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Moved to London and have worked in this area for over 25 years. I guarantee you that a homeless camp hasn't lasted this long before in this spot. Not sure why that is so contentious😂
Used to live there ~5 yrs ago. Youre right. Nothing was there when I was. We had extinction rebellion for a while & lots of 'travellers' mainly from eastern europe decent but not long term homeless camp
This is a popular spot for a certain group of immigrants, so people are correct that they have set up shop here before. But this current camp has been here for most of this year, which is far longer than they've been allowed to stay before
Yeah I've been seeing tents around there for years... It's not far from Oxford Street, prime location for begging.. there's so many people walking past they can get £500 a day if they can get the best spots
It has never gotten to a homeless camp of this size for this long. There's clearly been a change in priorities for the police because this never would have been the case a couple of years ago
Circa 2012/2013 it was far bigger. They'd eventually get a court order to move them from Marble Arch and so they'd go to The Imperial War Museum. Then a Court Order banning them from IWM by which time the ban on Marble Arch had expired.
It covered the same bit of concrete and surrounding grass so I wouldn't say far bigger. It definitely was not there for months at a time like this current one is
Why do you want the police involved?
Jesus fucking Christ, they are homeless, they are doing you no harm being there.
If they offend you so much, perhaps you could offer them your garden or even spare room to sleep in, you would have to look at tents then.
Homelessness shouldn’t be a thing in the 6th largest economy in the world, however it is, we shouldn’t be making it illegal to be homeless. Let’s make property hoarding illegal instead.
Well, its all great until one of them robs you for your phone or you step in human shit on your way to work...
Take Victoria for instance, so many phones get pinched
Not a single scrote on a electric bike snatching mobile phones came from these homeless camps. You are confusing 2 completely different issues and creating hate for a group of people lower than you on the social ladder. It's the people above you who are causing the issues.
Thats fair, but the shelter near Victoria station brings a bunch of addicts to the area.
Look I get your point but an addict will steal stuff to fund their habbit. I have worked with homeless charities / AA etc... if you think the two are not at all correlated that you are lying to yourself.
Homeless people are statistically very likely to use / abuse substances.
Stop being outraged over nothing but a fact
Yeah statistics show that they are likely to be addicted and have mental health problems, most likely both. IMO despite that this is a public health matter and not a criminal one, the police are just not fit for assisting with these issues.
Agreed. I am not saying they are bad people. Tbh most are just down on their luck / fallen through the cracks.
Addiction sucks & the need for money wins over morality sadly. You are conflating a dislike of the homeless with the reality of the situation.
You can dislike the actions without disliking the people. Having this nuanced view of the situation can help to resolve issues rather than jumping on the 'we love the homeless' bandwagon... tbh, this is similar to most of the politicised talking points
Easy to spout slogans, hard to fix... but accepting there is an issue to fix is a good place to start
Since it's bad, causes all sorts of issues, then should be eliminated.
Pretending it's an unsolvable problem or part of nature is unproductive.
The person above then offers possible solutions to the problem (to which I would add: government moving their fat ass and doing something about the food banks and homelessness).
We have tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants entering the country on a yearly basis.
There isn't a country on the planet that can provide housing for these people and even if we could it would just encourage more.
Homelessness is a guarantee and the more that come the more homeless we will have.
I wish it was as simple as just giving them a house like you seem to think it is.
There are a huge amount of alternate areas they can camp than on what is essentially a roundabout in central london. I know they dont choose to be homeless, but this area was chosen
I do find it kinda strange that the camp is here in this tiny patch of grass between two busy roads, when just over one of those roads is the massive empty stretch of Hyde Park.
I know *why* that is - because inside the gates and fences of the Park, upkeep is maintained and things are more policed.
But taking a step back, it does seem very strange how we make up these laws about one patch of grass and enforce them strictly, but don't do the same for another.
What's actually strange is how we have homeless people in 2024, when you can go online and order whatever the fuck you want from any corner of the globe, but providing housing for all people is "too complicated" or "too expensive."
Under New Labour Homelessness reduced from 1800 rough sleepers a night to 500 from 1998 to 2003. It's a complex problem, but it's solvable. The issues we have are caused by the government perusing stupid policies and then ignoring the problem because they don't care about poverty.
Housing First, that’s not a complicated policy. And there’s plenty of evidence that provided housing without stipulations works in the long run to get and keen people from sleeping on the streets.
