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from my local online evening newspaper:
Destitute with only a shop doorway for cover - a night with Norwich's homeless
Snake, a homeless man who was sleeping in the doorway of Primark when reporter Sam Emanuel went out on patrol with the CAPS team.
16 November 2009
Homelessness is a problem that never seems to go away, with rough sleepers often visible in doorways and on streets around the city.
But there is a team dedicated to helping them, which goes out three nights a week to speak to homeless people and investigate possibilities of housing them until they are able to secure more permanent accommodation.
SAM EMANUEL went on patrol with the Contact, Assessment and Prevention Service (CAPS) from St. Martin's Housing Trust.
As he sat in the doorway of Primark wrapped in a sleeping bag, a homeless man named Snake told me how his life fell apart after his wife and 18-month-old son were killed in a car crash.
He talked of how he lived in children's homes as a child and how he fought in the Falklands, Northern Ireland and Argentina and served his country for nine years, getting shot in the back twice.
He told me how he was let down by the Government, how he relapsed into alcoholism, and how he no longer cares whether he lives or dies.
Snake, 43, whose real name is Stuart Duffy, said he has been living on streets around the country for 23 years and that he recently arrived in Norwich to get his beloved dog Witch back after it was taken away from him when he was wrongly sent to prison.
He was one of the homeless people I met while out on patrol with the CAPS team, which is funded by Norwich City Council and goes out every Monday, Wednesday and Friday night, counting the number of homeless people, assessing their needs and giving them a hot drink and a bed at Bishopbridge House if one is available.
The team told me that the information they have about the homeless people they speak to can sometimes be hazy, because they are only able to get information from the person themselves, so they work on the basis that it is correct unless they find out otherwise.
Anna Hassan, who runs CAPS and is in charge of Bishopbridge House, said that if they had more details about Snake, like his service number, they may be able to put him in touch with an organisation which helps ex-soldiers, but the lack of information has made this very difficult.
She said: “Because people come to use straight from the streets, the information can be quite hazy because they have lived a chaotic life and so can lose grip slightly on what has happened and when it happened.”
Unfortunately, as there was no accommodation available for him at the hostel that night, we had to leave Snake and his dog at the Haymarket in the city centre, where volunteers from the Salvation Army give out warming refreshments including soup to people in need every night of the week between 10pm and 10.30pm.
He will be put on the list of people who need accommodation to be considered next time there is a vacancy.
There were about ten people at the Haymarket in total, but the team said that only two of them were actually homeless - many had been given accommodation but were either lonely or had found it difficult managing their own budgets.
Miss Hassan said: “A lot of people that go there go for the social aspect. If they have been given their own accommodation they can sometimes feel isolated - loneliness is a massive issue for homeless people.
“If they are used to living in a hostel they have a ready made community, and so when they go on to their own accommodation, they can find it hard, and come here for the company.”
Another issue for some homeless people seems to be attacks from unruly members of the public. A man named Ashley, who is currently living at Bishopbridge house, was at the Haymarket and told us that several people he knows have been beaten up recently, with one man getting “his head smashed against the ground” by a local gang.
In 2007, the Evening News reported on a 30-second video of a homeless man being beaten up outside KFC on Prince of Wales Road was posted on YouTube under the category “comedy”, and in 2002 we told how Big Issue seller Keith Swan died after being repeatedly punched and kicked by three men at the corner of Brazengate and Queen's Road, Norwich.
But it is believed many assaults are not reported to the police.
We took another man, who was homeless and walked with a bad limp, back to Bishopbridge House where he was given a room with an en-suite and a single bed with comfortable bedding.
He had been offered a room by the hostel staff several times before, but told them each time that he would make his own way there and then failed to arrive. The staff are unsure why this is but made sure he got there safely by giving him a lift in their people carrier.
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Miss Hassan said: “I think one of the key features of the CAPS team is persistence. We have to persist with some individuals for a while for a number of reasons. They may have had a bad experience in another hostel, not be comfortable around other people or have mental health problems. So we spend time talking to them over a period of time and building their trust so they let us help them.”
After taking the homeless man to the hostel, we returned to Gentleman's Walk, where we spoke to Snake and gave him some dog biscuits for Witch.
After speaking to him, we continued our patrol around the rest of the city, visiting places where homeless people tend to sleep. The walk took us along many of the city centre's backstreets, where we did not see any homeless people sleeping but did see evidence they had been there - for example near All Saints Green we found a sleeping bag, rucksacks and the remnants of food and drink, and at a church in the Golden Triangle we found a sleeping bag on cardboard and a piece of carpet with an empty bowl, although no homeless person was there when we visited. The team left a hot chocolate and a leaflet
inviting the rough sleeper to get in touch with them.
Time will tell whether they do.
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