I am still amazed that homelessness still exists in London. I often walk past Big Issue sellers (whom apparently are homeless) and beggars (who look homeless) and wonder how did these people get into this situation and why are they still in it.
I wonder if I was to sit down with one of them and offer them a lunch in a restaurant (assuming they would be allowed in), and discussed with them a plan to get their life back in order, and if they seemed like all they needed was a leg up, give them a hand and whether this would help.
I hear sometimes that homeless people are there because they are mentally ill and unable to navigate the system to provide them-selves with accommodation and that they have fallen through the cracks.
Perhaps if I could work out what a specific individual needed, it probably wouldn’t be more than a few hundred quid, to put them back on the path whether this would turn their lives around.
Perhaps if this approach worked say 1 or 2 times out of 10, then maybe a fund could be set up to tackle the problem and treat people as individuals and put to work an army of kind people to do this work on mass.
I wonder if people are desperate, they might want to learn a skill and become self-sustaining in the market place. Perhaps this could be part of the plan.
If this was run by someone like me who knows industry, who knows what to teach someone so they are guaranteed to get a job, rather than the wishy washy skills taught by some job person from the government career advice centre, who hasn’t been able to get much of a job themselves.
Perhaps even taught this person to be entrepreneurial?
The danger is that the money is taken for drugs, drink etc, but if the money was given instead in the form of a program, perhaps this might work.
When I am richer, this might be a worthwhile area of investigation to see what else is going on and whether there is truly an individual based solution out there.
Amendment…
The article on the Guardian web site which I found when googling for pictures for this post, says “based on returns from 400 charities”…
400 charities! Surely there can’t be 400 charities set up for homelessness in the UK. If 400 charities can’t sort it out then either they are totally inept (or corrupt), or I totally don’t understand the problem or it’s a lost cause, or the Guardian is lying (most likely cause).
This definitely warrants more investigation.