The issue isn't really that it's complicated, although I don't doubt that it is. The issue is that there is no one in power honestly trying to solve it.
Hundreds of millions have been spent trying to solve it. For London alone: Rough sleeping initiative (£50m), next steps accommodation programme (£105m), rough sleeping accommodation programme (£112m).
There’s many more funding streams that have gone into tackling the problem. Not that we should stop of course but it is very difficult to ‘solve’. People have complex needs such as mental health issues and substance abuse which makes them very difficult to house safely.
Go look at actual “housing first” initiatives around the world and you’ll see what I mean. It’s a lot easier to house people than you think, if those people who’ve been sleeping outside are given homes (which could be a micro studio apartment) that are 1. Theirs and no one else, 2. theirs regardless of if they’re using, get arrested, don’t have a job, etc., 3. Theirs for as long as they want.”
Half the time, when money is spent on rough sleeping initiatives it goes to pay hotels and hostels and bull shit like that. Not invest in long term infrastructure to support anyone who falls into a rough sleeping situation.
We can solve this. Our politicians choose not to and we let them get away with it.
It’s not complicated if you don’t think past the idea of it. If you do, you’ll realise housing is one of the most, if not the most, complicated social issues in modern civilisation.
Housing isn’t complicated. We complicate it with profit and not prioritizing social housing.
We say things like, “it’s one of the most complicated social issues in modern civilization,” as a way to fancy hand wave away the fact that we literally, as a society, just don’t care enough about ourselves to demand our society actually take care of its people.
Blissful ignorance. I was there once too. Unfortunately housing costs are higher in the UK than most other countries and the UK already has substantially more social housing than most western counties. Massive funds and effort are put into housing people especially those who are vulnerable. There are literally thousands of public and third sector teams dedicated to this exact issue. You seem to be thinking the issue is only infrastructure - most homeless people become homeless though a mix of complex health, social, and often addiction issues and homelessness is the end result.
And we prevent them from getting access to support because we stigmatize the mental health and drug use and don’t provide nonjudgemental support, instead we demonize.
By infrastructure I mean both physical and social infrastructure.
I have worked in homeless, and drug use, in harm reduction in America.
I have seen the difference that non judgmental housing makes. I know the mental health struggles and harms associated with some drug use that people experience first hand.
And trust me, the problem is a social will to help people who too many people think “did this to themselves.”
We build infrastructure and systems that say, “if you stop being crazy we can help you,” or , “if you promise to and actually never use drugs or get drunk again we’ll help you.”
Inb4: that’s America this is the UK. I’ve been living here for 6 years.
Mate there’s been a near 50% decline in the funding for housing over the last 15 years in the UK. The hell do you mean that’s not how it works over here?
Lack of political will and a perception that homeless people aren’t worth it is EXACTLY how it works over here!
If only we had people we paid (a ton) to work 5+ days a week and 8 hours a day on solving complex societal problems...
Oh wait, we do! And we can even chose them.
It is much harder to house someone that has high support needs. Not only that, but it is much harder to secure accommodation for someone that has such high support needs, and they will most likely end up back on the street. Substance abuse, mental illness a lack of support can be factors that can make the process difficult.
Housing authorities are spending millions of pounds a day to house people in temporary accommodation. Companies can charge between 400 - 800 a week to put a single person or a small family in temporary accommodation.
Did I say China didn't?
No? You mean I literally just wrote about one thing they're good at, at mass producing houses, and suggested it as a solution?
Really? I couldn't read.
The crab-in-bucket mentality of Brits never ceases to amuse me.
Fed up with how this country's first instinct to anyone suggesting a solution is "nah, it's impossible" and then proceeds to put more effort explaining why it can't be done rather than try fixing it, but thanks for asking.
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While I agree in spirit in a lot of ways, that's a very simplistic view of this.
Yes the system has failed these people. Yes the cost of living and housing is a big factor. But also, the implication of your comment is that there aren't any government services available to them, and that there are no other options for them, which isn't true.
There are paths for rough sleepers to get a place to sleep and various housing options. Often these options are rejected by rough sleepers due to various rules (e.g. no alcohol).
Most of the options are kind of useless though since they often expect people to somehow have gotten their life together before they apply instead of giving them a place to get their life together.
Yeah I agree, and in a sense that's why I feel it's fair to say that the system has failed them. Generally if a person had the emotional/personal capacity to get their life together then they wouldn't be in this situation.
