Sleeping rough
As our way to school or work in the mornings gets colder, we deduce that the nights are getting colder too, making scenes of mattresses and sleeping bags housing the homeless overnight tug at our consciences with more fervour than usual. We can only imagine what homeless Londoners suffer, but few of us have a fully painted picture of what it's like to sleep rough through the winter. I certainly didn’t before I wrote this article, so I decided to ask Suzie Bright about her experiences. I met her on King street, Hammersmith, where she was spending the day on the pavement opposite Costa Coffee with her dog.
I started by asking her where she had slept that night. “I sleep round the back”, she replied, pointing behind us. “Back of Marks and Spencers”. She said that she had been homeless for about 18 months, and went on to describe how her current situation came to be. “I lost my home… through rent reasons. My husband was an alcoholic and he ended up dying so I ended up losing my home”. “Do people come and… try and help you?” I asked. “Some people, yeah, but most people think you're invisible and just move on”. I went on to ask if anyone had approached her through a professional organisation such as St Mungo’s to help with employment. “No. At the moment I’m trying to get the money now to get in a hostel with her [the dog]. But there’s only one hostel that takes dogs”. “How much is it for a hostel?” I continued. “Twenty pounds to get the first week's rent and then I have to get my benefits sorted out. And then once I’ve got that I can pay the service charge each week and then housing credit will pay the rest of the rent but I have to get the first twenty pounds to get in there” replied Suzie. “Most days how much money do you make?” I asked, referring to the change passers-by place in her paper cup. “I just get enough for food and that's it really. So it's enough to sort me and her [the dog] out”. When I enquired as to whether Suzie had stayed in a hostel recently, she said that she hadn’t, because the money she makes every day never amounts to £20. “They [passers-by] seem to help the junkies more than anything” she adds, laughing. “Sorry, no offence, but they seem to help the people on drugs more”.
To wrap up our conversation I asked the woman what the most beneficial thing someone could do for her was. “Get me in a hostel” was her unhesitating answer.
This small peek into Suzie’s life made her situation seem particularly bleak in the context of the changing seasons- with nothing on the horizon to promise a positive change in her daily income, Sleeping outside through winter is a very real prospect for her. Just twenty pounds, though, could change this prospect for any of the thousands of rough-sleepers in London this year.
