by James Clarke

Created on: December 31, 2006   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

Homelessness is a wonderfully visible issue, something that no country can really hide away. People on the street, begging, passed out, it's a fascinating insight into the society and culture of an area. It doesn't just demonstrate how a government is handling the issue, you can see how local people respond to them, which parts of a city they have been "confined" to and a host of other things.

When I was a teenager, I saw homelessness purely as a failure of government. Homeless? They need houses! Simple equation!

Cause=Bad Government/Capitalism Solution=Houses!

How hard could it be? So I spent two years studying and practicing welfare work and started working in inner Sydney at a drop in centre. My simple equation went out the window after a week, and I've never had a clear solution ever since. Not for want of trying, though.

I considered many other causes for homelessness, believing and dismissing each one. Uncontrollable drinking/drug abuse, long term engrained homelessness, laziness, a failure of the welfare state, and finally, that all people are hopeless, and why bother with anything. When I started considering the last one, I knew it was time for a holiday, so I left Sydney, travelled a bit and started working with homeless people in the UK.

So, with four years experience, what do I think about the causes and solutions to homelessness, specifically here in the UK?

For causes, I have to say that the UK is a pretty equitable society in regards to housing. I can't say that the many of the causes of people becoming homeless are at a governmental level. Mostly, I've found that people are homeless because some new prime directive has moved into their lives. By that I mean that something has happened to them, either as a child, or as an adult that has caused some mental trauma and they've just slipped off the rails and life has run out of control.

Maybe their partner died/left, maybe they have an ongoing mental health issue that they have never had help with, maybe they suffered child abuse. Whatever the reason, they lost their accommodation and never got it back on their own. It may seem that these kinds of people are lazy, but put it in context. They are living their lives, doing what they know, living the same way for year after year. Most people are like that, only they live in their houses and never "improve" their life. It's inertia, we all do it. We're comfortable doing what we are doing, and all change is scary, especially if we have a chance of failing.

These are two basic behaviours that almost all humans share: We're comfortable doing what we know, and changing to something else is scary. They're true for me, they're probably true for you, and they're true for most homeless people.

The other large part of homelessness is addiction. People from all walks of life develop addictions, and if they go unchecked, they can lead to people not caring about their accommodation and loosing it/getting kicked out. So add the fact that people are financially focussed on and psychologically addled by a drug to my last point, the love of inertia and a fear of change. Not easy. I've also noticed that the boredom/stress of living on the streets leads people who have no history of drug use to start using. Drugs seem to be a handcuff to the streets.

In my view, most homeless people lack an inner confidence to address the internal problems that lead them to become homeless/addicted. Not to say that homeless people lack confidence, you have to have some serious guts to survive out there.

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