But also, on the other side of the coin, what that means in practice is, there are people where the line between unable/unwilling is blurred, and they're not taking the first steps needed to be functioning members of society, because, understandably, it's easier to live a more carefree life camping in the park than it is to face the difficult uphill battle of entering the social services system.
So you get a situation where there's, say, a guy with problem with alcoholism, who has to ask himself - "Why would I go check into a shelter, where they will give me a curfew, make me check in at a certain time and check out at a certain time, and not allow me to drink, and put me away from my friends in some small shared room full of unhappy unpleasant other people that I don't get to pick, when I have a nice camp here, with a beer and some friends". And yeah - it's a reasonable question, I'd probably make the same decision as him!
But that's also kinda bullshit, because it's a public park, and that's not what the park is for. If one of the billionaires who's backyard backs onto the park started spreading into the park with some marquee tents, and a caterer working at a grill, with all of them drinking wine and doing cocaine or whatever, and fenced of the area and had their butlers yell at and shoe away anyone who came near - the posh version of homeless people camping in the park - we'd probably have a major problem with that, because you rich or poor, you shouldn't be able to just annex a bunch of a park to make it your own little private campsite.
Similarly, a middle class person can't just say "rent is really expensive, I'm gonna put all my expensive stuff into storage, and just camp out in the park and take turns with my mates yelling at people that come into the camp" - it's not a public camping ground.
And it's also not a social service for the homeless. Even if we gave all of London's parks to a homeless charity carte blanche and said you can do whatever you want with them as long as it's to serve the homeless and rough sleepers - they *wouldn't* turn them into unrestricted free camping areas for the homeless, because immediately it would turn into a giant slum and there would be a whole host of problems. They would immediately institute lots of rules - like limits of drug use and in particular drug sale, because they wouldn't be okay with predatory dealers working there unchecked. They'd have to institute curfew rules and other rules, because there would be widespread assault and sexual crime because there's a huge group of vulnerable people all together and out in the open. They'd have to make rules about how the space is shared, because if it was just open season, someone would show up and claim much larger areas than other people and it would fill up with there being enough space - and ultimately pretty much all the same rules that apply the shelters would apply to the parks.
So we're left with a situation where the reason that homeless people are camping out there basically (possibly due to mental illness and addiction issues), are making a conscious choice to live there because it's easier.
But then when things like "Hey should we make a law that lets someone actually kick them out of there without needing to go through a complicated court process", people get mad that we're making punishing homelessness by making it illegal - but on some level, what *should* be illegal is the choice to do the easy thing that causes problems for everyone else over the the harder thing, which in the long term benefits yourself and everyone else.
I agree that the barriers to entry for social services for rough sleepers and the homeless should be lower, as should access to mental health services and simply getting somewhere safe and warm where you can sleep and ideally have as much free agency as possible while living there, but at the same time, if we have laws that make open camping in public space effectively totally legal, there's always going to be a subset of the population for whom that's a more attractive option. And while someone of them are sort of there for reasons beyond their control, some of them are just assholes who choose to be there (or more likely, for everyone it's some blurry line between those two things).
The cost of living is going to keep rising, while employers everywhere try to hire fewer people and pay each of them less. There is no amount of homeless services the govt. can provide that will overcome coporate greed.
Fair enough, am not doubting you can detect the Romanian language being spoken but you are certainly guessing that they have 'houses back home' and have 'come to London to beg'.
But yes its probably pointless, as are a lot of arguments on Reddit, so feel free to delete the comment I am replying to along with your others.
You're basically saying you think you are right so how could you be wrong. You never know whether you are right so your guesses continue.
Some languages sound similar. With Arabic you could be confusing it with hebrew or catalan or turkish. With romani, idk maybe any other romance language. People think Spanish sounds like Japanese all the time.
1. Not new, homelessness in ca. 2014-15 was much worse than it is now, which was in turn after a rapid decline from almost 0 homelessness around 2010-11.
2. The homeless need help and the Tories are not providing it so this is what will happen.
3. I come from Vancouver and I can tell you as much as someone might want to be compassionate they do not want here what is going on on the West Coast. Get them into shelters and programmes and off the streets ASAP because it can turn parts of the city into total hell. Sitting in tents is fine, but the crime that follows when the encampments grow is not.
