Four-legged friends

Four-legged friends
Not all hostels accept dogs, so the Dogs Trust has been working alongside homeless charities Broadway and St Mungo's to develop pet friendly policies for homeless services. Clare Kivlehan, Dogs Trust outreach manager, explains the importance of pets to homeless people: "The stability, love, responsibility and companionship brought about from looking after a pet is essential for their eventual resettlement and a life of independence." Photograph: Isabel Hutchison/Dogs Trust

Cold facts

Cold facts
Half of all the rough sleepers in the UK are in London. For obvious reasons, winter is a particularly difficult time resulting in rough sleepers suffering three times as many physical health problems as the average person. The death rate of rough sleepers is 25 times that of the rest of the population. St Mungo's has a team of street outreach workers working with rough sleepers in London ensuring that each night 1,400 people stay in their emergency hostels and semi-independent housing. Photograph: St Mungo's

Crime has become career of choice for young men from the inner city

Crime has become career of choice for young men from the inner city
Richard Ford, Home Correspondent
# Gang life offers wealth and status
# Drug-dealing is just the beginning
Young men in deprived urban communities see crime as a better career opportunity than the legitimate labour market, ministers have been warned.

Dealing drugs and committing other crimes gives those with little education an opportunity to overcome deprivation and gain wealth and status in their neighbourhoods.

A report on gun crime commissioned by the Home Office warns: “Dealing in illegal drugs appears to significantly underpin the criminal economy in many locations and seems to be instrumental in legitimising crime as a career option for some individuals.

“There are many indications that drug-dealing and other criminality are ‘out-competing’ the legitimate labour market.

“For individuals whose employment prospects are limited by a lack of qualifications, and an existing criminal record, a criminal lifestyle can be seen as an attractive proposition.”

The study found that social pressure to own fashionable clothes and other material goods is driving young people in poor areas to crime, particularly drug-dealing.

Ministers are warned that when drug-dealing establishes a grip on an area, this leads to collective criminal behaviour and young people being drawn into gangland activities.

The 160-page report said that criminal economies were more firmly consolidated in Greater Manchester and Liverpool than in Birmingham, Nottingham and London.

Researchers interviewed 80 offenders serving sentences for firearms crimes and found that the majority aspired to conspicuous material wealth.

Even though the interviewees were in jail, crime was perceived by many to be “a viable career option, enabling material aspirations and social or peer pressures to be realised”.

The report also highlighted the malign effect of young people seeing “successful” criminals living in their neighbourhoods. Pressure to gain material goods was reinforced by “role models” demonstrating the viability of criminal careers that in some cases were more lucrative than working.

The report was produced by the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies at the University of Portsmouth.

Gavin Hales, a senior research fellow and a co-author, said that he did not believe that the criminal economy was more important than the legitimate economy in deprived areas. Most people living in poor city areas were law-abiding, but increasingly more were becoming part of the illegal drugs market.

He said the report’s findings presented a big challenge for the Government in how to educate some young people about the choices they faced. “The criminal economy has very low entry costs and you need no qualifications,” he said.

“It is a cash economy, it offers a degree of instant wealth, instant cash . . . it is an economy that puts a premium on being ‘street smart’.”

If you are homeless or about to become homeless

Emergency

If you are homeless or about to become homeless contact Shelter's Free Housing Advice Helpline for advice and information. Or use Search all services to look for your nearest housing advice centre or day centre where you may be able to get advice and help.

If you need urgent help or advice on other issues try one of the helplines listed below:

Childline - Helpline for children and young people in danger or distress.

Drinkline - Advice and information for people with alcohol problems.

FRANK - Helpline for anyone concerned about drug or solvent problems.

Natonal Domestic Violence Helpline - Helpline for women experiencing physical, emotional or sexual violence in the home.

London Street Rescue - Runs a hotline, currently open 9am-12 midnight, for anyone concerned about people sleeping rough. Can accept referrals from the following boroughs: Barking, Barnet, Bexley, Bromley, Enfield, Greenwich, Hackney, Harrow, Havering, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Kingston, Lewisham, Merton, Newham, Redbridge, Sutton, Tower Hamlets and Wandsworth.

