I’ve been homeless. I know what circles and what hoops you have to jump through to try and get anywhere. 

If you’ve got no base, you can’t get any ID, you can’t get a bank account. You can’t get anywhere. Back then as well, you couldn’t even claim benefits if you didn’t have an address. Luckily now you can use the benefits office as an address. Well, not even a lot of people know about that these days though. 

You can’t walk into a bank and say, ‘Can I have a bank account, please? I’m on the streets.’ You ain’t getting anywhere are ya. 

You can’t walk into a job and say, ‘Can I have a job?’ You just look like you’ve just been dragged through a bush. You know what I mean? You’re smelling, you’re not looking so clever, who’s gonna give you a job? Where’s your money gonna go if you’ve not got a bank account.? What’s your address?

So you’re just going around in circles until you’ve got that base. 

So I think what Shelter is pushing for – that Housing First and stuff like that – is probably something that needs to be done really. 

You need the house first, but you need the support as well with certain people. Some people you could possibly just give them the keys and go, ‘There you go’. 

If you’d given me the keys when I was on the streets, I’d know what I’m doing. But give them to some other people, they’d probably need some wraparound support – not everyone’s the same are they.

You can’t get yourself clean on the street can you?

Say you’re on drugs or something, you don’t want to either. Because you’re sat there in the pissing down rain. It’s freezing. All you want to do is blank that shit out for now.

People walk past going, ‘Look at that guy on spice over there’. I don’t think he wants to be like that, does he? 

He might have some issues. He might not have even had them issues when he hit the streets. But soon as you hit the streets – and you’ve been on the streets for a few days. not even a few weeks – you start to realise, you know, well I need something to fucking cope here. This is doing my rocker in. 

Some of them might not have even been drug users until they actually hit the streets. 

You know, they need something to keep them warm. That’s why a lot of them drink. If you’re on the street and you’ve got a bit of whiskey, or a bit of drink, you don’t feel the cold as much.

They just look at them and go,’ look at that pisshead on the street’, or ‘look at that wino’, or ‘he’s a crackhead’.

That’s somebody’s son, or that’s somebody’s daughter you know. They’ve not always been like that.

They could have had underlying mental health issues that haven’t been addressed. So they’ve self-medicated for many years and ended up like that because some of the services have gone, ‘these people we can’t help anymore’, and just let them go around and round and round.

Anything could have happened to them. They could have been abused when they were a kid. A lot of them have gone through the care system and stuff, which has never worked. 

Anything could have happened to them in their life to keep going around in them circles. 

There’s a chap what I know in the Salford area. Everybody really slags him off, all over Facebook, saying he’s this, he’s that. But I know what he’s gone through ‘cause I went to school with this lad, and I know some of the stuff that he’s gone through in his life. And believe me, a lot of people probably would’ve ended their lives if they’ve gone through half the stuff he’s gone through. Nobody knows him. It’s not for me to tell them either. You know what I mean?

They should be just compassionate and have a bit more understanding themselves. There’s that many homeless people knocking about now it’s becoming the norm. Which is completely wrong isn’t it? 

When you start walking over people and going like, oh it’s just Dave, it’s Sandra there you know. it’s just a norm. That shouldn’t be the norm. There’s that many people on the streets. 

Everybody’s just got the blinkers to it and thinks oh, you know, it’s just a normal day in Manchester.