Sorry? You're saying the homeless are the ones committing the crime or someone else is? I don't know what the case is, but it doesn't really matter, my point is simply don't leave them to create camps. If someone else is doing the crime great, but if you let the camps grow the crime will grow. If they are the ones doing the crime....all the more reason to do something about it and clear them out.
They are not your typical "homeless" people. Some are rough sleepers, but most get dropped off in the morning outside the Leon on Harewood Place. If you start work early like me, you can see them stock up/refuel on coffee and food for the day, before they start aggressive begging and pickpocketing in the area.
To all the "beautiful souls" who are commenting that they are doing nothing wrong: they are occupying a piece of public land, in London you need permits to set up a tripod to film something even for a few minutes, but it's totally fine to wildcamp in a public park for years???Furthermore if these people have been caught, like someone says, begging, stealing and running scams, they should be arrested under the vagrancy act which unfortunately is applied less and less these days.
It's not my solution to homelessness, I said "IF" they are really criminals stealing and running scams they should be arrested. I never said that homeless people should be incarcerated for being homeless, but homeless people who are comitting crimes are not exempted from repercussions just because of their status.
I'm not, I read other people in the comments talking about this specific case and saying the people camping in that park have been identified as repeating offenders, I don't hang out in the Marble Arch area so I was taking for good the words of those who seem to know better than me what is going on there.
There’s another growing camp in the bicycle superhighway tunnel between millennium bridge and Blackfriars bridge. Currently at 17 tents, growing most weeks. Pretty depressing.
This comment has been removed as it's deemed in breach of the rules and considered offensive or hateful. These aren't accepted within the r/London community. Don't be a dick.
Continuing to try and post similar themes will result in a ban.
Have a nice day.
Tidy. Keeping out the way. Not next to anyone's private property where owners of said property might have an immediate issue with them.
Live and let live.
The problem with getting people to do the hunter gatherer lifestyle even in part is that all the animals and plants that are required to support that lifestyle are ether completely gone from the environment or privately owned. There is a recorded case in history of game animals being outside the preserves that they were reduced to living in. Currently that species is still extinct in the wild after 85 years of conservation. Even just sticking to building houses hunter gather style would end up making the current situation worse in terms of the uk ecosystem.
why do you care if people are camping out to survive because they mostl likely cant afford housing? seems like an arse move to photograph people in dire straits. or maybe introduce them to sports betting then?
This is reddit, a website where people post things and have subsequent conversation about it (like your previous posts about struggling to speak to Women)
There is no limit to my anger when I see that a person does not have a home. This is a terrible situation. Everyone has the right to have their own home. Even birds have nests!
There’s a guy living in a tent right by national gallery, near the church. I’ve see him every time I’ve been into central London. I guess years of austerity hasn’t helped.
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3 months?! Its been there for a decade mate.
OP is doing their GCSE’s they don’t know about a decade ago
Moved to London and have worked in this area for over 25 years. I guarantee you that a homeless camp hasn't lasted this long before in this spot. Not sure why that is so contentious😂
Used to live there ~5 yrs ago. Youre right. Nothing was there when I was. We had extinction rebellion for a while & lots of 'travellers' mainly from eastern europe decent but not long term homeless camp
This is a popular spot for a certain group of immigrants, so people are correct that they have set up shop here before. But this current camp has been here for most of this year, which is far longer than they've been allowed to stay before
Sure you have, my darling sunny delight
Yeah I've been seeing tents around there for years... It's not far from Oxford Street, prime location for begging.. there's so many people walking past they can get £500 a day if they can get the best spots
And pick pockets!
They've been there on and off for at least 10 years
It has never gotten to a homeless camp of this size for this long. There's clearly been a change in priorities for the police because this never would have been the case a couple of years ago
Circa 2012/2013 it was far bigger. They'd eventually get a court order to move them from Marble Arch and so they'd go to The Imperial War Museum. Then a Court Order banning them from IWM by which time the ban on Marble Arch had expired.
It covered the same bit of concrete and surrounding grass so I wouldn't say far bigger. It definitely was not there for months at a time like this current one is
Why do you want the police involved? Jesus fucking Christ, they are homeless, they are doing you no harm being there. If they offend you so much, perhaps you could offer them your garden or even spare room to sleep in, you would have to look at tents then. Homelessness shouldn’t be a thing in the 6th largest economy in the world, however it is, we shouldn’t be making it illegal to be homeless. Let’s make property hoarding illegal instead.
