Someone's home

To you and me this looks like an empty doorway, but on Saturday night some chap was sleeping rough on the hard ground using it as his home for the night. Normally, I see seven or eight whilst out and about but tonight I haven't seen any. I can only hope that they have managed to find a shelter for the night.

I remember when living in Bristol several years ago a man asking me for money. After giving him some cash he offered to show me his home. I was quite wary at first, but he showed me a little shed that he had been staying in. He told me the local residents knew he lived there and that they tolerated him. He was unsure how long he could stay there as the landlord had got wind of his presence. He said that he was on strong medication for his diagnosis of schizophrenia, and that services where of little help for him. I worked with assertive outreach teams for a while, so know how difficult the engagement issue is for professionals. However, the man was probably right to some degree, as much of their work seemed to be about monitoring and adherence to medication as anything else.

Homelessness seems a bit passé as an issue nowadays, may we have got so used to it we don't really take much notice of it anymore.