According to home secretary Sue Ellen Braverman, AKA Suella Braverman (this name change stops her being confused with JR’s wife, Sue Ellen Ewing on the TV soap Dallas), people who live on the streets do so as a “lifestyle choice“. This makes total sense. Who wouldn’t prefer to shelter in a damp shop doorway, with all your worldly possessions in supermarket bags, than to sleep in a warm bed in a sheltered place all of your own? No chance of attracting bed bugs in winter. Nothing quite beats the prestige and luxury of the glamorous lifestyle you get from literally living on the streets. Braverman certainly thinks that way because she wants to make it a civil offence for anyone who provides a tent for a homeless person to sleep in. In her world, people who have nothing have never had it so good.
Unlike Ms Braverman, I take a more sympathetic view when it comes to homelessness, not least because I have come across numerous homeless people throughout my professional and now non-professional working life and I have never, once, come across anyone who made a positive choice to forsake “normal” life to live on the streets where, lest we forget, the average man on the street has a life expectancy of 45 and a woman two years less.
Homelessness is unquestionably a complicated issue and people end up on the streets for all manner of reasons, which can include addiction, family break up and joblessness to name but a few, and there is another group I have from time to time come across: military veterans.
This week will culminate in the nation commemorating Armistice Day, followed by Remembrance Day, when we remember those who served our country. Those suffering homelessness will certainly include military veterans, although actual numbers are not clear. Yet Braverman, who will be one of the dignitaries placing a wreath on the Cenotaph, would happily punish those providing tents for homeless veterans by making them guilty of a civil offence, which might see charities fined for so doing. Is this really what should be happening in our country in the 21st century? Braverman certainly thinks so. If she means it, it just proves what a vile person she is. And if she doesn’t really mean it, but is using such ugly, inflammatory statements to stir up hate and stoke culture wars she’s an even more vile person.
Wouldn’t it be great to live in a world, or at least a country for starters, where no one was homeless, where everyone had the dignity of having somewhere to call home and where no politician had the brass neck to refer to homelessness as a “lifestyle choice“? Call me old fashioned but I value human life in far more positive terms than Braverman ever would and given that she occupies one of the great offices of state in our country, can anyone seriously deny that our country is broken?