Runaway Helpline - Helpline for children and young people who have run away or been forced to leave home.

Samaritans - Emotional support for people who are experiencing feelings of distress or despair.

SANELINE - Helpline providing support on mental health issues.

Sexual Health Line - Information and avice on sexually transmitted infections and HIV prevention.

London Local Authority Emergency Numbers

London Local Authority Emergency Numbers

Agencies with homeless clients who are or may be in priority need should refer them to their local authority. During the day, clients should be referred to their local Homeless Persons Unit - contact the local authority for the telephone number and opening hours.

Outside office hours, use these emergency numbers.

Barking and Dagenham 020 8594 8356
Barnet 020 8359 2000
Bexley 020 8303 7777
Brent 020 8937 1234
Bromley 020 8464 4848
Camden 020 7278 4444
City of London 020 7606 3030
Croydon 020 8686 4433
Ealing 020 8825 5000
Enfield 020 8379 1000
Greenwich 020 8854 8888
Hackney 020 8356 2300
Hammersmith & Fulham 020 8748 8588
Haringey 020 8348 3148
Harrow 020 8863 5611
Havering 01708 433999
Hillingdon 01895 250697
Hounslow 020 8583 2222
Islington 020 7226 0992
Kensington & Chelsea 020 7373 2213
Kingston Upon Thames 020 8770 5000
(run by LB Sutton on behalf of Kingston)
Lambeth 020 7926 1000
Lewisham 020 8778 0877
Merton 020 8770 5000
(run by LB Sutton on behalf of Merton)
Newham 020 8552 9587
Redbridge 020 8553 5825
Richmond Upon Thames 020 8744 2442
Southwark 020 7525 5000
Sutton 020 8770 5000
Tower Hamlets 020 7376 1637
Waltham Forest 020 8496 3000
Wandsworth 020 8871 6000
Westminster 020 7286 7412

Smiths helps St Mungo's make London's homeless healthier13/11/2006

Smiths helps St Mungo's make London's homeless healthier

13/11/2006

SMITHS Group, the global technology business, today announced that it is funding a new Health Manager for St Mungo's as part of an initiative to make London’s homeless healthier.

St Mungo's, London’s leading homeless charity, provides practical support for thousands of homeless and vulnerable people each year by helping them find a place to live; develop their skills through education and training programmes; build positive relationships with other people and improve their mental and physical health.

The new Health Manager, who will work across the London boroughs, will train staff on key health issues and build strong relationships with local health authorities to help the charity’s 1,700 residents gain access to vital health services from GPs, hospitals and statutory services.

This training will enable staff to recognise symptoms of serious conditions and will also include awareness of healthy eating, sexual health and access to exercise for all residents.

The cooperation between St Mungo’s and Smiths was launched formally on Thursday 9th November at the Endell Street Hostel in Covent Garden. Keith Butler-Wheelhouse, Chief Executive of Smiths Group, said: ‘We are delighted to be able to contribute towards such an important initiative in our community.”

Homeless people can suffer from poor health due to sleeping rough but are often unable to obtain the health care services they need due to social exclusion.

Kate Whalley, the new Health Manager for St Mungo's, said: “This crucial support from Smiths will enable us to train all our staff about all of these key health issues and help our clients to get the help they need. Given the seriousness of some residents’ health conditions, this work could save around 100 lives each year.”

Smiths is also investigating employee volunteering opportunities with St Mungo’s to benefit both the charity and Smiths people, who can build their skills whilst giving something back to their local community.

ENDS

About St Mungo's

St Mungo's is London’s leading homeless charity, opening doors for thousands of homeless people each year.
Around 88% of their clients have two or more medical support needs. St Mungo's provides specialist help to address the complex physical and mental health problems that many of their most vulnerable clients face. Last year, the charity supported 800 people with their mental health issues, and referred 600 people into rehabilitation and prescribing services. Health clinics are based within several of their larger hostels, which have visiting nursing, dentistry and chiropody services.

