Two conversations I heard on the radio recently really got me thinking. The first was on the
Terry Wogan show on Radio 2 on Sunday morning. They were talking about homeless people and relating it to Charles Dickens. To help him cope with his persistent insomnia, he wandered London’s streets in the early mornings, bearing witness to the degrading power of drunkenness, prostitution, poverty and homelessness.
He described these wanderings in his
Night Walks essay. He saw the experience as an “education”:
In the course of those nights, I finished my education in a fair amateur experience of houselessness. My principal object being to get through the night, the pursuit of it brought me into sympathetic relations with people who have no other object every night in the year.It was a huge learning experience to Dickens and it no doubt planted one of the seeds which lead to Dickens desire to combat social inequality.
Interestingly, slightly later on in the essay, he seems to put himself in the shoes of the homeless people, saying “us homeless people” and “we”.
The restlessness of a great city, and the way in which it tumbles and tosses before it can get to sleep, formed one of the first entertainments offered to the contemplation of us houseless people.Dickens makes it clear that the ordeal of homelessness stretches far beyond just not having a house. His description really evokes the desperation, loneliness, isolation and ennui of people who live on the streets. He shows that staggeringly drunk people can easily have a sense of fraternity yet companionship amongst the homeless is fragile and easily disturbed.
The most poignant sentence, and one which was evoked on the Terry Wogan show, was: “in the yearning of the houseless mind would be for any sign of company”.
It continues:
[for] any lighted place, any movement, anything suggestive of any one being up--nay, even so much as awake, for the houseless eye looked out for lights in windows.The light here is clearly more than physical. People on the streets are searching for a way out of their dark situation and for hope.
The guest to Wogan’s show was saying that if lent had not been going well then instead we should give up ignoring homeless people. How many of us deliberately avoid eye contact with them as we walk past? I myself often deliberately cross the road to avoid going past a Big Issue seller, either because I feel guilty for not wanting to buy a copy or because I don’t want to feel compelled to buy one.
Simply giving money to a homeless person is not going to make a huge difference to their life.
When helping out one Saturday night in a homeless outreach run by the church one of my housemates go to, I heard one homeless person remark that when other groups handed out food to the homeless, certain individuals acted really coldly towards them. They just handed out the food and did not want a conversation. What the homeless man really appreciated was that students who participate in outreach projects are really willing to give up their time to actually have a conversation.
Dickens gives one personality in the story/essay the name “Houselessness”. In both Dickens time and our own, there is a tendency to group homeless people together as though they are a distinct race. There is a tendency to generalise. For some people this generalisation is taking to the extreme. “Oh I’m not going to give any money to that guy because he’ll only spend it on drugs and booze”. “She’s probably only on the street because she was too lazy to work” etc etc.
Another phrase in Dickens which struck me (excuse the pun) was the following:
When a church clock strikes, on houseless ears in the dead of the night, it may be at first mistaken for company and hailed as such.This stood out to me because it reminded me once more of the homeless outreach. My boyfriend, who also helped out, told me that one woman he was talking to. This woman, her homeless boyfriend and their companion were sadly rather drunk. She told my boyfriend that she had tried going to churches before but had never felt welcomed by them. She felt judged. It is so sad that someone who was searching for help, for company was treated in this way.
We need to remember that the homeless are people to. Unfortunately, this is something which a ad agency seems to have forgotten. This was being discussed on a radio show I was listening to today.
A division of Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) equipped 13 homeless people with 4G wifi devices in Austin, Texas.
Someone from the agency said it helped raise awareness. Surely there are less demeaning ways of raising awareness, ways which do not turn homeless people into a commodity?
Sadly we live in a society where human beings are being turned into commodities. We are less the consumer than the consumed.
We are put into categories by ad agencies and companies such as Facebook and Google. It needs to be remembered that we are humans, we are individuals.
My challenge for you is to treat homeless people as human beings too instead of treating them as an item street furniture.
Sunshine gold and ebony black. Should your brothers see you
laying there they would want to clothe themselves in mourning dress. Perhaps they
too will fall from the sky, their wings suddenly freezing mid flight as they
finally succumb to undernourishment Your distant ancestors could buzz from
flower to flower, soaking up their goodness. But you, poor Bee, had no such pleasure. It
was the genetically modified crops that slew you, deprived of the vital
nutrients. 
This is the monstrosity of a front page published in the Sun today. I have blacked out the images because some of you may find them disturbing and not wish to see them. Although I suspect they already caught your eye if you happened to go past any news agents. If you really want to see it in its full ‘glory’ please 
