Coalition for the Homeless: We had just sued Amtrak on the grounds they cannot throw people out of Penn Station ... We worked out a plan that we would assist people into moving into temporary shelter if Amtrak would not evict people. Mike Harris
US to Offer Housing Vouchers To Lure Homeless From The Subways. The New York Times, Metro Section article
The trouble with going to the Opera is you keep tripping over all these people tucking up for the night. I suppose they really must enjoy it. Rumpole of the Bailey s7e5: Rumpole and the Family Pride, Her Ladyship, ITV 1992
Above all others I pity the homeless: where can they go to masturbate? Robert Clark
I don’t want to be his only thing. The Soloist 2009 starring Jamie Foxx & Robert Downey junior & Catherine Keener & Tom Hollander & Lisa Gay Hamilton & Nelsan Ellis & Rachael Harris & Stephen Root & Lorraine Toussaint & Justin Martin & Octavia Spencer & Jena Malone & Lemon Anderson et al, director Joe Wright, Steve Lopez to counsellor
I’ve done good by you, haven’t I? ibid. Downey to Foxx
If I ever see you again, I’ll cut you like a fish. ibid. Foxx to Downey
You are of no consequence: Nathaniel Ayers. ibid. commentary
Sometimes friends piss each other off, right. It’s part of the deal. Mr Ayers, I’m honoured to be your friend. ibid. Downey to Foxx
A year ago I met a man who was down on his luck and thought I might be able to help him. I don’t know that I have. Yes, my friend Mr Ayes now sleeps inside. He has a key. He has a bed. But his mental state and his well-being are as precarious now as the day we met. There are people who tell me I’ve helped him. Mental health experts who say that a simple act of being someone’s friend can change his brain chemistry, improve his function in the world. I can’t speak for Mr Ayers in that regard. Maybe our friendship has helped him, maybe not. I can however speak for myself. I can tell you that by witnessing Mr Ayer’s courage, his humility, his faith in the power of his art I have learned the dignity of being loyal to something you believe in. Holding on to him. Above all else believing without question. That it will carry you home. ibid. at Beethoven concert
Mr Ayers still sleeps inside and is a member of LAMP. He continues to play the cello, as well as the violin, bass, piano, guitar, trumpet, French horn, drums and harmonica. ibid. banner
Mr Lopez continues to write his column for the LA Times. He is learning the guitar. ibid.
There are 90,000 homeless people on the streets of greater Los Angeles. ibid.
Washington (UP): The US Department of Health and Human Services said Thursday that it was about to begin testing a new technology designed to help more closely monitor and assist the nation’s homeless population. Under the pilot scheme, which grew out of a series of policy academies held in the last two years, homeless people in participating cities will be implanted with mandatory Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags that social workers and police can use to monitor their movements. Press release
I live in Trafalgar Square,
With four lions to guard me,
Pictures and statues all over the place,
Lord Nelson staring me straight in the face,
Of course it’s rather draughty
But still I’m sure you'll agree,
If it’s good enough for Lord Nelson,
It’s quite good enough for me. Popular music hall song
You discover boredom and mean complications and the beginnings of hunger, but you also discover the great redeeming feature of poverty: the face that it annihilates the future …
And there is another feeling that is a great consolation in poverty. I believe everyone who has been hard up has experienced it. It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
The spike consisted simply of a bathroom and lavatory and, for the rest, long double rows of stone cells, perhaps a hundred cells in all. It was a bare, gloomy place of stone and whitewash, unwillingly clean, with a smell which, somehow, I had foreseen from its appearance; a smell of soft soap, Jeyes’ fluid and latrines – a cold, discouraging, prisonish smell. ibid.
To my eye these Salvation Army shelters, though clean, are far drearier than the worst of the common lodging-houses. There is such a hopelessness about some of the people there – decent, broken-down types who have pawned their collars but are still trying for office jobs. Coming to a Salvation Army shelter, where it is at least clean, is their last clutch at respectability. ibid.
The dormitory was a great attic like a barrack room, with sixty or seventy beds in it. There were clean and tolerably comfortable, but very narrow and very close together, so that one breathed straight into one’s neighbour’s face. Two officers slept in the room, to see that there was no smoking and no talking after lights-out … He was the kind of thing that prevents one from ever getting enough sleep when men are herded as they are in these lodging rooms. ibid.
