Homeless.. and holding down a job
JUST like his colleagues, Jonathan leaves home every evening to clock on for his night shift in security.
But for him, “home” is a horse box, with no electricity or water. He sleeps on a ledge above the front seat and his loo is “Tesco or a bottle”.
Jonathan is one of a growing number of “working homeless” who bed down on the streets each night – despite holding down a job.
As rough sleeper numbers spiral, charity workers all report this new scandal which involves thousands of people yet is still largely hidden from sight.
We found chefs, engineers, construction workers and security staff living in doorways, tents, cars and vans, battling to get enough sleep and to keep themselves presentable enough to hold down their jobs.
By having a horse box for shelter, Jonathan, 50, regards himself as better off than many other homeless people.
When we meet, the horse box is parked next to a cemetery in Bristol – although he has been told to move on by the council, which faces a growing problem of people living in vans and caravans in the city. Jonathan says: “It does get freezing but I have a heater. I was evicted from my flat two years ago. I had a zero hours contract doing warehouse work and a landlord who put the rent up. I am lucky I have a job.”
A few miles away, under the Clifton suspension bridge, 49-year-old Richard, who once worked as a supported housing officer, is living in a derelict public toilet.
His front door is under the Ladies sign and his bed is made from pallets. He once owned a home but was made redundant and could not meet the mortgage repayments.
His most recent job was distributing newspapers but he says: “Keeping clean and tidy enough for work is hard. You can just about do it for rough and ready jobs like labouring but I probably couldn’t do office work.
“Ordinary people can’t afford housing. Homelessness is now part of the ordinary working class, day to day experience.”
As Richard hunts for work, he is trapped in a spiral where he is unable to save enough for private rent and has given up any hope of social housing.
He has made improvements, building a wood burner to ward off damp and cold and a raised bed to grow vegetables. But the toilet block has no water – and so no working loo – and no electricity.
Not far away, I meet a 35-year-old man
living in a shipping container who does not want to be named. He works in construction, currently at a city hotel.
The container has been converted by a charity as one solution for rough sleepers. Before moving here, he slept rough for six weeks. He’s a big bloke but says that life was dangerous.
He says: “Being big doesn’t help – people with drug and alcohol problems will still try stealing your bag.
“There were some days I rang up my boss and had to say I couldn’t come in because I hadn’t got enough sleep, or didn’t have clean clothes or hadn’t had a shower. I would sleep some nights in my work clothes, some days you get changed into the clothes in the backpack that you carry with you. I would watch my colleagues go home and I would go back to my doorway.”
Alex Wallace, manager of the 365 Night Shelter in Bristol, says of the 15 beds up to eight are usually taken by working people, including carpenters, mechanics and chefs – one who recently asked for help to get his whites clean.
Alex blames zero hours contracts and informal work arrangements for the rise in working homeless numbers. He says: “If you approach a letting agent and show them a contract with no guaranteed hours they can decline it.
“Or it may not be for six months or so before you have pay slips to convince someone what you
I was evicted from my flat. I had a zero hours contract and a landlord who put the rent up JONATHAN SECURITY WORKER WHO LIVES IN A HORSE BOX
have earned. So you might find you need to work that job while living in a night shelter for five months. Just to build up the deposit and have employment history. And during those five months you are vat risk of unstable lifestyle.”
Matt Downie, of the homeless charity Crisis, says: “The rise in people in work and experiencing homelessness lays bare the failings of a housing market. The lack of affordable housing is leaving thousands living on a knife-edge.
“In many parts of the country, housing benefit is out of step with market rents, leaving many people with no choice but to wake up for work on the sofas of friends and family, in emergency accommodation or even on the streets.” Dennis Martin, 42, is one of them. He worked as a commis chef while sleeping in a tent on the seafront in Brighton. He has spent 18 months rough sleeping, admitting “mistakes” with drugs landed him there.
He says he worked 240 hours a month at one point, trying to save up a deposit. “I decided there’s no way out of this situation unless you are working. But when you’re working and living on the beach it’s relentless.”
He became depressed and his poor mental health finally cost him his job.
In 2017, 4,751 people were estimated to be sleeping rough in England, an increase of 169% since 2010. Homeless charity Shelter says overall, 300,000 people are officially registered as homeless, which includes temporary accommodation. Of these it estimated that there are around 33,000 “working homeless”, which has risen from 19,000 in 2013.
Jonnie Angel, who runs The Wild Goose, a cafe for the homeless run by a Christian organisation, Crisis Centre Ministries, in Bristol, says: “Over the last few years we are hearing from people who are working and homeless. We didn’t hear that a few years ago.
“It can only go one way – homelessness becoming a way of life.”