London Olympics 2012 - Homeless Watch

[Dominic]

The London Olympics are set for 2012, and members of the International Homeless Forums are keeping account of the treatment of homeless people in London. Before, during and after the London Olympics of 2012, the treatment of homeless people in London will be revealed here.

[dunksplace]

thanks for setting up space for this to be documented and disscused, i would like to see us high light the issue before the event and work out a way to respond and support each other..

[zipcode]

Originally Posted by Dominic

The London Olympics are set for 2012, and members of the International Homeless Forums are keeping account of the treatment of homeless people in London. Before, during and after the London Olympics of 2012, the treatment of homeless people in London will be revealed here.

i'll tell you rite off the bat that the london buiness people are going to get the homeless off the streets or matter of fact out of town they don;t want homeless people panhandleing hangingout they'll do somethingbeleive me i seen it done in utha when the witer olympicsshiped them out by the bus loads.to any where they wanted to go they sent the homeless as long it was out of ogden utha i could od got a free ticket out but i was kinda hard nosed about it i wanted to ssee the games at first they said we 'al could get jobs working cleaning up at night so i stsuck with my guns and i goyt my seldf a job and seen lome of the winter olympics. ipicked up tash on the ground where everybody was standing watching wo can they trow the tash around i can't tell you how many bas of trash i picked up but i go my self a job.god bless you ziipcode. bye till nex timei wish i could be in london during the olympics there that would be cool!neer been across the ocean but some day i hope i'll be a stoweaway in a big caargoship ijjump trains so ithe only thing different would be have to make sure to take enough food and water.

[housed]

having read that u can see that govts dont give a rats arse for the under priviliged, its all about cities looking good, and bugger everything else, cheers. peter.

[Tom.]

The British government with the London Olympic games of 2012 in mind are now desperately determined to rid the streets of London of homeless people.
While we are still as yet three years away from the games the pressures are already being applied to the street homeless population, and the church / charitable organisations that cater for them.

As a part of their argument, the political powers, both in local and national governments, claim that soup kitchens and soup runs encourage rough sleepers to live on the streets rather than seek the help and assistance that they need to move back into mainstream society. In so doing, they are effectively killing homeless people by encouraging them to sleep rough on the streets.

This debateable argument has now become widely known as " KILLING WITH KINDNESS." in London. As a consequence, those powers are trying to dissuade local churches and charitable organisations from feeding homeless people. A recent attempt by some local London authorities to ban soup runs failed due to organised resistance by various homeless charities including:

The Simon Community: http://www.simoncommunity.org.uk/

and Housing Justice: http://www.housingjustice.org.uk/

Operation Poncho: http://forums.homeless.org.au/showth...2230#post22230 and this recent news item posted by Dominic: http://forums.homeless.org.au/showthread.php?t=3570 about eastern European homeless migrants in London, highlights some of the other tactics being deployed by those political powers in their attempts to achieve their political agenda.

Recent [unconfirmed] reports would suggest that the British Government will be bringing in two political advisors from Sydney, the host of the 2000 Olympic games, to advice them on the Olympics, and the measures needed to deal with the street homeless people.

The Feeding of street homeless people is of course not only applicable to Britain. It is practised in many parts of the world.

I would invite your views and comments on this subject:

Are you a provider of street services to the homeless?

Are you street homeless and reliant/dependant on soup runs/ Kitchens?
__________________

[jon@everyoneshome.org.uk]

That killing with kindness thing made me fume... This is a reposted piece about it... it still makes no sense to me. I think the perspective the government and a lot of charities are taking is quite frankly: Sick.

Right - Wall of Text time... sorry....

Killing with kindness? I don't think so...

I've looked at the London homelessness sector, admittedly too much from afar, (but I do what I can), for the last two years. Even with the sheer volume of wonderfully inspiring and down to Earth day in day out giving for a multitude of reasons, religious or not, I've seen and heard of, I don't know how anyone can say that this is a sector of industry that kills with kindness. Apparently the sector is analysing itself soon discussing this very question - Killing with Kindness.

