Raising Awareness of Homelessness in Leeds

What if we did the same thing in Leeds as they did in Paris? How quickly would people respond to 50+ tents being erected on Millenium Sq outside the City Hall or in front of the train station on City Sq? 

Making Homelessness Visible

Raising the profile of homelessness is very important to attract help and support for programmes aimed at ending rough sleeping. As many homeless people hide away, especially when sleeping rough, the scale of the problem is easy to underestimate. Groups like the Big Issue help to raise awareness by getting homeless people into view and creates a self help environment.

There have been many other groups and vents that have done there best to raise awareness about homelessness particularly rough sleeping. Perhaps one of the most successful of these events has been the Children of Don Quixote’s tent village along the banks of the Saint-Martin canal in northeast Paris. Which follwed Medicins Du Mondes ‘tent city’ campaign of 2005 (The Independent: 'Tent city' shames Paris into helping its homeless Aug 11 2006) which had handed out 300 tents to homeless people to pitch around Paris. The camp was established in response to police action to remove smaller camps from Paris.

Image from Flickr – Matthew J Oliver http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewoliver/331129080/

This Children of Don Quixote set up a community of 100 lightweight tents along the banks of the canal in December 2006 to highlight the problem of homelessness in Paris. The organisation then invited affluent Parisians to spend time or a night in the cold at the camp to experience what the homeless people go through. The event was so successful that many homeless people flocked to the camp and other non profit organisations provided 150 more tents. The group which became protestors refused to leave the camp until the government promised to do more to eradicate homelessness in France.

However not everyone was happy about the event especially those who were more sceptical about the government promises of increased aid which accompanied both the 2005 ‘tent city’ campaign and the Children of Don Quixote’s campaign, one homeless man living further up the canal said "When they go, you'll go(meaning the media), everyone will go — right back where they came from," he replied, throwing a stick on his fire. "Us, we'll still be here. We're always here." http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1573252,00.html

The group attmpted to repeat the event the following year setting up tents opposite Notre Dame but these were ‘torn down’ by police under orders from the new French president Nicolas Sarkozy before the protest could establish itself.  (The Independent: Paris police tear down tents for homeless Dec 17 2007).

Further info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_Saint-Martin

Homelessness in Numbers…

Homelessness effects many thousands of people in the UK and while most of these people will have access to shelter every night either with friends or family, in a B&B or in a hostel some will end up on the streets exposed to the elements and vulnerable to assault and other crimes. The governments official figure of the number of rough sleepers on an average night is 464, however, outreach programmes and charities who work on the streets with homeless people believe this number to be a significant underestimate because of the difficulty of counting people who do not want to be found or who spend the night travelling around to avoid being disturbed (check out organisations such as Crisis, shelter and the Simon community for more info (or wait for my background studies report to be finished for more detailed info)).

Life on the Street's Ain't Easy

A video by the residents of York Arc Light, a centre for the homeless designed by Baumon Lyons - right click on the video and click show all to see the full width or tell me how to adjust it on the post.

A Place To Lay Your Head

Having thought about this further it seems that what transitional shelters (and emergency shelters before that) are doing is preventing those displaced people from being homeless. The shelters provide a roof and in longer term strategies a bed, somewhere to wash and somewhere to cook.

It is this thought about homelessness that has made me think that surely a transitional shelter for the UK would be just as suited to a homeless shelter on a day to day basis…

Modifications would be needed to change a transitional shelter into a permanent residence and this would have its own problems with regards to where it could be built and the effects it would have on local residents.