I saw a heap of damp duvet, a suitcase and bit of carpet in some bushes in the park this morning. It has been there for two days now. Somebody’s winter bedroom, probably, but where is that somebody? Impaled on nearby pavement spikes while trying to rest? Or perhaps they were hosed down by security guards while napping in a doorway, got pneumonia and ended up in A&E, or dead. Because where do you go when your clothes are drenched, it’s freezing cold and you have nowhere to dry out and nothing clean and warm to wear?
Will that person ever come back to the park for their suitcase? Last time the police found someone’s bedding and suitcase in our park, a couple of years ago, the wardens saved it all, because they knew whose it was, and that he was at work, still trying to hold down a job. No wonder he chose the park, because where else was he meant to go? And now “defensive architecture” is on the rise across England and Wales: spikes and huge pebbles in doorways and on pavements, or lumpy benches, perches instead of seats in bus shelters, all to stop the homeless from sleeping or resting.
I suppose it’s a bit more subtle than the 18th-century method of getting rid of “vagrants” – summarily whipping or rounding them up and moving them on “from parish to parish”, but it’s still painful and humiliating. What are our homeless people meant to do, if there are no homes for them? Jump off a cliff?
There’s no point trying to bully or hose all this misery out of sight. There’s too much of it. It’s bound to spill on to the pavements. In town, Fielding passed a woman yelling and begging with a dog, and a man sitting shouting at the night, both maddened by circumstances, within yards of each other. Now there are “shock figures” showing that Tory cuts have made social care worse. Shock? Couldn’t anyone see it coming? And this is the festive season of light and love. Just not for anyone living on our city streets.