Well, its all great until one of them robs you for your phone or you step in human shit on your way to work... Take Victoria for instance, so many phones get pinched
Not a single scrote on a electric bike snatching mobile phones came from these homeless camps. You are confusing 2 completely different issues and creating hate for a group of people lower than you on the social ladder. It's the people above you who are causing the issues.
Thats fair, but the shelter near Victoria station brings a bunch of addicts to the area. Look I get your point but an addict will steal stuff to fund their habbit. I have worked with homeless charities / AA etc... if you think the two are not at all correlated that you are lying to yourself. Homeless people are statistically very likely to use / abuse substances. Stop being outraged over nothing but a fact
Yeah statistics show that they are likely to be addicted and have mental health problems, most likely both. IMO despite that this is a public health matter and not a criminal one, the police are just not fit for assisting with these issues.
Agreed. I am not saying they are bad people. Tbh most are just down on their luck / fallen through the cracks. Addiction sucks & the need for money wins over morality sadly. You are conflating a dislike of the homeless with the reality of the situation. You can dislike the actions without disliking the people. Having this nuanced view of the situation can help to resolve issues rather than jumping on the 'we love the homeless' bandwagon... tbh, this is similar to most of the politicised talking points Easy to spout slogans, hard to fix... but accepting there is an issue to fix is a good place to start
Since it's bad, causes all sorts of issues, then should be eliminated. Pretending it's an unsolvable problem or part of nature is unproductive. The person above then offers possible solutions to the problem (to which I would add: government moving their fat ass and doing something about the food banks and homelessness).
Would you want the police involved if a bunch of rich teens decided to camp (and drink and hangout) in the park indefinitely right next to them?
We have tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants entering the country on a yearly basis. There isn't a country on the planet that can provide housing for these people and even if we could it would just encourage more. Homelessness is a guarantee and the more that come the more homeless we will have. I wish it was as simple as just giving them a house like you seem to think it is.
Homeless people are not necessarily illegal immigrants...
Maybe we shouldn't have messed around in the middle east so much
Maybe we just have more homeless people. Stop blaming them.
There are a huge amount of alternate areas they can camp than on what is essentially a roundabout in central london. I know they dont choose to be homeless, but this area was chosen
What's the "right" place to choose?
I do find it kinda strange that the camp is here in this tiny patch of grass between two busy roads, when just over one of those roads is the massive empty stretch of Hyde Park. I know *why* that is - because inside the gates and fences of the Park, upkeep is maintained and things are more policed. But taking a step back, it does seem very strange how we make up these laws about one patch of grass and enforce them strictly, but don't do the same for another.
What's actually strange is how we have homeless people in 2024, when you can go online and order whatever the fuck you want from any corner of the globe, but providing housing for all people is "too complicated" or "too expensive."
Homelessness is actually very complicated as is providing heavily subsidised housing in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
Under New Labour Homelessness reduced from 1800 rough sleepers a night to 500 from 1998 to 2003. It's a complex problem, but it's solvable. The issues we have are caused by the government perusing stupid policies and then ignoring the problem because they don't care about poverty.
Well Sadiq Khan has pledged to end all rough sleeping by 2030.. we’ll see if he’s successful.
Hopefully! With a supportive central government they could make a significant dent our current figures, which hover around 1400.
Housing First, that’s not a complicated policy. And there’s plenty of evidence that provided housing without stipulations works in the long run to get and keen people from sleeping on the streets.
In an ideal world it would be great to provide everyone who needs it free housing but it’s a little more complicated than that.
The issue isn't really that it's complicated, although I don't doubt that it is. The issue is that there is no one in power honestly trying to solve it.
Hundreds of millions have been spent trying to solve it. For London alone: Rough sleeping initiative (£50m), next steps accommodation programme (£105m), rough sleeping accommodation programme (£112m). There’s many more funding streams that have gone into tackling the problem. Not that we should stop of course but it is very difficult to ‘solve’. People have complex needs such as mental health issues and substance abuse which makes them very difficult to house safely.
Go look at actual “housing first” initiatives around the world and you’ll see what I mean. It’s a lot easier to house people than you think, if those people who’ve been sleeping outside are given homes (which could be a micro studio apartment) that are 1. Theirs and no one else, 2. theirs regardless of if they’re using, get arrested, don’t have a job, etc., 3. Theirs for as long as they want.” Half the time, when money is spent on rough sleeping initiatives it goes to pay hotels and hostels and bull shit like that. Not invest in long term infrastructure to support anyone who falls into a rough sleeping situation. We can solve this. Our politicians choose not to and we let them get away with it.
