On the 6th
March Everyday Kingston, Kingston Churches Action on Homelessness & the
YMCA SouthWest London will partner for SleepEasy 2015, when a number of brave
souls will sleep out in the Memorial Gardens to raise money for these
organisations working together to support the homeless in the borough. We’ll
launch with live music and on-stage presentations before heading out into the
hall and the Gardens themselves. If you want to join us, please e-mail our team to see where you might be needed

Homelessness and rough sleeping in the streets of London is
a problem which refuses to go away: tragically it is rough sleepers themselves –
and not homelessness as a phenomenon – who are usually seen as the problem, whether by local authorities, residents, workers or passers-by. The truth is though
that they are not the problem, not by a long-shot: the biggest problem is with
our hearts.

I’ve been getting to know rough sleepers to different
degrees and at different times since the late 1990’s when I first moved to
London as an 18 year old student; I’ve had friends who lost jobs and homes and
spent time on the streets but went on to recover and establish themselves in homes
and work again; I have friends who have been homeless for anywhere up to 19
years – and make no mistake, 19 years represents a rare longevity of life span
for a street homeless individual. Despite all of this exposure to the homeless
community what has shocked me most in the past year has been the slow realisation
of my own easy acceptance of other people’s misery… years ago I spent one unplanned
for & fitful night on the streets of London myself, eventually falling asleep on a
thrown out mattress in a private alleyway behind a pub. It was a grim night,
and yet in the morning I was able to find my way home to all the luxuries we’ve
come to take for granted. Those who find themselves homeless for a second night on
the streets of London find themselves in the throes of a waking nightmare…

Quite apart from the social stigma and isolation they
experience my street homeless friends describe fending off foxes who brush against their faces, having their meagre
belongings stolen, being robbed, attacked, kicked, urinated on and even burned… statistically
they are far more likely to be drug or alcohol addicted, mentally unwell and to die before
their time… spend some time with the Street Pastors in Kingston on any given
night and you’ll find tightly packed crowds of hundreds of young men and women spending thousands
of pounds on booze, cigarettes and kebabs literally feet away from utterly destitute individuals sitting or lying in shop doorways. The juxtaposition is a terrifying
indictment of our apathetic society as everything about this picture screams “we don’t care”; tragically, terrifyingly, it’s a picture played out in our streets night after night, week after week, month after month. It has to stop. 

Some – many – individuals do care of course, and the majority of men and women
in the homeless community are incredibly grateful for the kindnesses that
people show them. The truth is that Christians can do a lot of good by showing
simple courtesy to homeless people rather than just passing them by… but with all the riches of God’s mercy in Jesus, surely we can do much more. 

I’m horrified that it’s
taken me nearly 20 years of detached exposure to this particular social injustice to
realise that it is pure wrong for my pet cat to enjoy a better standard of life
than the thousands of people who are sleeping out in the streets of London
tonight. We can’t ignore this any longer… Would you please join us in
praying and acting to alleviate and even eradicate the problem of homelessness
in this city? We want to become a community of people who loves those that
society has cast out and given up on, but we also want to push for lasting
transformation – we need homes, money and life-changing grace for these precious
men and women. We need faith that our Father, the God of the impossible, can do
what no one else can…  

We are growing in our friendship with the street homeless
community in Kingston and a number of them are currently taking part in our
Alpha course. Please pray for our dear friends by name: Rab, Andrzej,
Sebastian, Artur, Aurimas, Darren, David, Steve, Christian, Marc, Mark, Sam,
Kelly, Kirk… God has a wonderful plan for each of them and Jesus died to give
them abundant life.

From the Crisis website: 

Rough sleeping, as with homelessness in general, is a particular problem
in London. In 2008, as a result of campaigning by Crisis and others, the Mayor
of London committed to ending rough sleeping by 2012. However, despite
the support of the Coalition Government, this target has not been met. When
an individual is contacted by outreach teams or other services working with
rough sleepers in London, their details are entered onto the Combined
Homelessness and Information Network (CHAIN) database. According to
CHAIN, 6,508 people slept rough at some point in London during 2013/14,
an increase of one per cent on the previous year’s total of 6,437 but this
is more than double the number six years ago. 

CHAIN also tells us that:

·        
4,363 people were new rough
sleepers, 1,413 people were seen sleeping rough for two or more
years, and 732 have returned to rough sleeping after a gap of a year or
more. 

·        
87 per cent are male, 69 per cent are
white. 

·        
57 per cent are aged between 26
and 45 years with 12 per cent under 25 and 10 per cent over 55.

·        
Many have one or more support
needs: 43 per cent alcohol; 31 per cent drugs; 46 per cent mental
health. The proportion of rough sleepers with no support needs has risen to 28
per cent, compared to 17 per cent in 2010/11.  

·        
33 per cent have been in prison at
some point, 9 per cent in care and 10 per cent in the armed forces.

·        
Where nationality was recorded, 2,945
people rough sleeping were UK nationals – 46 per cent of the
total.  32 per cent were from Central and Eastern European
countries. For more information see ‘Homelessness
among different groups’.