Smiths Group

Smiths seeks to contribute to the communities in which it operates by participation in, and support for, community and charitable initiatives. Smiths is a global technology business, listed on the London Stock Exchange. Smiths Group is a world leader in the practical application of advanced technologies. Our products and services make the world safer, healthier and more productive. Smiths Group has four divisions: Aerospace, Detection, Medical and Specialty. It employs 32,000 people and has over 250 major facilities in 50 countries. For more information visit www.smiths-group.com

Media contacts:

St Mungo's
Lucy Whitford
+44 (0)777 070 4529

Smiths Group
Chris Fox
+44 (0)20 8457 8403

Why shouldn't Gehry be allowed to Brighton up the neighbourhood?

Why shouldn't Gehry be allowed to Brighton up the neighbourhood?


The trendies love it, but many Hove locals feel a renowned architect's new scheme for its Regency seafront is too big and bold, writes Jon Robins

Sunday December 17, 2006
The Observer

Here's a no-brainer for you: a council stuck with an unloved, rundown 1960s-era recreation centre at the end of an otherwise attractive Regency promenade and a world-class architect eager to transform it into an iconic residential complex, complete with state-of-the-art sports facilities paid for by the developers. So where's the problem?

If that's an oversimplification of problems that surround Frank Gehry's plans for the redevelopment of a rusting eyesore on Hove seafront, many in Brighton believe it's not much of one.

Gehry first expressed an interest in November 2002 in reviving the bit of Brighton front where, architecturally speaking, everything runs out of steam, as did Richard Rogers and Piers Gough (who is adviser to the project). It is tempting to characterise the interminable debate over the £290m development of the King Alfred centre as a stand-off between Hove's blue rinse brigade and the metropolitan trendies of Brighton.

The latter would love the kudos of having the architect behind the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao leaving his stamp on their patch. But what do the residents of Hove think? After all, they are going to have to live, literally in many cases, in the shadow of the new 22-storey building with 751 apartments, not to mention that £48m sports centre.

'It's an absolutely massive overdevelopment,' complains Valerie Paynter of the anti-Gehry Save Hove campaign, who lives in front of Hove station, just down the road from the site. 'We're talking ugly stepsister in Cinderella's shoes.'

David Smale runs the Coriander restaurant on Hove Street, a few minutes' walk away. 'It is fantastic. I'm completely gung-ho about the project,' he says. 'Brighton has a real chance to be taken up a few notches.'

Supporters are conscious not only of an opportunity sliding through their fingers, but the message this sends out. Earlier in the year Tony Mernagh, executive director of the Brighton and Hove Economic Partnership (BHEP), said the bureaucracy involved in the planning process would 'guarantee no serious investment will come near Brighton and Hove for another 15 to 20 years'.

Richard Coleman, a Brighton-based architect who worked as a consultant townscape expert with Norman Foster on Swiss Re's 'Gherkin' in the City of London, has set up a support group called Hove Up to make sure that those who want to support the development have a platform to do it from. 'There is a danger that if the project stalls any more it could die,' he says.

Coleman complains that conservationists are making too much of the architectural heritage in what he describes as 'a pretty poverty-stricken area of Hove, in terms of culture'. 'It used to be a tiny village at the time that Brighton expanded its parish with its Regency architecture. Frankly, it was a one-street town and it still seems a little lost.' He describes the plans as 'a substantial development on what is a very substantial site'. 'It is the right thing to do,' he says. 'It is a very big building, but Hove can take a very big building.'

It is the scale and the boldness of the plans that have unsettled locals. The initial designs were for a cluster of four 38-storey towers, since reduced to 22. The architect said he was inspired by a picture of Edwardian ladies with their dresses billowing as they walked along the blustery seafront. The flowing dress effect will be achieved, apparently, by a trellis over a layer of glass; 'the light will blur the mass and the trellis will probably be white painted steel,' he explains. Less kind critics have called it 'a couple of trannies caught in a gale' or even 'a crumbled fag packet'.