The fact is that the Salvation Army are so in the habit of thinking themselves a charitable body that they cannot even run a lodging-house without making it stink of charity. ibid.
The dormitory was dark and close, fifteen beds in it. There was a horrible hot reek of urine, so beastly that at first one tried to breathe in small, shallow puffs not filling one’s lungs to the bottom. ibid.
He had a gift for phrases. He had managed to keep his brain intact and alert, and so nothing could make him succumb to poverty. He might be ragged and cold, or even starving, but so long as he could read, think, and watch for meteors, he was, as he said, free in his own mind. ibid.
It is worth saying something about the social position of beggars, for when one has consorted with them, and found that they are ordinary human beings, one cannot help being struck by the curious attitude that society takes towards them. People seem to feel that there is some essential difference between beggars and ordinary ‘working’ men. They are a race apart – outcasts, like criminals and prostitutes. ibid.
He had not eaten since the morning, had walked several miles with a twisted leg, his clothes were drenched, and he had a halfpenny between himself and starvation. With all this, he could laugh over the loss of his razor. One could not help admiring him. ibid.
By seven we had wolfed our bread and tea and were in our cells. We slept one in a cell, and there were bedsteads and straw palliasses, so that one ought to have had a good night’s sleep. But no spike is perfect, and the peculiar shortcoming at Lower Binfield was the cold. The hot pipes were not working, and the two blankets we had been given were thin cotton things and almost useless. It was only autumn, but the cold was bitter. ibid.
The paupers talked interestingly about workhouse life. They told me, among other things, that the thing they really hated in the workhouse, as a stigma of charity, is the uniform; if the men could wear their own clothes, or even their own caps and scarves, they would not mind being paupers. ibid.
Our dormitory was a barn-like room with thirty beds close together, and a tub to serve as a common chamber-pot. It stank abominably, and the older men coughed and got up all night. But being so many together kept their room warm, and we had some sleep. ibid.
It is a queer that a tribe of men, tens of thousands in number, should be marching up and down England like so many Wandering Jews. ibid.
I shall never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, nor subscribe to the Salvation Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant. That is a beginning. ibid.
A home? Ha ha. Who needs a home, these days, Rab? We’re all rudderless ships in a black night tossed by the icy storms. Rab C Nesbitt, Heat, BBC 1999
These are the down and out. Familiar images of displaced people on our streets, far removed from our lives. Most of us feel we could never end up like this yet some of us do. Down and Out in America, 1986
In the land of opportunity there are 34 million people living in poverty. 20 million a day go hungry. 2 million are homeless. Here in the heartland of America there is great devastation. The family farmer, the backbone of America, is being driven off his land. ibid.
Ten years ago the banks encouraged these farmers to borrow and expand. The policy has backfired, and now the Farm Credit system is in trouble. They are calling in old loans and denying old ones. ibid.
3,500 jobs a day are moving out of this country. The rubber industry has gone to Mexico. Electronics has gone to South Korea. Textiles to the far east. ibid.
Rough sleeping in British has doubled over the past six years. And increasing numbers are women, from those fleeing violence to expectant mothers. Tonight, with public services under more threat than ever, Dispatches goes undercover to put councils to the test. We investigate claims many are failing in their duty to help vulnerable women off the streets. Dispatches: Britain’s Homeless Scandal, BBC 2017
There are no official figures on the number of homeless women. ibid.
Pregnancy should be an exciting time. But what do you do if you are expecting but have no place to call home? Dispatches: Born Homeless, Channel 4 2019
More and more pregnant women are facing homelessness. ibid.
Over the summer term Dispatches has followed three boys from the same class struggling with poverty, homelessness and overcrowding. The £20 cuts in Universal Credit means as many as 300,000 more children are being pushed below the poverty line. But with fuel prices at an all-time high, and landlords once again being able to evict tenants, homelessness is also threatening Britain’s most vulnerable children. Dispatches: Growing Up Poor: Britain’s Hidden Homeless Kids, Channel 4 2023
I need something. I crave speed in my love. Carts of Darkness, 2008
Recently, I discovered a group of outsiders living in my neighbourhood making these hills their own. No-one else seems to see them. ibid.
My brother’s got a cartful of empties. ibid.
I used to notice broken down shopping carts randomly discarded at the side of the road. And always wondered why they were left there. ibid.
I live in a bush. Collect cans. ibid.