The Horror Of Homelessness
“Homelessness has become something that is normal, in that we are no longer outraged or shocked by the living conditions some people are forced into."
It's been quite a hard week for my family. My partner's mum was rushed into hospital with a serious illness, my partner's work were complete arses about time off, well until I publicly highlighted their treatment of him and their fake public persona. So what was already a bad time was made even more stressful, added to that the everyday pressures of trying to live and raise a family.
Don't worry, this isn't a pity party for poor old Emma. Things have improved, my partner's mum is recovering better than anyone expected and now his employers couldn't be more accommodating (isn't it amazing what a little social media campaign can do!).
However, things were put into perspective for me the other day. We were going to the hospital to visit my mum in-law and had just parked the car and were walking through the car-park. Just in front of us were a couple of men, headed in the same direction. I didn't really take much notice until they stopped at a bin and then started to go through its contents, looking for something to eat.
It was almost surreal, the normality with which they went about looking for food. I would like to say it was shocking, seeing people reduced to finding their food from a rubbish bin, but that would be a lie. Homelessness has become something that is normal, in that we are no longer outraged or shocked by the living conditions some people are forced into.
I've written about my town here more than once, always in praise of the people and the place, but homelessness is very real here too, in this small rural town. When I was younger, fifteen or sixteen, the only time I would encounter homelessness was when, with friends, I would go to Nottingham on the train on a Saturday. We would sometimes go ice-skating, followed by a look around the shops. We would skirt around the homeless, scared and awkward because it was alien to us. But at the same time, it was a city and you knew there would be homeless people, it was to be expected.
The homeless are the drop-outs of society, only the term 'drop-out' is misleading. To drop out of this society would mean to be free of it, and instead the homeless are not. They have nothing, but also have to survive in this capitalist world where there is no viable alternative, at least not for the poor. To live in a manner that doesn't rely on money or buying shit, you have to have money. To maintain a certain level of sophistication, such as heating, electricity and so on, you'd have to have the funds to set all of that up in the first place. To live in a more caring way is always discouraged, else it would be cheaper to do so.
So the homeless are the acceptable whipping boy. They are at the very bottom of society.
Here in Britain, and I'm sure countries the world over, the poor are treated abysmally by government. Only recently, with the engagement of Prince Harry and Megan Markle, the leader of Windsor council sparked a massive backlash by demanding the police 'clear' the homeless away before the royal wedding.
In another case, Bournemouth Borough council removed a homeless man's sleeping bag ( yes, in the middle of winter!), deeming it rubbish. The man was found dead under a bridge days later. This is the same council that a few years earlier played bagpipe music at nighttime at train and bus stations to deter rough sleeping.
When we are no longer shocked and outraged about issues that should shock and outrage us, then our perceptions begin to change. In this particular instance, the homeless are seen as an entity, some dirty mass of otherness. Listening to some people, the homeless are almost sub-human, a different species. It becomes easier to dislike, to despise.
In Maidstone, Kent, two young men were recently sentenced to life imprisonment for beating a homeless man to death. And the reason they saw fit to take another's life? Because they thought it would be funny.
Of course, these actions against the homeless are the extremes. And whilst there is still outcry over the ill-treatment of the homeless, there are still many with a blase attitude, more than people realise, and the problem with such is that it leads to unnecessary cruelties. A friend of mine is a delivery driver for a chain of grocery stores. They told me once that at one shop, the staff had been complaining about a homeless man who'd been eating the food that the shop threw out into the rubbish at the end of every day. Food with nothing wrong with it only that the sell by date runs out the next day. One member of staff piped up, bragging about how the man wouldn't be eating it again as she'd started pouring bleach onto the food. Food they were throwing out anyway.
It's this kind of callousness that is widespread. We think that all homeless people are either drug addicts or alcoholics, that they all deserve this fate that has befallen them. Now I'm sure that for some homeless, substance abuse may well have been their downfall, but I also think that people just don't realise just how easy it is for some types of people to become homeless.
For the working poor in particular, homelessness is only a step or two away. Here's a scenario that happens all too often here in Britain. Consider a family who live in social housing, a man, woman and child or children. Imagine that the family are poor, perhaps only managing on one wage. Now imagine that the man and the woman split up. Chances are, and statistics would seem to support that the woman stays in the home with the children, and the man moves out. Unless that man can lay his hands on a lump sum of cash to pay a deposit for other accommodation (and who has a lump sum saved away when it's a struggle to live on what he earns, never mind save some each week?), then that man will struggle to find somewhere to live. If he's lucky he may have family or friends who can help him out, but if he's alone, then he really is alone. Because the authorities do not have to help him. There is no housing support for men who are homeless, especially for those without children.
For the working poor, and those without savings, homelessness is never that far away. It might seem like it is, but the reality is that should an emergency occur, or should the breadwinner lose their job and the rent cannot be paid, homelessness becomes a very real threat.
So what an we do? I do not know. We can try and help in any little way we can, with donations of food or money, but all that does is help to alleviate a small measure of discomfort. Until we get rid of a system that would reduce humans to this life because they have no money, then I don't think we will be able to make any meaningful change. It's almost funny, that governments can find millions of pounds for wars and their own political agendas, nuclear armourment, highspeed rail (that nobody wants), or bailing out the bankers, but when it comes to the need of the people, there's no money to be found anywhere.
Until we can get rid of this system that doesn't value human life, that views us as mere workers, cogs in the machine of industry, then I fear things will stay the same.
Emma Kathryn
My name is Emma Kathryn, an eclectic witch, my path is a mixture of traditional European witchcraft, voodoo and obeah, a mixture representing my heritage. I live in the middle of England in a little town in Nottinghamshire, with my partner, two teenage sons and two crazy dogs, Boo and Dexter. When not working in a bookshop full time, I like to spend time with my family outdoors, with the dogs. And weaving magic, of course!
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