The original designs failed to impress those guardians of our public space, English Heritage and the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, which felt they failed to ensure the building would be seen as an integral part of Hove. Another concern was that the perimeter buildings were too drab, and even supporters concede they were 'rather Soviet'. Under the revised plan, they are going to be 'Gehryfied': a bit curvy and smaller. Both English Heritage and CABE are now onside.

'Yes, the plans are dramatic and it will clearly be a landmark,' predicts Simon Fanshawe, the Brighton-based broadcaster. 'People will see it as they fly into Gatwick and Heathrow, which will be rather fun.' And what does he think of the design? 'I like its deckchair quality. Gehry's buildings are always very playful. It really makes me laugh when people say they want to preserve the tradition of "Regency Brighton" when, for a start, there is this bit of a Liberace right bang in the middle - the pavilion.'

The BHEP's Mernagh is more pragmatic about the proposals: 'If Brighton turns down £80m of community benefit - £48m for the sports centre and £30m of affordable housing - on a site only worth £11m, and, on top of that, rejects a world-class architect there, other cities will question our sanity.'

· The council is due to consider revised plans after Christmas.

Parked up

Last Updated: Wednesday, 31 May 2006, 11:11 GMT 12:11 UK

Parked up
By Sean Coughlan
BBC News Magazine

Car park
Homeless for nine months, Anya Peters slept each night in a car
A homeless woman, writing a blog about her experiences of living in a car, has now signed a book deal with a major publisher and is nominated for a media award.

A few weeks ago, Anya Peters was homeless and living in a car, hanging around the places where she could wash and eat and keep herself looking respectable. Her contact with the outside world was through an online diary.

But this blog, published under the name of Wandering Scribe, was picked up by readers around the world and has provided a remarkable way out of her homelessness. She has written her own escape story.

The story of her homelessness and her previous life is going to be turned into a book, with a publishing deal signed and the hardback scheduled to reach the bookshops next Spring.

In the space of a hectic few days, Anya Peters was taken on by Curtis Brown, one of the biggest literary agencies in London - and the subsequent book proposal sparked a bidding battle between publishers - eventually won by Harper Collins.

Still living in her car, she found herself in the surreal position of being homeless and taking calls offering her book deals, with reports about her blog appearing in papers such as the New York Times and Le Monde.

First bath

The blog itself has now been nominated for a media award run by the New Statesman magazine.

"It still feels like a dream - it's completely turned around," she says.


WANDERING SCRIBE
graphic

The story of Anya Peters' homelessness blog

And she has finally parked up. This weekend, after nine months living in a car, she moved back into rented accommodation. Although the publishers say the amount paid for the book is confidential, it's been enough to set Anya Peters back on her feet again.

But despite anticipating a perfect first night in a house again - "warm, scented bath, Beethoven on in the background, a glass of something" - she says that it didn't quite work out that way. Her stuff was still in the car, she felt unsettled and disorientated after her long stretch living outside.

"I have the privacy that I have craved all these months. It is the strangest feeling though ...So far I have mostly just wanted to run out of the place. It is too warm and I can't breathe or recognise all the unfamiliar smells or sounds, and nothing feels like mine yet."

Despite the first-night nerves, she is delighted by the upturn in her fortunes.

Writing in her blog, she said: "Not sure if I'm dreaming this or not...but I think Lady Luck just came strolling down my laneway, rolling her big, shiny dice. Words have come clattering to a stop, and all I can do for now is smile."

Since last summer, Anya Peters had been part of the "hidden homeless", showing no outward signs of sleeping rough in her car each night and without any contact with other homeless people or housing advisers.

Agents of change

Surreptitiously using facilities such as showers in hospitals and computers in libraries, she maintained both her public appearance and her communication with the outside world through her online diary.

Bookshop
The Wandering Scribe book is to be published next Spring

This Wandering Scribe blog, which reported both the practicalities of homelessness and the emotional reaction to her circumstances, struck a chord with readers - with thousands following the diary.

It also caught the attention of literary agent, Camilla Hornby at Curtis Brown, who contacted Anya to talk about the idea of a book about her life.