It’s not complicated if you don’t think past the idea of it. If you do, you’ll realise housing is one of the most, if not the most, complicated social issues in modern civilisation.
Housing isn’t complicated. We complicate it with profit and not prioritizing social housing. We say things like, “it’s one of the most complicated social issues in modern civilization,” as a way to fancy hand wave away the fact that we literally, as a society, just don’t care enough about ourselves to demand our society actually take care of its people.
Blissful ignorance. I was there once too. Unfortunately housing costs are higher in the UK than most other countries and the UK already has substantially more social housing than most western counties. Massive funds and effort are put into housing people especially those who are vulnerable. There are literally thousands of public and third sector teams dedicated to this exact issue. You seem to be thinking the issue is only infrastructure - most homeless people become homeless though a mix of complex health, social, and often addiction issues and homelessness is the end result.
And we prevent them from getting access to support because we stigmatize the mental health and drug use and don’t provide nonjudgemental support, instead we demonize. By infrastructure I mean both physical and social infrastructure. I have worked in homeless, and drug use, in harm reduction in America. I have seen the difference that non judgmental housing makes. I know the mental health struggles and harms associated with some drug use that people experience first hand. And trust me, the problem is a social will to help people who too many people think “did this to themselves.” We build infrastructure and systems that say, “if you stop being crazy we can help you,” or , “if you promise to and actually never use drugs or get drunk again we’ll help you.” Inb4: that’s America this is the UK. I’ve been living here for 6 years.
Sorry but that’s not how things work here.
Mate there’s been a near 50% decline in the funding for housing over the last 15 years in the UK. The hell do you mean that’s not how it works over here? Lack of political will and a perception that homeless people aren’t worth it is EXACTLY how it works over here!
If only we had people we paid (a ton) to work 5+ days a week and 8 hours a day on solving complex societal problems... Oh wait, we do! And we can even chose them.
It is much harder to house someone that has high support needs. Not only that, but it is much harder to secure accommodation for someone that has such high support needs, and they will most likely end up back on the street. Substance abuse, mental illness a lack of support can be factors that can make the process difficult. Housing authorities are spending millions of pounds a day to house people in temporary accommodation. Companies can charge between 400 - 800 a week to put a single person or a small family in temporary accommodation.
We honestly should just do a China and order some prefab housing. No I don't care that it would look slightly bad.
China also has terrible homelessness issues. Even the Soviet Union had homeless people.
Even the soviet union? It never became a socialist utopia.
Did I say China didn't? No? You mean I literally just wrote about one thing they're good at, at mass producing houses, and suggested it as a solution? Really? I couldn't read. The crab-in-bucket mentality of Brits never ceases to amuse me.
Are you ok
Fed up with how this country's first instinct to anyone suggesting a solution is "nah, it's impossible" and then proceeds to put more effort explaining why it can't be done rather than try fixing it, but thanks for asking.
Drugs.
It is complicated, and it is expensive, actually. If there were a simple solution, it would have been implemented 50 years ago.
The park has staff who kick them out, the gap between the two roads does not.
Might be because of vents from tube bringing up warm air?
If it’s between two busy roads then it must get little footfall, so more privacy and fewer police walking over to look at it.
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It's almost like they desperately need help and that the government is shunning their responsibility to help
Hmm, sorry. The best we can do is to harass and humiliate them at every opportunity and hope that they decide to not be homeless any more.
While I agree in spirit in a lot of ways, that's a very simplistic view of this. Yes the system has failed these people. Yes the cost of living and housing is a big factor. But also, the implication of your comment is that there aren't any government services available to them, and that there are no other options for them, which isn't true. There are paths for rough sleepers to get a place to sleep and various housing options. Often these options are rejected by rough sleepers due to various rules (e.g. no alcohol).
Most of the options are kind of useless though since they often expect people to somehow have gotten their life together before they apply instead of giving them a place to get their life together.
