Provision for the homeless

[ailbhe]

http://www.reading.gov.uk/NewsArticle.asp?id=SX9452-A7848CC8

St Mungo's is the street outreach team commissioned by Reading Borough Council to work with rough sleepers in the borough. The team's support workers have been out in the town over the last few days to see what support they can give to people living on the streets. Every single person found sleeping rough has been offered accommodation at one of Reading's hostels.

Some people have chosen not to accept offers of help however and instead chose to sleep rough, despite advice to the contrary.

St Mungo's has found some rough sleepers, particularly around the town centre and Central Library, are stopping members of the public and telling them they need money in order to stay in hostel accommodation.

The Council and St Mungo's would like to clarify to members of the public that free hostel accommodation is offered to all street homeless people during this cold snap and the situation is being constantly monitored.

Perhaps experience leads them to believe that they are safer on the street than in a free hostel. Certainly Dublin's free hostels are terrifying.

Comments

[sfred]

That sounds likely to me.
Or that the hostel's rules on consumption of alcohol or other substances would be harder to bear than another night out in the cold.

[ailbhe]

Yeah, a hostel full of DTing alcoholics who aren't allowed to smoke sounds fun...

[sfred]

A chap I vaguely know said one of his friends died at New Year because he chose a dry/drug-free hostel over sleeping rough, and his system couldn't cope with the shock detox.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

On the street, you can get away sometimes. Enclosed in a building, you can't.

N.

[the-changeling.livejournal.com]

What nasty people those street sleepers are. Can't they get with the programme, and function within society as we have deemed fit. Honestly, if they keep acting like this, they'll end up on the streets you know. Oh, wait....

[biascut.livejournal.com]

What? I don't think that's what the press release is saying at all.

Hostels have got the choice of letting in people who are drinking or drunk, and risking them kicking off and endangering or excluding other service users, or excluding people who are drinking or drunk. Ditto with pets: one person's "they won't let me in with him, but he's harmless, wouldn't hurt a fly" is another person's "I'm not going in there, they let dogs in who roam around everywhere, f'cking terrifying".

[the-changeling.livejournal.com]

Ehm, not quite sure you're getting my sarcasm, here. :-)

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Ah, OK! Sorry about that.

[miriammoules.livejournal.com]

I want to throw something at that council

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

It's also just about possible that rough sleepers are people, with agency, who have made a decision about their lives. They don't *have* to fit into some victimhood narrative, shunted like pinball balls between thoughtless councils, dangerous hostels, their own demons and addiction etc.

This is not aimed at any one person in particular here, it's just that the possibility that rough sleepers sleep rough because that is what they choose to do hasn't, so far, been brought up.

[ailbhe]

Um, it's the *only* one that was brought up in the press release.

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

I was talking about the reactions to the press release rather than the thing itself, though it has to be said that the whole "despite advice to the contrary" whiffs of "poor souls don't know what's good for them" a bit.

[ailbhe]

Or they need money to stay in a hostel where they might actually be able to stay, rather than have to sit up all night guarding their stuff or their lives.