Fatcats would do more good paying taxes
EDINBURGH charity Social Bite yesterday announced Sleep in the Park 2018, “the world’s biggest simultaneous multi-city sleep out”, on the night of December 8 in Scotland’s four largest cities.
With 150million homeless in the world, this is sadly not the “biggest simultaneous multi-city sleep out”.
The press release in my inbox read more like a promotion for T in the Park than an event to “end homelessness”.
“Participants will be joined by an impressive line-up of artists.
“Amy Macdonald will be joined on the bill by fellow Scot KT Tunstall travelling on a helicopter donated for the night.
“Author Irvine Welsh will perform this year’s bedtime story.”
Itison are offering 50 per cent reduction on early bird tickets without any sense of irony at all.
While the motivations for this event are laudable, it does feel a tad crass.
Sleeping out in December tells us what we already knew – that it is bloody cold.
It gives no insight, however, as to what it feels like to lose a home, be estranged from family or the terror of sleeping in a doorway in fear of violence and sexual assault.
Or to have been spat out by a prison or the Army with no safety net for comfort.
Most street homeless are not rough sleepers. They are hidden in crappy hostels or shelters, surrounded by chaos, watched by CCTV and dehumanised by a system in which they are treated like prisoners.
Every 18 minutes a household was made homeless in Scotland last year, thrown into bed and breakfasts or to the limbo of temporary accommodation.
For them the reality is eviction, taking your kids and any belongings you can carry, to wait in a housing office while officialdom deigns to give you a bed. I don’t need a camping trip, while being serenaded by KT Turnstall, to know that stinks.
Most of those who take part in this event are driven by a desire to do good, to raise awareness of homelessness.
The charity have received visits from Hollywood superstars George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio. Most recently, Social Bite were visited by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle during their first trip to Edinburgh together.
But surely we do not need a photogenic, multi-millionaire celebrity or a sleep out to drive home the moral repugnance of homelessness in a wealthy country.
We are already aware, we just need to care more.
Social Bite have raised millions, changed lives for the better, built homes, given the homeless work and hope but it is chronically far removed from a long-term solution.
It is a plaster on an open, festering wound, a distraction from the major surgery our system needs.
For the majority, participation is well intentioned but fatcat chief executives and politicians cynically use events like this as a PR exercise and a conscience salve.
But while they are pushing the agenda of the poor homeless on Twitter, their accountants are working on reducing their tax bills.
Only government policy, higher taxes, major house-building projects, addiction rehabilitation and drastically improved mental health services will effect the change this problem demands.
The homeless don’t need the Housing Minister to sleep in a park for the night, they need him to provide a home.