How Are The Homeless?

It was Monday night. A busy day of work was behind me, and as it tends to happen I could not wait to get home. My eagerness was not so much caused by the melodramatic, clichéd apathy of employment, but I was more anxious to reach some shelter due to the bitter cold weather. It was dark and grey, with a violent wind. The only blessing was the momentary pause in the rain.

On my way down the High Street in Canterbury, on the bridged area near restaurants like Ask or Marlowe’s, I came across C. The homeless man was sitting in his familiar place by the bridge, asking people for spare change in his usual particularly quiet and polite demeanour. I calmed my haste, and stopped to talk to him. The cold was inevitably beating down on the poor man, although he had managed to purchase himself a cup of coffee and a Cornish pasty. I asked him how he had been, and his answers, although still framed with his polite phrasing, could not speak of shining moments.

He was cold. He was unsure of his shelter for that evening. He was waiting to be accepted to a hostel on the following day, but due to the weather, the forthcoming night seemed daunting. C. spoke to me of his hopes of getting enough money to perhaps hire a room is some cheap B&B for the night. As if to emphasize his words, the wind attacked us. I reached for my wallet and passed C. a few pound coins, wishing him the best. Later that night, after being caught in a bit of blizzard myself, I sincerely hoped the polite beggar had found some modest roof above his head.

I kept thinking of C. throughout the week. As I made my way around Canterbury again on Friday, I was hoping to see him in his familiar location, and ask him if he perhaps needed some warmer clothing. I did not see C. However, an hour later, after meeting David, I learnt why. Between Monday and Friday, the police had fined C. for begging, and as he was unable to pay, C. had been banned from the city centre. He could no longer sit by his bridge. The council was, I heard, clamping down on begging on the streets. In the dawn of the new spring and tourist season, the bridge had no place for an unfortunate, however polite and courteous beggar. Suddenly my Friday felt gloomy.

Juha Virtanen



Juha and I had just met up that Friday afternoon. We walked and talked, turned a corner and were heading for the delightful Castle Arts Café to acquire a quiet space to think and converse. It was then that we came across a scene which for me proved both worrying and a great relief. Two policemen were taking notes and talking to Luke, a man I met two weeks ago when trying to find a friend of mine named J.

Two weeks previously, I had arranged to meet J. as I had a spare quilt and he was in need of one. He had owned a number of items of bedding until recently, when upon leaving his duvet and blankets for all of ten minutes, the Council sent in its heavies and in his absence confiscated them. Whether they justified it as fly-tipping, or were just trying to creatively find ways to make life difficult, they took them without a word. These were clearly the possessions of somebody homeless, left at the spot the homeless always sit, and clearly needed. At the allotted time, J. didn’t turn up and I hadn’t seen him since. Naturally I began to worry for the man who in my experience was always in town. Yet upon turning the corner that Friday, my anxiety was lifted. Stood a few steps away from Luke, who was looking sheepish and avoiding the gaze of the policemen, there he was – back from the dead – J. We chatted for a few minutes. I told him that his duvet was still available and where to pick it up, and he informed me that he had been horrifically beaten whilst sleeping in a car park.

I should really have noticed sooner that his nose was entirely bent out of shape and his right eye still a little swollen. An undisclosed number of drunken idiots had decided that fuelled with enough Dutch courage to enter a dark car park, they would go in and beat up a sleeping J. He was punched in the face, had his nose broken and his head stamped on, and all presumably as he lay relatively duvet-less.

The story of J. is a fascinating and frustrating one. I’ve known him for about two years (though he has been on the Council’s housing list for three and a half). When we first met he had a girlfriend and a dog with whom he shared his spot. The three had seemed inseparable, though it was clear that his girlfriend wasn’t in the best of health. She said very little, in fact I’m not sure I remember her speaking once. J. is a good man. I know nothing of his history, but I have followed his life for a long enough period to consider him nothing but polite, helpful and friendly. There are some beggars I know of in this city who are known according to J. as aggressive beggars. They sit down in the underpass near the Odeon, drinking sherry and abusing those who ignore them. I can understand the want to abuse in the face of a public who wish to forget that you exist. They do not want a constant reminder that there is poverty in this country, and in an attempt at maintaining a guilt-free life, feel that ignoring the homeless is the best idea. Yet through this, the vast majority of those begging are nothing but friendly and grateful.

Not long after our first meeting, in a brief spell of good fortune, his girlfriend inherited a trailer from her grandmother and the two planned to go and live (with their dog) on the outskirts of the city in the caravan park. This seemed a much better option than the previous place they had tried to live in Ramsgate found for them by the Council, where every night would see a drugs raid on the flat below them. Night after night of sirens and noise pushed them back onto the street for the sake of his girlfriend’s health.

So off they went to live under a safe, quiet roof that they owned. They did so for a few weeks… that is until the Council stepped in. Unfortunately there was an ongoing attempt to decrease the size of, and eventually remove the caravan parks that lie at the edge of the city. The locals didn’t like these ‘gypsy’ types it seems and the Council doing its duty to the electorate were on a crusade. J’s girlfriend’s grandmother had lived in that trailer for near on thirty years, had planted apple trees and a hedge around it, and to all intensive purposes created a permanent home. The park warden had let her live there with no qualms whatsoever, but unfortunately the park has recently been sold to the Council who have very different ideas it seems. J. was told that despite his girlfriend owning the trailer, they could not live there and that they were on Council land. Having little money and even less idea of what was going on, the two of them were unable to represent themselves in the court battle that ensued, and as such lost all they had hoped for and returned once again to the streets. And how was it they were unable to find representation in court? After all if you cannot afford legal representation, the services of such a fellow will be provided for you. That of course assumes though that their legal representative bothers to appear in court on the day of the decision, and as luck can hardly be said to be on the side of J. and his girlfriend, they were appointed a deserter. Surely then the court postponed the case as the trial was unfairly balanced? No, they were left high and dry once again.

Soon after this event, J’s girlfriend left him. She was by this time very ill and moved away to live with family (though why they hadn’t helped before I do not know). J. kept his dog, though bringing the story back to the present, it is now living with friends of his. The poor animal has arthritis in its back legs and couldn’t feasibly spend the winter nights outside.

Why have I told this tale of woe, the frustrating disbelief of which seems never-ending for J? It is because it was he who gave Juha and I the news of the crackdown which led to the expulsion of C. I reiterate that the Council at various points have given him a home living above a regularly raided drug dealer, put him back onto the street despite him finding a home himself, then stolen his warmth, and left him in danger of a beating. If this is what life was like before then I dread to think what the effect on the homeless of Canterbury will be if there is a ‘crackdown’. Incidentally I have to wonder whether the implementation of these harsh new methods has anything to do with the recent change of hands after the Council elections from a Labour/Liberal Democrat split to Conservative control.

I do not know why Luke was being questioned. Perhaps it is because Big Issue sellers are not allowed to approach anyone or call out in any way, and I have certainly known him to advertise the magazine with reasonable volume. J. seemed outside of the interrogation and so the worrying situation of seeing two people I know questioned by the police was lessened. However, I wonder at the J’s prospects, being as they are fewer now that he must watch his back at all times.

Juha and I left J. to continue on our way to get a coffee whereupon our conversation, though it began on the subject of homelessness, soon turned to our own personal matters. The insignificant always works its way through when one’s own problems are concerned. Though J’s story continues to fill me with rage and sadness, this tale must end with an admission of guilt on my part, for though my life is relatively worry free and pleasant – I do so very little to help the man who has influenced me so much.

David Nettleingham


By Juha Virtanen & David Nettleingham

Copyright March 2006