This "Sector" is not kind enough, to it's patrons, beneficiaries, or between itself. For a sector built on the most part in religious Loving kindness philosophies, with some heavy government interference thrown in, asking for less kindness, is the talk of spin merchants, political posturing and unhelpful introspection in an industry with great potential to spread day to day kindness, and expand it to better futures for all people everywhere. Uninspiring concepts of killing with kindness will kill the passion for showing kindness, often in the face of those who at the time can't, won't or don't even appreciate it.

Kindness is all fundamentally anyone can bring to working in homelessness, tireless, relentless, unjudgmental but honest kindness. For the sector to be questioning it's own extent of kindness is a logical fallacy I can't get to grips with. Is there any part of this world that needs less kindness? Why can't soup runs be overground, accepted, cherished and integrated better to provide a real first line of support rather than sought to be banned by London Councils? Why can't agencies get together to ensure when someone endures a tragedy or series of tragedies in their life that we don't instantly also add homelessness to their lists of worries? Why are there more merchants of useless advice than practical solutions here now everyone can participate with to practical resolutions? Why is the internal perception of this sector that "Good eggs get cracked and thrown away whilst bad eggs get made into omelettes" as I recently heard from someone who has been through three household name services?

The government has raised a kindness to the homelessness industry, it's raised millions, now the pot is running dry, revenues are static, people are becoming disenchanted. Is the government killing with kindness? Or is there going to be a moment when the homelessness industry stops straddling the tory/labour fence for greater donations? Is the solution to homelessness going to be more private or social housing? What's the proportions like? Do they bear any relation to current socio-economic statistics? Does anyone know? Who is watching the watchmen? Who is really killing who with kindness?

When someone is even being evicted from homeless shelter after homeless shelter, what can you really do for that person, how you going to help someone who can't or won't help themselves? You either round them up like mentally ill people, vagrants by another name, or you support them as best you can, when you can, how you can, any which way you want to. One thing that can't be done is to critique the kindness, evidenced by so many people working towards a common goal, but constrained by a lack of organisation between them - that's always going to happen. If there is disconnect between the kindness often given and the kindness seldom given but sorely needed - than why not say that - and leave the criticism of kindness to the homeless hating brigade whose privilege or lack thereof fosters nothing but unkindness - rather than picking up their flawed rhetoric and trying to engage their inhumanity? killing with kindness is impossible and makes no sense.

The fundamental fact is society moves, changes, evolves and grows. Until we get to a point where population growth is negative, we're always all of us going to have less than we could in terms of Shelter. Doesn't matter if you've ever been unlucky enough to sleep rough long or not. Housing is a perpetual headache for 95% of us all. Is that kind? Can anyone truly explain how to get around it, other than getting the government to dishonour yet more hard campaigned for improvements in housing, and forever hoping for a better tomorrow whilst the situation continues to degenerate into hopelessness?

Hopelessness is the problem - burned to the back of the eyes of every person you've ever seen pushed into a life of begging and dependency amongst a sector that should be a vibrant hopeful mess of interdependence and possibilities. Kindness is the fuel of the homelessness sector and should never be questioned in itself - although it may be helpful to question the direction of it - to question it's presence in so far as saying kindness kills - does little to alleviate the hopelessness naturally evident in an industry like this. Indeed saying that kindness kills when it plainly does not will entrench this hopelessness when the discourse about homelessness needs to be more powerful and intolerantly kind than any other controversy in our society.

Yet it's to be expected in a world where starvation is present always somewhere and a lack of food, like a lack of Shelter is either the fault of outdated social structuring in neo-feudalism - or the simple fact of bad family planning and prudence... the fact simply is, that the facts of homelessness, bad housing and poverty are all rooted in the hopelessness that people won't come together - and will continue fighting in petty groups for resources greater for all if shared in common.

