If you’re homeless, you’ve got enough going on in your life – like trying to find a roof over your head and an address so you can, as passersby tell you, “get a job” – without having to hear these annoying and sometimes hurtful comments.
Why don’t you go get a wash? You’re all criminals.
00:04
Get your dirty bags off the bus. BOTH: Crackhead!
00:10
Crackhead. Love it.
00:13
Are you a crackhead, my darling?
00:14
Er… No.
00:16
It’s always a passing comment.
00:17
You never get to reply to the crackhead answer.
00:19
They don’t stand there and go “crackhead”
00:21
and then wait for your reply back.
00:22
Labelling someone as a crackhead
00:24
is just your way of closing off that person’s pain.
00:27
There is no help out there
00:29
for anyone that is drinking or doing drugs.
00:31
In the words of Whitney… The words of… ..”crack is wack.” Yeah.
00:37
Pretends not to see you.
00:39
‘Scuse me.
00:41
Hello.
00:42
That is the one that just makes you feel like you don’t exist.
00:45
I’ve gone five, six days in the past
00:47
and no-one’s approached me, no-one’s come and said hello.
00:50
So lonely.
00:51
It takes nothing just to make eye contact with someone and say hello.
00:55
We don’t even know what time it is.
00:57
Wouldn’t it be so good to know what day or what time it is?
01:00
They don’t want to care.
01:01
They don’t want to know. The thing is…
01:03
It’s easier for them to look at you and judge you
01:05
rather than it is to learn about who you are.
01:08
It only takes one person to come over and say, “How are you?”
01:12
or, “What’s your name?”
01:14
How are you? How are you doing? Are you all right?
01:17
I will always sit and talk, actually for hours.
01:19
They want to leave!
01:21
I mean, that’s what I was like.
01:22
Life history.
01:24
“Right, I’ve got to get out of here.”
01:28
At least you’re not on the street.
01:29
You don’t have to be on the street to be homeless.
01:31
Homeless is sofa surfing, overcrowding, being evicted.
01:35
We still have the same anxiety about it.
01:36
You have no permanent residence.
01:38
I haven’t got a permanent residence at the moment.
01:40
Even living in a shelter, living in a hostel, it’s still homeless.
01:44
I was living with people who were like, you know, addicted to drugs,
01:47
and the police were having to be called.
01:49
Grown men will open the door, then walk in. Yeah.
01:52
You didn’t know who they were.
01:54
I was sofa surfing for months and months.
01:56
The problem is you’re sleeping on someone else’s couch,
01:59
so you end up falling out. How many friends have you…?
02:01
Yeah, when you’re under people’s feet and it just gets too much.
02:04
I was sofa surfing once,
02:06
and I remember I got told off for going to the toilet. Yeah.
02:08
And I felt so scared.
02:09
I was laying on his sofa thinking, “I need to go to the toilet.”
02:12
You have no support, but at least you’re not on the streets!
02:16
Didn’t you go to school?
02:18
Did you go to school?
02:19
The majority of people that are homeless have went to school.
02:22
You know? It just means some part of their life just went that way.
02:28
Let me tell you something as well on top of that.
02:30
Can you imagine going to school while being homeless? Amen.
02:32
Thank you. Do you know what I mean?
02:34
Can you imagine having to think about food,
02:35
think about clothing, think about warmth?
02:38
Tell one of the guys, yeah, “Listen, something’s gone wrong at home,
02:42
“I’m homeless.”
02:43
Come the next day in school, “Trey’s homeless, blah blah blah.”
02:46
You know what I’m trying to say?
02:48
Most of us are going to school, or in education or in employment.
02:51
We just haven’t got a shelter.
02:54
I went to school. I went to a private school.
02:56
Both my parents are doctors. I went to private school as well.
02:58
Did you?!
03:00
I don’t think I’ve ever met somebody on the streets
03:03
who isn’t qualified to do a job. You’re right, yeah.
03:05
I was reading a book once when I was out on the streets
03:07
and someone was shocked that I could read.
03:13
Get a job.
03:14
How am I going to get paid, baby?
03:15
I ain’t got a bank account cos I ain’t got a home.
