Natasha Davies, CEO Jimmy’s Cambridge discusses rising public hostility, chronic underfunding, and the urgent need for regulation, professional care, and compassion for people experiencing homelessness.
Guys, you have to take some responsibility for this!
That was the only line in an email sent to Jimmy’s Cambridge late this summer, it was accompanied by a photo of a mattress, some blankets and clothing in a tucked away corner of a Cambridge City street. The email came from a senior figure from one of the businesses on the same street as our hostel, and it was not the only one we received this summer in a similar vein.
We’ve also received an email from a major international who operate near us, along with photos and videos of individuals street rough sleeping, calling "homeless individuals", "serious safety risks", and another in all seriousness asking if “someone possibly is running a marijuana farm from the Jimmy’s building?”
We have seen what feels like a global rise in intolerance across the board this year, and in our sector it feels particularly brutal. I joined Jimmy’s as CEO 18 months ago from a long career in the public and voluntary sector, proud to be leading a thirty-year-old Cambridge institution which serves the community by providing 81 bed spaces, and professionally led and delivered 24/7 wrap around support services.
Nothing could have really prepared me for life in a homelessness charity. It’s a massively underappreciated, underfunded and frankly flipping hard place to operate.
We fight for every penny, I spent my first few months applying for every trust or grant I could think of or Google every single weekend, in an effort to just keep the doors open. My staff support individuals who, have not only fallen through the cracks, but who have been actively pushed by a State who turns a blind eye and crosses its fingers, in the hope that the charitable sector will pick up the pieces. Many of the people that walk through our doors should be in adult social care, palliative or in mental health settings, but because some self-medicate with drugs or alcohol, then those services will largely not allow desperate individuals anywhere near their front door. It’s easy to turn someone away when they don’t have the voice, status, family nor friends to shout and complain for them.
And I get it, services that care for human beings are grossly underfunded in the UK. That word, care, that’s the bit that really stings and the staggering truth about our sector. In 18 months, no one I’ve come across has really checked or even asked what are you doing behind those big red Victorian doors? What goes on in a homelessness hostel or housing?
How do you know people are better off (whatever that means) for walking through your doors rather than staying on the street?
At Jimmy’s, we pride ourselves on quality accommodation, places we as staff or volunteers wouldn’t mind spending some time in. None of our properties have damp or mould, I know because I check, and we take immediate action if something is unsafe or needs fixing. My Support Workers are offered respected qualifications, weekly training and development, we recruit based on values and an interest in people. I take an interest in all of our residents, the most joyful part of my day is a shared moment of connection with them, they are remarkable, interesting, intelligent, resourceful individual people, with a whole heap of history and even more ambition and hope for their futures.
However, I keep coming back to ‘care’. The homelessness sector is a completely unregulated sector in the UK, but one that serves the most vulnerable people in our shared communities. While regulation is coming, it’s still undecided what that will entail, so for now we are not subject to inspections, minimum standards or expectations, any type of bar in terms of training or qualifications. Many services are entirely volunteer-led, and while I celebrate volunteerism, I can’t help but question would we accept the same for any other statutory service? Regulation is coming in part to address the increase in enhanced housing benefit claims from unscrupulous landlords who claim it while providing, at best, minimal levels of undefined support. But is that really our primary concern? Bad stuff happens in seemingly good organisations now, well-meaning does not translate to the skills, knowledge and experience needed to even remotely understand decades of child and adolescent abuse, sexual abuse, domestic abuse, substance misuse, bereavement, grief and trauma. Well-meaning needs to be regulated, inspected and questioned.
Professionalising the sector, caring about what happens behind closed doors, regulating decent accommodation and defining the support paradigm, I feel, will go some way to addressing the stigmatising nonsense this article started with. A complete misunderstanding as to what we do, why and for whom in addition to who we are. None of us promote or encourage rough sleeping, none of us want fellow citizens to be photographed and filmed and showcased as somehow less than human, as dangerous, unsanitary, other.
The sector needs decent funding, fair and equal access for those we support to and partnership working with, other statutory services, understanding, and importantly active care.
We as a community, as a society should care. What happens to the lady in the library with all of her possessions in plastic bags when the library shuts for the day? What happens to the man on the street after you walk away with a warm glow, having bought him a coffee and a sandwich?
No one chooses to be homeless, no one chooses to be side-stepped, seen but avoided, labelled, judged, written off and discarded.