Janet Christie out on the street in Edinburgh with Cyrenians outreach workers

The Scotsman

We go out on the street in Edinburgh with Cyrenians to talk about homelessness and rough sleeping in Scotland and The Scotsman's support of this year's Cyrenians Winter Appeal.

Transcript

00:00This is Janet Christie at the Scotsman. This year we're supporting the Sirenians winter

00:03repeal. We're here on the streets with Nick Harrold, who's one of the homeless navigators.

00:10There are over 13,000 homeless in Scotland now. How many will be sleeping on the streets

00:15here in Edinburgh tonight?

00:16So it's hard to give exact figures for that because the population isn't static. They

00:21don't necessarily always sleep in the same places. But the last time earlier this year

00:26that a rough sleeper's count was held, 42 people were counted on that one night. That

00:33is about an average. I would say that it's probably on the increase just now. I would

00:38say the real figure is probably a wee bit more than that.

00:41And why is it on the increase?

00:42There are multiple factors for that. There is the cost of living crisis has definitely

00:49had an impact. Changes to legislation around foreign nationals after Brexit has definitely

00:56made an impact. Edinburgh has declared a housing emergency. We just literally do not have enough

01:03social housing available. We have lots of people in temporary accommodation, but there

01:10are still lots of people waiting on temporary accommodation. And because people aren't being

01:15able to move through temporary accommodation into permanent accommodation, it means that

01:20that system has got a bit of a bottleneck. So it's hard for anyone to move away from

01:26homelessness because of the lack of social housing and the lack of ability to access

01:30it.

01:31Okay. And you're one of the homeless navigators. Can you tell us what you do?

01:35Yeah. So my colleague Mark and I, we are deployed five days a week, Monday to Friday. We are

01:40out predominantly in the city centre, but we do cover further afield than Edinburgh,

01:45but mostly we work in the city centre. And our job on a daily basis is we walk the streets.

01:51We will engage with people who are sitting begging or who are rough sleeping. We will

01:57respond to calls from businesses if they're concerned about people that they see rough

02:03sleeping. We work quite closely with the community police, the officers who's based at Edinburgh

02:10and the West End. We do monthly patrols with him. We do a lot of partnership work with

02:20other agencies that are other homeless organisations. Mark and I, we can't operate in a vacuum getting

02:28anyone accommodated. It's not us that provide the accommodation. It's us that help people

02:32navigate their way through the system. I think that's where the name comes from. It's very

02:37much we try to be the mortar between the bricks to try and help people make their way

02:44through the services, because people will generally have quite negative experiences

02:50dealing with housing and social work and things like that. Homelessness, despite what some

02:57politicians might want to say, is not a lifestyle choice. There are not very many people in

03:03over 20 years working in this field that I've met who have chosen to be homeless. It's one

03:08of these myths that you hear people expounding that they've decided that they want to do

03:15that. Nobody moves into sleeping in a graveyard or stuff like that because it's a lifestyle

03:26choice. Okay, and how about what we can do to help? There's the practical things like people

03:37need the stuff that you need to sleep rough, but frankly my priority is not helping facilitate

03:45people rough sleeping. It's helping them move away from rough sleeping. I think to help what

03:51we need is pressure on government, local government, Scottish government. Recently they changed

03:58the rules so that it enabled people from all over Scotland to be able to access services

04:04anywhere in Scotland. It used to be a case that they called it local connection. If you

04:09were a homeless person in Edinburgh, that was where you got a service. If you were homeless

04:12in Glasgow, that's where you got a service. It stopped people travelling around taking

04:17advantage of slightly better services in different cities. They've removed local connection

04:22so it's brilliant because it now means that any Scottish person can get help anywhere

04:27in the country, but that hasn't come along with an increase in the resources for Edinburgh.

04:34So many people now are gravitating towards Edinburgh because they think we have good

04:38services and we have more available here. In theory we do, but because we have so many

04:43more extra people coming to Edinburgh from other parts of the country, not just Scotland

04:48but also Britain as well, we are really creaking under the strain here of the services. Temporary

04:56accommodation, you're lucky if there are two or three beds available every day and they're

05:01gone by half nine in the morning. So that's partly why it's on the increase here then.

05:08What will happen if people give to the Winter Appeal, how would that help?

05:13I think Sirenians as well as the Navigators, we are one very specific part of someone's

05:19journey through homelessness. We are very much at that cold phase, that hard end. Sirenians

05:24as an organisation, we look at homelessness more holistically and we have projects that

05:32are more attuned to things like employability, helping people move on, helping younger people

05:39not fall into homelessness, a lot of preventative stuff, but also stuff like recovery work,

05:46so helping people move away from addictions, also things like volunteering opportunities

05:51for folk that are ready for that. And also I have a job as well, so it would be nice

05:57to get a wee bit of extra resources for us as well. But I think by helping Sirenians

06:03it's not just the people that you can visibly see on the streets, because there's a lot

06:08more to homelessness than the people you see begging on Prince's Street.

06:12Thank you, that's great. So if you want to donate to the Sirenians Winter Appeal you

06:17need to go to sirenians.scot

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Transcript

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