a member of the council they continually used the term 'statutory minimum' and when challenged over this, the response was that anything less would be unlawful and anything more would encourage the 'wrong sort' of people to come to our town. Not only that, but offering them housing or other support would merely perpetuate the problem, the homeless need to be made to stop being homeless and settle down (somewhere else?).
It seems that this attitude also prevails within Westminister's bounds regarding the topic of soup kitchens with their, "If you feed them, they will come," approach to the homeless.
A couple of years after my discussion with the councillor, we had a well-known local tramp die of exposure whilst sleeping rough in a bus shelter. There was an outcry and the public were outraged and civic leaders postured and spoke out about 'doing something' and here we are, at the close of the 2010/11 winter with still nothing done and any public, or morally-driven, sense of purpose now gone.
About three years ago I approached the housing department and told them that I would organise a charity and bunch of volunteers to attempt to deal with homelessness where we are. All they had to do was provide a pair of down-at-heel houses and we would provide, and manage the funding, of temporary accommodation.
This was greeted rather negatively with various reasons (we don't have the housing stock) and various attitudes (if we did that, people would come here and we don't have a homeless problem at the moment) and loads of well-meaning inactivity (well, nothing has happened so it is inactivity whether those who read this and feel guilty/angry/whatever like it or not!).
So before people get on their high horses over Westminster, can I suggest that you stop and look at your own community and see what is offer there? I imagine that you will find pretty much the same, and if not 'Well Done' now take a look at the next place along the road from you and ask yourself, "How can I influence, aid or support them?
If we take one of the quotes from Westminster and change the name, I wonder how many of us could say the same for our place of residence or ministry?
My Town believes that food handouts only serve to keep people on the streets longer, damaging their health and life chances.
Well? rather than all the posing and self-righteous blog-writing, what are we going to do about it? Not Westminister (unless you live there) but where you live. An opportunity for a 'Churches Together' project. A need to get together and raise up candidates for our local councils.
We need to stop muttering, writing and being outraged and start being the difference!
Now, before the next winter
Pax
5 comments:
Vic,
It seems to me that most local authorities have similar policies, keep the homeless moving to be a problem for someone else.
Our local authority does have a policy to provide emergency housing, which normally means placing people in B&B somewhere else, preferably as far away from the borough as they can get them.
Our Churches do have some sort of arrangement for providing accommodation with a hostel in the next borough in Kent, this is short term and does not replace the local authorities responsibility to provide some sort of accommodation.
What I have noted is that those locally who appear to be in this position is that they are in the main, single East European migrants, who appear to slip through the networks designed to support them.
I am sure that there is a wider problem locally or particularly young people who are 'sofa surfing' which was highlighted by the death of two young people who were allowed by a business owner to stay in an empty flat above his premises and who were choked by CO2 fumes from a faulty heater.
For his act of charity? he was prosecuted and went out of business.
We are constantly told that we need to build upto another 5000 homes locally in the next 10 years to just stand still with people waiting for accommodation - but we never actually seem to meet these targets. There has been lots of building over the last 5 years, but it is in the main, high cost houses or apartments, with a sop to social housing of the inclusion of a tiny number of units for this purpose.
I don't have the answer to the problem, but can forsee that it will get worse when the real effects of the current spending cuts kick in later this year.
It's pretty much the way the Poor Laws from the 16th to the 19th century worked. Parishes simply moved the problem to the parish next door and so on.
"we don't have a homeless problem at the moment."
Just like they don't have a problem with racism etc. no doubt (and I understand Tamworth used to have a policy of deliberately refusing to allow ethnic minorities to work in the area). Just chuck the problem over into next door's garden and it's solved. The real problem is the attitude, not the homeless.
I don't see there being a problem insofar as matters racial are concerned, mind you we have such a low ethnicity score they think Brummies are foreigners here, or else haven't come across any reports of it.
We need the Christians in an area to knuckle down and get involved, especially in the getting a voice in the councils and other committees.
Thanks for responses guys,
V
Vic, your comment about Brummies tickled me.
Coming originally from Stepney in London, when we were unenlightened kids, we genuinely believed that anyone from south of the Thames were foreigners.
We considered ourselves true cockneys, being born within the sound of bow bells. Not imagining that they could also be heard south of the River. The funny thing being that Bow Church was blitzed and they did not restore its bell tower until well into the sixties.
Vic
Thanks for this. I was a social worker for Westminster for many years and the council has been criticised for banning soup-runs (this was in the late 90s/early naughties). On a regular basis several churches in the Midlands ran ‘soup’ runs, where a bunch of volunteers would pile in a Transit van and head down the M1 on a Saturday to hand out food etc. to those sleeping rough around the West End. As one of the officers from Westminster said to me at the time – and I echoed – haven’t these churches homeless people in their own towns they can minister to? In fact, you are left asking, for whom are these Christians really doing their act of charity? The homeless or to make themselves feel better about themselves? Matt 6: 1-4 needs careful consideration before planning such work!
For several years I worked at an Evangelical run nightshelter and came to the conclusion that there is a good deal of what Bourdieu (French social anthropologist) calls ‘Symbolic Capital’ in the work: the church the nightshelter is part of happily claims to work of the nightshelter as part of its witness. Whereas in truth very few of the congregation volunteer in the nightshelter. It had paid staff and now (unlike my day) receives slightly more than half its income from Support People rather than donation.
My own PhD is centred on state funding reliant faith-based organisations (FBOs), asking for whom do they exist and are they really an expression of religion in society. I find it interesting how Christians in particular have very fixed ideas of the work and organisation of FBOs – ideas that normally shed a favourable light on Christians. e.g. I asked members of a local church ‘What proportion of the cost of a bed at [a well known Christian welfare charity hostel] is paid for by donations?’ Christians tended to put this around 80%. The actual proportion is 16% - the rest comes from the tax-payer. When asked what portion of staff do they think are members of the charity – again 80%+; the truth is around 8% with a mainly paid secular staff team. In fact there is almost no discernable difference between the work of this particular charity and that of a secular homeless charity. Yet Christians in particular have an idea that ‘Christian’ charity is somehow imbibed with a ‘specialness’ that alas, appears to exist only in the minds of Christians (I’d even go as far as to say many secular organisations do it better!).
Some of the more bias Christian media often presents the idea that the government itself prevents there being an overt Christian presence and witness in these organisations. It is true out right proselytising is discouraged, but when you pay the piper, you call the tune! (Tho’ the FBO I am working with holds services in the hostel once a week, without censure.) But the larger reason appears to be so few Christians WANT to work in poorly paid, low status and stressful work. Which perhaps is why there is a Christian bias for believing in the ‘Christian’ work of FBOs is greater than it really is – charity by proxy.
I have also been researching a small, Evangelical new religious movement that provides services for homeless people. It does not accept gov. money and ONLY employs (and this is a loose term as there is no pay structure, cleaners get the same wage as the centre manager) members of its churches or those sympathetic to its ethos. Where do I prefer to spend my time as a researcher? The small, locally church driven FBO, because it doesn’t ask anything off government, works to its own rules and provides a good and useful service (and I’m a liberal Christian, not overly fond of Evangelical Christianity). Moreover, as you so rightly note, people are getting their hands dirty rather than ‘charity by proxy’ and these to me seems to be more in keeping with a Christian understanding of charity than the multi-million (multi-billion in the USA) industry that is ‘professional’ faith based social welfare!
Regards: S
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