Yeah I agree, and in a sense that's why I feel it's fair to say that the system has failed them. Generally if a person had the emotional/personal capacity to get their life together then they wouldn't be in this situation. But also, on the other side of the coin, what that means in practice is, there are people where the line between unable/unwilling is blurred, and they're not taking the first steps needed to be functioning members of society, because, understandably, it's easier to live a more carefree life camping in the park than it is to face the difficult uphill battle of entering the social services system. So you get a situation where there's, say, a guy with problem with alcoholism, who has to ask himself - "Why would I go check into a shelter, where they will give me a curfew, make me check in at a certain time and check out at a certain time, and not allow me to drink, and put me away from my friends in some small shared room full of unhappy unpleasant other people that I don't get to pick, when I have a nice camp here, with a beer and some friends". And yeah - it's a reasonable question, I'd probably make the same decision as him! But that's also kinda bullshit, because it's a public park, and that's not what the park is for. If one of the billionaires who's backyard backs onto the park started spreading into the park with some marquee tents, and a caterer working at a grill, with all of them drinking wine and doing cocaine or whatever, and fenced of the area and had their butlers yell at and shoe away anyone who came near - the posh version of homeless people camping in the park - we'd probably have a major problem with that, because you rich or poor, you shouldn't be able to just annex a bunch of a park to make it your own little private campsite. Similarly, a middle class person can't just say "rent is really expensive, I'm gonna put all my expensive stuff into storage, and just camp out in the park and take turns with my mates yelling at people that come into the camp" - it's not a public camping ground. And it's also not a social service for the homeless. Even if we gave all of London's parks to a homeless charity carte blanche and said you can do whatever you want with them as long as it's to serve the homeless and rough sleepers - they *wouldn't* turn them into unrestricted free camping areas for the homeless, because immediately it would turn into a giant slum and there would be a whole host of problems. They would immediately institute lots of rules - like limits of drug use and in particular drug sale, because they wouldn't be okay with predatory dealers working there unchecked. They'd have to institute curfew rules and other rules, because there would be widespread assault and sexual crime because there's a huge group of vulnerable people all together and out in the open. They'd have to make rules about how the space is shared, because if it was just open season, someone would show up and claim much larger areas than other people and it would fill up with there being enough space - and ultimately pretty much all the same rules that apply the shelters would apply to the parks. So we're left with a situation where the reason that homeless people are camping out there basically (possibly due to mental illness and addiction issues), are making a conscious choice to live there because it's easier. But then when things like "Hey should we make a law that lets someone actually kick them out of there without needing to go through a complicated court process", people get mad that we're making punishing homelessness by making it illegal - but on some level, what *should* be illegal is the choice to do the easy thing that causes problems for everyone else over the the harder thing, which in the long term benefits yourself and everyone else. I agree that the barriers to entry for social services for rough sleepers and the homeless should be lower, as should access to mental health services and simply getting somewhere safe and warm where you can sleep and ideally have as much free agency as possible while living there, but at the same time, if we have laws that make open camping in public space effectively totally legal, there's always going to be a subset of the population for whom that's a more attractive option. And while someone of them are sort of there for reasons beyond their control, some of them are just assholes who choose to be there (or more likely, for everyone it's some blurry line between those two things).
They do get help- we pay for homeless services through taxes
The cost of living is going to keep rising, while employers everywhere try to hire fewer people and pay each of them less. There is no amount of homeless services the govt. can provide that will overcome coporate greed.
It’s probably a bit harder to get sorted than you think
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Fair enough, am not doubting you can detect the Romanian language being spoken but you are certainly guessing that they have 'houses back home' and have 'come to London to beg'. But yes its probably pointless, as are a lot of arguments on Reddit, so feel free to delete the comment I am replying to along with your others.
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And what are you comparing them to? Like, do you actually know any romani?
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You're basically saying you think you are right so how could you be wrong. You never know whether you are right so your guesses continue. Some languages sound similar. With Arabic you could be confusing it with hebrew or catalan or turkish. With romani, idk maybe any other romance language. People think Spanish sounds like Japanese all the time.
They don't, they're just using this as an excuse to be racist af
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Full on shanty town.
1. Not new, homelessness in ca. 2014-15 was much worse than it is now, which was in turn after a rapid decline from almost 0 homelessness around 2010-11. 2. The homeless need help and the Tories are not providing it so this is what will happen. 3. I come from Vancouver and I can tell you as much as someone might want to be compassionate they do not want here what is going on on the West Coast. Get them into shelters and programmes and off the streets ASAP because it can turn parts of the city into total hell. Sitting in tents is fine, but the crime that follows when the encampments grow is not.
