Today, in the United Kingdom—in the sixth-largest economy in the world—roughly 300,000 people are homeless. While Westminster has talked of care and compassion for our most vulnerable and desperate people for well over a decade, a 10 minute stroll around any of our city centres reveals the hollowness of their rhetoric and the inadequate policies that have followed. All the while, consistent attacks against our welfare system, including cartoonishly evil cuts made to disability payments, have condemned many more to the streets, and more still to wither away in shoddy temporary accommodation.
The result of these slashes has been to shift the burden of responsibility from the government to us—civil society—charities, locally-run shelters, street pastors and other out-reach groups, therefore further depleting the wealth of working people, fattening the pockets of the already-grotesquely wealthy, and exacerbating the unsustainable gap between the haves and the have-nots. Homelessness is, afterall, a symptom of a sick society; with 300,000 people and counting now without permanent shelter, ours is approaching terminal status.
In this short film, you will get to listen to the stories of people struggling to survive on Southampton’s streets. You will hear testimonies that would have otherwise gone untold and unheard. They are characterized by financial struggle, bad luck, and personal trauma leading to issues of addiction that could have otherwise been remedied had an adequate support system been in place. The other part of this film involves me. For three weeks, I will be living on the street myself, documenting and relating my experiences, in order to show the effect homelessness has on an individual. It is my hope that by putting myself in that situation, while also being privileged enough to express my thoughts, I might be able to better convey the dire circumstances that homeless people are forced to endure.
I hope too that anyone who watches this film may come away with a greater appreciation for the common thread we share with our society’s most desperate people.
Thomas Fordrey