Homelessness organisations pandering to a gross "get a job" sentiment amongst the uneducated will reap the rewards of their message - less donations and less kindness to distribute to those most in need. The only plausible story I've hitherto heard supporting the "killing with kindness" nebulous hypothesis was from a Housing Justice publication where the experience of a outreach worker, faced with getting a long term crack addict into a rehab hostel was undermined by the Christmas giving of goods and money by a Christian organisation, whereupon the addict in question told the outreach worker to bog off because he could obviously do better on the street than engaging in a recovery program.

It sounds plausible in the beginning, but when you examine this story further, it's fallacious. How successful are recovery programs at the best of times, especially when someone is being persuaded into them, rather them seeking them out and interfacing with the programs for themselves? The success rate isn't good. If someone wants to be homeless - they should be allowed to be homeless. Free market and charitable services should be allowed to assist them. But, trying as so many homeless organisations do, to galvanise people behind some unattainable goal of ending homelessness is at the source of the intellectual disingenuous - you're never going to end homelessness - you can certainly end the need for it, in a very short space of time, but then - that would encounter the notion that even crack addicts deserve housing suitable to their needs - rather than what we 'think they need'.

It will also require the tolerance and change of some current religious and other altruistically focused thought systems towards use, abuse and addiction with illegal substances. If the homelessness sector wishes to rail against the law and order focus in government attempts to tackle homelessness - then it will have to be consistent and rail against the Drug War which encourages and then categorises peoples addictive predilections - and then persecutes them.

If our homeless bloke in the story before mentioned were a more acceptable street drinking drunk - would we try and categorise him also as deserving of no or less kindness - would 99% of organisations refuse that person advice, shelter, and support - all because of an addiction which manifested no mental health or issues beyond the fact of addictive use itself? Would we say people were kiling with kindness through giving such a person begging money directly? Because they buy drugs with the money - the money is wasted? The recovery programme was obviously not all that. And this in a country that bans ibogaine treatment. An apparantly fascinating potential temporary and permanent solution to all class A drug addictions. Reason we can't have? It's hallucinogenic and psychotropic. Instant LSD Therapy. Zero - "How does that make you feel?" required. That's no good. You can't hire support workers for that.

You're not going to help anyone out of a bad addiction through restricting their intake to zero. A drug addict will always find their poison - trust me on that - only the individual can decide when enough is enough - only by hitting bottom and becoming spiritually, mentally and physically completely sick of ones own addiction can a person garner the power necessary in themselves to change their circumstances, wither with help or without it. Addiction is the problem, yet you're never going to starve and freeze someone out of their addiction, surely everyone has seen this for a fact themselves? Our current policies and thoughts regarding killing with kindness, such that the question is even being asked, brings a cause for alarm.

That why that story didn't move me - if the crack addict homeless person hadn't received the package with money and had gone into the Shelter as the outreach worked wanted and worked towards than his likelihood of successful imposition of sobriety was awfully low - considering he obviously didn't want to be sober anyway. For me personally - I have seen repeatedly - it is not the drugs themselves whatever they are that cause a person's homelessness - it is society's herd mentality and squeamishness about the fact that humans as sentient and sensual beings will always seek to augmentate their reality with substances that cause tenancy lapses, etc, along with the obvious cost to a persons finances which are the direct cause of our society having a drug war hatred focused policy as regards addictions.

Therefore in a way - if I'm giving money to a homeless person - unlike Thames Reach - I don't care if they spend it on drugs. Drugs should be cheap and legal anyway - addiction would be far less of an issue in our society with more tolerance and kindness - which is informed by wisdom and truth - not the convenient lies of the prohibitionist lobby and those whom have been caught up in their unkind rhetoric. The drug war is causing myriad people to lose their prospect of a better life - not because strictly of the drugs themselves, but how society reacts to people fallen into the traps of addiction the most socially corrosive effects of which are those of the drug war's causing itself. It's not so much the problem of addiction itself, as how we're never going to get anywhere with the perceptions, we hold about it.