03:17
How am I going to get my letters? I can’t, cos I ain’t got a home.
03:19
I’ve genuinely tried to get a job.
03:21
I’ve approached many places with a CV that I’ve made myself
03:23
in the library and they said
03:25
“No, you’re not in supported accommodation, in any accommodation at all, we can’t help you.”
03:29
If someone came up to me and said, “Get a job,”
03:31
I’d be, like, “Great, when do I start?
03:33
“Where’s this job? When’s it happening? Where am I going?”
03:37
So, what happened?
03:39
So, what’s this, story time?
03:41
I just woke up one morning and just thought,
03:43
“Hey, do you know what – I just want to go and live on the street!”
03:46
Some people can’t explain it.
03:47
Some people don’t want to explain it.
03:50
They don’t need a sob story. This ain’t X factor.
03:52
This ain’t one of them moments where you need me to cry for you
03:55
and get down on my knees and beg. No, B!
03:57
It’s just that there’s so many different things, you just
04:00
can’t cover it all at once, you have to sit there for about an hour.
04:03
If you go up there asking judgmental questions, then don’t do it.
04:08
Yeah, yeah.
04:09
But if you’re going up with a genuine care and concern
04:11
for another human life, then do it.
04:17
Just stay with your family!
04:20
Oh, my God. Thank you for this information.
04:22
I did not think to stay at home.
04:24
I had family problems.
04:25
So for me it was, like, I don’t want to be at home. Exactly.
04:29
Guess what?
04:30
I can’t stay at home. Oh, why?
04:32
Because being homeless is better
04:35
than being in the prison that trapped my spirit, OK?
04:40
Baby, baby, preach.
04:42
If I wanted to be at home, don’t you think I’d be at home?
04:46
You’re all criminals.
04:47
Aren’t we all, a little bit?
04:49
I have stolen for food, I’ve stolen for drink.
04:51
If you’ve not eaten, doesn’t matter who you are,
04:54
what background you’re from, you will go out shoplifting.
04:56
As homeless people, yes, they do have to do certain things…
05:00
BOTH: To survive!
05:01
And the amount of criminal organisations
05:03
that are in shelters now that pull vulnerable people out
05:07
to make them go work for what they want to do.
05:09
All these old, rich businessmen would come up to me
05:14
and try and sort of proposition me,
05:16
like, you know, there’s ways in which he could help me out.
05:22
Isn’t that disgusting?
05:24
Yeah, it’s disgusting they didn’t proposition me
05:26
cos I’d be, “Yeah, I’m doing it! I’m off, then!”
05:32
That could never happen to me.
05:33
Is there a way to get homeless?
05:36
Is there a route onto homelessness that they see?
05:39
It could be family problems…
05:40
Relation breakup. Financial problems, going bankrupt.
05:44
You see it all the time.
05:45
You can be up here and, all of a sudden, just drop here.
05:47
I cannot describe how quickly, and it shocked the hell out of me.
05:51
I used to have 40-odd grand in the bank.
05:53
I had a couple of horses, a couple of dogs, I had land,
05:55
I had a nice house in the middle of the countryside.
05:58
Literally, one day we were sleeping in a five-star hotel,
06:02
the next day I was homeless.
06:06
In fact, from 12 noon. Check-out.
06:08
Part of me is still slightly damaged from it.
06:11
But as I said, it’s a learning curve and no-one will ever just get back
06:14
to normal like that. It will take years.
06:16
I think it’s a good thing to go through in a way,
06:18
cos you are grateful for everything you have.
06:20
I choose to see the abundance and the richness of my life
06:22
and I chose to see that when I had nothing.
06:25
When you’ve been that low and
06:27
as low as you think you can possibly get, you can only get higher.
06:30
It’s like a superpower. You become resilient.
06:33
Nothing can faze you.
06:35
Nothing’s going to stop you after that.
06:40
Begging is such a big thing.
06:41
Imagine begging your parents for money.
06:43
It’s still a massive thing.
06:45
So imagine us now going to the public and begging.
06:47
It’s worse, do you know what I mean?
06:49
So don’t judge. It’s just unnecessary, please.
06:51
If you have to, beg your way to the top!
06:54
OK! Fake it till you make it!
—
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