One way to help a rough sleeper

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Permalink Reply by Sarah on March 25, 2016 at 4:46

I had a couple of guys sleeping outside my flat for five weeks. Reported to Streetlink and the Council's ASB team. Streetlink got back to me a couple of days later to say they had been "engaged with". The ASB team came during office hours and reported they could not find them but had done a letter drop in my block (I never saw this letter). They did find them in the end and got back to me to say they were Polish and had been evicted from their flat. They could only identify one of the men.

Eventually, on the night it snowed in November, the police came at about 3am and moved them on. They gave the police the same story about being evicted. Only one of them had ID or seemed to speak any English.

I never saw them again. It's funny, they were very loud, especially when they got up to go to the toilet (further down on the grass) but I did worry a bit on nights they didn't turn up. They generally kept quite regular hours though so I wondered if they were going to work somewhere - or I live not far from Wickes so maybe they were just joining the crowd there. They smoked a lot but didn't appear to have any drink or drug issues.

Not really sure how much Streetlink helped them I must say. Also not sure how kind it was of the police to tell them to move on the coldest night of winter.

I guess we have to rely on the experts in these situations though.

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Permalink Reply by Betty Careless on March 25, 2016 at 16:18

Sadly there is very little Streetlink can do up here because this Borough hasa scandalous lack of provision for homeless people.  In fact calling Streetlink may do people a disservice - it will mean that they are logged as being homeless here so this is where their 'local connection' will be and services in other Boroughs won't be able to help them (most homeless services have funding which geographically restricts the people they are allowed to help).  People would actually be much better off being seen by Streetlink down the road in Hackney or Islington where there are much better services.

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Permalink Reply by Finsbury Park Ranger on March 26, 2016 at 10:16

It is a bit 1984, it's very common for even rough sleepers to have a mobile phone these days, almost everyone really in a pickle knows ( feeling very ill, cold weather, homeless) they could just call 999 for free.

Perhaps we need a guilt free way of calling the police on urban campers ?

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