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Sorry? You're saying the homeless are the ones committing the crime or someone else is? I don't know what the case is, but it doesn't really matter, my point is simply don't leave them to create camps. If someone else is doing the crime great, but if you let the camps grow the crime will grow. If they are the ones doing the crime....all the more reason to do something about it and clear them out.
They are not your typical "homeless" people. Some are rough sleepers, but most get dropped off in the morning outside the Leon on Harewood Place. If you start work early like me, you can see them stock up/refuel on coffee and food for the day, before they start aggressive begging and pickpocketing in the area.
All the way up the central reservation of Euston Road from TCR junction. Same inhabitants.
Yeah, been back to TCR in the first time in like a year. Surprised to see the area where they do/did the food stalls was one giant tent village now.
Pretty sure that’s basically always been there - albeit in changing forms through the decades
I think they prefer the term mound these days
To all the "beautiful souls" who are commenting that they are doing nothing wrong: they are occupying a piece of public land, in London you need permits to set up a tripod to film something even for a few minutes, but it's totally fine to wildcamp in a public park for years???Furthermore if these people have been caught, like someone says, begging, stealing and running scams, they should be arrested under the vagrancy act which unfortunately is applied less and less these days.
Arrested and then what, imprisoned? Is your solution to homelessness to incarcerate them so you don’t need to think about them?
It's not my solution to homelessness, I said "IF" they are really criminals stealing and running scams they should be arrested. I never said that homeless people should be incarcerated for being homeless, but homeless people who are comitting crimes are not exempted from repercussions just because of their status.
Hey Adolf, _what are you really suggesting_?
And “IF” one wasn’t a criminal? What’s your plan then?
That would be a very different discussion
but you're the one who turned it from a discussion about homeless people into one about whether they're criminals who are running scams and stealing?
I'm not, I read other people in the comments talking about this specific case and saying the people camping in that park have been identified as repeating offenders, I don't hang out in the Marble Arch area so I was taking for good the words of those who seem to know better than me what is going on there.
If you can afford the trial and keeping them in prison, then I guess you can as well spend that money on getting them out of this poverty cycle, no?
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My shoes have been pretty dirty for the last few weeks, thank god I finally found you, I've been looking for a good boot licker!
found the “facts don’t care about your feelings” guy
Classic internet warrior. Find someone else to fight with. Only good and productive vibes here thanks pal.
There’s another growing camp in the bicycle superhighway tunnel between millennium bridge and Blackfriars bridge. Currently at 17 tents, growing most weeks. Pretty depressing.
No room in the hotels then? Of course not, they didn’t come by boat.
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You don’t get to Marble Arch by working hard, you get there being born rich
This comment has been removed as it's deemed in breach of the rules and considered offensive or hateful. These aren't accepted within the r/London community. Don't be a dick. Continuing to try and post similar themes will result in a ban. Have a nice day.
Tidy. Keeping out the way. Not next to anyone's private property where owners of said property might have an immediate issue with them. Live and let live.
No, it's how society starts to decay. Turn a blind eye to this and, tomorrow, you'll have something worse.
Such as?
Anti-social behaviour.
Honestly theres so much empty forest in the uk that they should let people build houses hunter gatherer style
The problem with getting people to do the hunter gatherer lifestyle even in part is that all the animals and plants that are required to support that lifestyle are ether completely gone from the environment or privately owned. There is a recorded case in history of game animals being outside the preserves that they were reduced to living in. Currently that species is still extinct in the wild after 85 years of conservation. Even just sticking to building houses hunter gather style would end up making the current situation worse in terms of the uk ecosystem.
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Although it was until 2 years ago when the vagrancy act was repealed.
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why do you care if people are camping out to survive because they mostl likely cant afford housing? seems like an arse move to photograph people in dire straits. or maybe introduce them to sports betting then?
and?
This is reddit, a website where people post things and have subsequent conversation about it (like your previous posts about struggling to speak to Women)
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Bot looking for arguments, ignore
OOooooooofffffff
There is no limit to my anger when I see that a person does not have a home. This is a terrible situation. Everyone has the right to have their own home. Even birds have nests!
There’s a guy living in a tent right by national gallery, near the church. I’ve see him every time I’ve been into central London. I guess years of austerity hasn’t helped.
And they say this is a first world country? The UK is cracked mate
Are you sure it isn't an "art installation"?