A Time to Mourn.
Three deaths on the streets in Sheffield in ten days. Immediately, questions were being asked about accommodation and the impact of the weather. While these questions were asked a group of us sat on a call together remembering those who had died. We told stories and lamented their deaths and the lives they had ended up living.
All of us knew the two women. They died seven days a part, one in a stairwell, the other behind a high street store. It would have been upsetting for those who discovered them. We didn’t know the man. We aren’t sure who does know him or whether he was from Sheffield. But he would have been somebody’s son, maybe a brother or a dad or uncle. The headlines will speak of him as a homeless death but let’s cling to our humanity just a little longer and think of him as a someone.
One of the two women could praise and criticise in a single breath. We were doing a sleep out by the Cathedral once and she came to tell me that we, The Archer Project, did nothing for her. Whenever she asked for something, she claimed, we deliberately said “no”. I knew this wasn’t true but listened to her, nevertheless. One of the people who had joined the Sleep Out to raise money said, “Oh, are you homeless?”. Immediately she answered, “Yes, and these are fantastic – if you’re raising money raise loads, they need it! They’re wonderful.” She could be exasperating or encouraging. Nobody wants that lifestyle - caught in a never-ending cycle of alcohol consumption and the grind of street life.
The other woman was much more predictable. Present most nights in the city centre, carrying her bags, unkempt and with fingers that looked as though they’d done the work of two lifetimes. She would approach people for money, I never knew her to be rude doing that. She was quiet and deferential in many ways. Try as we may, and the different housing and health agencies did try repeatedly, she wouldn’t stay in the different accommodations made available to her and returned to the city centre streets.
It doesn’t matter how difficult either could be, we knew them and had affection for them. We didn’t want them to live on the street, or to eke out an existence in the shadows of the city centre. So why couldn’t we change that?
I had a university ethics lecturer who frequently repeated that every complex problem had a simple answer, and it was usually the wrong answer. When I hear people ask why we hadn’t got any of these three a home I remember his saying and I agree with him. We did get homes for both women, but we couldn’t take away the deep hurts and pains from their earlier lives. So often we help people to live with their histories of abuse, neglect and trauma. But it doesn’t happen for everyone. And when those pains have been self-medicated with addictive drugs, the task of helping someone to live a better more rewarding life becomes even harder.
So, a whole group of agencies (drug and alcohol support workers, outreach workers, accommodation support workers, and many more) are left with memories and regrets. We will laugh at somethings and ask our own questions like, “why did we have such drastic budget cuts?” and “when will have the resources to properly reduce the tragedy of street homelessness?”.
I don’t know the answers to those questions. What I do know is we will continue to work with people who exasperate and encourage us in the best way we can.