As for mental illness and disability related homelessness, the government has brought on a massive crisis in provision through, curiously most of all, politically correct empowerment policies that justify continual lack of support. It keep them (and us) on our toes like... fair do's -

- as for the rest of us, we're just trying to struggle by and not be homeless whilst helping those that are. It's a funny old game... and now, in bizzaroland, I'm wondering how still, do you kill, with kindness?

Kindness doesn't know how to kill. Kindness gives and rejoices in a thousand small seemingly futile gestures of acceptance, involvement and hopeful giving. Kindness is all we have and where we condemn we also fail to understand the motivation and perspectives possible in existence for other people not of our mind perhaps, and in a place, we can't comprehend. People are killed with knives to the throat and repeated beatings of the head. All for being outside. Killing is the cold of winter tucked in a place thought safe but not whilst empty properties lie vacant disused. Killing is expensive, unregulated, unmonitored narcotics designed to relieve the pain of hopelessness in the addiction in a poisoned supply of judgment, misinformation and fear. A State backed up by the State itself. Law and order is killing, where it need not, and homelessness too often brings a person a sense of hopelessness and hopelessness is fear of future beauty, it's when you've been down so long you think it's where you belong. It's simply bullshit. Kindness is the mechanism by which the savage policies of law and order can be overcome and bypassed. It's our greatest weapon.

tl;dr? I think the homelessness sector has better things to do than analyse how kind it is. Killing with kindness has been going on a long time, but it's not really the kindness itself, doing the killing. It's the lack of it. If nefariously antiquated and ridiculous politics and religions clouding the honest notions of what "kind" actually is. Kind isn't kicking out a rape victim and her partner from a shelter, whilst leaving the alleged assailant within. Kindness isn't bailing out banks whilst mortgages are foreclosed on families in a depression and it takes years eventually for housing stock to filter through to those in need. Kind isn't leaving honest hardworking people in bad times out in the cold because they haven't made themselves vulnerable because of drug use, or the suffering of a mental health condition. In a world where kindness and the faith with it is the only proven antidote to poverty, overcoming adversity, and motivating someone - to ask if we are killing with kindness is symptomatic of a wider malaise.

It begins in our minds when we first begin to fear kindness is futile. Why do bad things happen anyway? Because of kindness lacking upon or after the incident in either party.

It's a fear not to take. Kindness is feared because it is difficult and it is different, and something the homelessness sector has become famed for in opposition to a ruling class more into subjugation than emancipation, now government has to hear us, but we are unsure what to say: why???

Because we're busy wondering if WE are killing with kindness!

You couldn't make it up. As Littlejohn would say.

There is killing going on, but it's not, with kindness.

[Tom.]

For BBC TV coverage of OPERATION PONCHO which is ongoing in the City of London click onto this link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7967343.stm


Watch also this second video on the same site:

Mayor's homeless pledge

[Tom.]

It takes a long time for an acorn to grow into a tree. It takes even longer for politicians to listen and react to what the people are saying. The news item below is an example of what many homeless people have been saying for many years, and now it seems there is movement.

Of course time will tell if this is just another empty statement from yet another politician, but let us hope that it is not.

Homeless hostels in there present condition are not acceptable to many homeless people, and quite rightly so.
The behaviour of the residents, as this article states, does need to addressed, but equally, the behaviour of the 'staff ' within these establishments will also need to be considered. "Two wrongs does not make a right," so with attitude problems prevailing on both sides of the divide, little progress will be made until those attitudes are acknowledged and put right.

New homeless regulations unveiled

The regulations will cover temporary accommodation
New regulations aimed at improving living conditions for homeless people have been unveiled.
Communities Minister Malcolm Chisholm said he wanted to ensure that those living in hostels and temporary accommodation had "minimum rights".
He said those providing accommodation would be given "a clear framework within which to support people who are often very vulnerable".
More than £150m will be spent on tackling homelessness over three years.