"We're often approached by people with blogs, but they don't usually translate into a book. Here was an account of the everyday details of being homeless - and it was written in very beautiful prose, it inhabited another realm.

"I wanted to know more about the glimpses of her past life - and why this articulate woman was living in a car like this."

Publishers Harper Collins are expecting the book to appeal strongly to the big market for stories about overcoming tough experiences - the so-called "misery memoir" - and are confident it will be in the top 10.

The success of the Wandering Scribe blog also highlights the shifting relationship between new media and traditional publishing - and how the book market is trying to tap into the vast potential of an online audience.

Second chance

Even if the book becomes a top 10 chart topper, for a hardback that can mean only selling five hundred copies a week - while the Wandering Scribe blog has averaged 11,000 readers per week since March. And the BBC News Magazine story about her clocked up more than 200,000 readers.

While the prestige might lie with the publishers, the numbers are driving in a different direction. And the blog will continue - keeping up the next instalments for a regular readership who have followed her story.

But as homelessness recedes and the book looms, it will inevitably raise questions about the boundary line between her blog as an online diary and a marketing tool.

What has Anya Peters learned from her time living in a car?

"I don't ever want it to happen again. I didn't have the security net of people and relationships before when things went wrong. I'll never try to do it on my own again. This is a fantastic second chance."

No holiday humor in radio pair’s jollies over degrading homeless

No holiday humor in radio pair’s jollies over degrading homeless
By Michele McPhee/ The Beat
Boston Herald Police Bureau Chief
Monday, December 18, 2006 - Updated: 01:19 PM EST

Some people may have giggled at the idea of a gaggle of homeless men taking over the upscale Short Hills Mall in New Jersey, a stunt staged by radio shock jocks Opie and Anthony and heard by WBCN [website] listeners all weekend. It was tantamount to bringing a bus filled with the bedraggled from Boston Common to sit on Santa’s lap at the Chestnut Hill Mall.
“This so-called ‘shopping spree’ is a sick and twisted exercise that degrades the most vulnerable members of our society. This is an outrage. This is wrong, and we need the public and our partners who care about the homeless and about basic human decency to stand up and tell them so,” Menino said, adding that the broadcast came on the same day that the city began counting the Hub’s homeless.
“The homeless people who will be used for this event are human beings who may have been struggling for years with the adversity and problems that come with alcoholism and addictions, or with mental illness and other disabilities,” Menino said.
“The fact that WBCN has chosen the homeless and the holidays to present this humiliating and shameful attempt at humor is inhumane and shameful.”
Of course, Menino has his own problems with the shock jocks.
The pair was already infamous for inhumane behavior - such as airing a couple having sex inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, enraging Catholics nationwide.
But no prank is worse than the one they pulled on April Fool’s Day in 1998, the one that got the duo fired by WAAF [website].
They went on the air and told listeners that Menino had been killed in a car crash, terrifying his wife, children, grandchildren and loved ones.
Call me humorless, but who could find that funny? Apparently, a lot of people, because the two knuckleheads moved to New York and their show became syndicated.
In this weekend’s highly publicized trip, “homeless and lunatics” were brought to the fancy mall in New Jersey and treated to Christmas presents, makeovers - and booze.
And there were girls - I’m certain they were decked out in $200 Juicy sweatpants and armed with their daddy’s Amex cards - who called the show to complain that Opie and Anthony were ruining their shopping experiences.
They were called over-privileged “whores” on the air.
And all this Christmas cheer comes just days before National Homeless Persons Memorial Day.
OK, maybe creating a memorial day to the country’s homeless population is a bit too crunchy granola, but I’m also opposed to using down-on-their luck folks who could be mentally ill, or desperate alcoholics for financial gain.
Remember “Bum Fights” - those atrocious videos that show teenage punks beating up homeless people and then urinating on them? Those uplifting clips provoked the beatings of at least a half-dozen homeless people across the country.
At least the homeless brought to the Short Hills Mall got a few beers, pictures with Santa and maybe even some Gap sweatshirts, rather than a beating.
And then they were dropped off back on the streets they were rousted from in the name of fun.