Mr Chisholm made his announcement during a visit to a hostel in Dundee run by homeless charity Cyrenians.

We have to do more than provide bricks and mortar

Said Malcolm Chisholm Communities Minister
"Homelessness can happen to anyone, and it's not just a housing problem," he said.
"Many people who get into this situation require support to address drug or alcohol problems or mental health issues, others need family support or assistance in accessing employment.
"With the right support, homeless people can turn their lives around."

The proposals unveiled on Wednesday will go out to public consultation.
"We have to do more than provide bricks and mortar," said Mr Chisholm.
"That means investment in a range of different types of accommodation and a huge range of support services for those who need help.
"We want to make sure that people living in hostels and temporary accommodation have minimum rights and that accommodation providers have a clear framework within which to support people who are often very vulnerable."

The regulations also set out the standards of behaviour expected of residents.
Meanwhile, the first dedicated midwifery service for homeless women is being launched in Glasgow.
More than 1,000 women become homeless in Scotland each year while they are pregnant.

It is believed that there are many more who do not report to homeless centres.
Women in this position may not have a GP or be receiving ante-natal advice.
NHS Greater Glasgow has appointed a midwife specifically to deal with this vulnerable group, linking them up to the services they need.
It is hoped that fewer women will fall through the net and can be encouraged to seek help for other issues, like drug or alcohol addictions.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4132845.stm

[Judy101]

when I read these words I had to register so I could voice my opinion. "Killing with Kindness" is about the most logical statement I've heard in my entire experience. I look like a mad person telling people to stop giving me free food, SOLVE THE DAMN PROBLEM that caused me to be facing homelessness. Nobody will do so because every person experiencing hardships, experiencing homelessness has been violated by it's own government system in one way or another. Don't look at the homeless person as the cause to the problem, but look around at your societies and watch at the level of love and concern they have for each other. Once a victim, you learn insane thought patterns and then re-enact them only to be just as evil as the criminal that introduced the negative pattern. The victim does not want to turn into the evil patterns so they are stuck in mental illness or addictions trying to cope with the reality that they are the only one's sane while living in a completely insane world. What part of this world looks sane? Which government system looks and acts perfectly sane? The one's holding all the advice are not the one's solving the problems. Ask the homeless guy what he or she needs and they will tell you every flaw found in our dysfunctional system. Nobody wants to hear it because some body is getting rich off of it. Follow the money..... Solve the problem or you are the problem.

With love
Judy

[ncn]

The London Olympics will be a nightmare for those living rough in London, if they don't get moved out which I suspect they will; it's going to become almost impossible to stay in the city where most of the charity organisation are set up. St Martins in the field , The passage etc.
Operation Poncho II is still in full swing in the City of London. "The Pavement" a free magazine for homeless people in London regularly report on it.
Incidentally "The pavement" have a very up to date and comprehensive list of where you can get help and support not only in London but also around the UK.
http://www.thepavement.org.uk/story.php?story=107

ncn

[Janum]

Originally Posted by Judy101

I look like a mad person telling people to stop giving me free food, SOLVE THE DAMN PROBLEM that caused me to be facing homelessness.

1. Stop taking free food if you hate it so much.
2. What makes you think humble people trying to ensure food security for societies most unmoneyed people have anymore power than you to "SOLVE THE DAMN PROBLEM"?
3.

The one's holding all the advice are not the one's solving the problems. Ask the homeless guy what he or she needs and they will tell you every flaw found in our dysfunctional system. Nobody wants to hear it because some body is getting rich off of it. Follow the money..... Solve the problem or you are the problem.

Never a truer word said. Physician. Heal thyself.

[ncn]

In away I understand the frustration of being given too much food.
When I was on the road I'd simple except the kind offer and then pass it on to someone else who needed it more than I.
Normally I didn't have to look far.