Tags for Forum Posts: homelessness
Doesn't sound a lot like 'choice' to me, Antoinette.
Chere Marie Antoinette,
Let the bugger eat cake. And surely there are several of McDonalds' and #hashtag's bulging bins and bags in his near vicinity? I understand your overweening compassion and how it is strangling and constipating your admirable spasms of conscience. Know clearly, however, to whom you should attach the blame. I, too, spent a good hour of my valuable time this afternoon spellbound by one of what you describe as "professional beggars". This grey-beard loon transfixed me like some ancient mariner, to tell me a tall tale about when he served as some sort of councillor or counsellor for Harringay, but now it seems he has fallen upon hard times and is doomed to spend the next five or ten years as King of the Homeless Beggars. I've often caught sight of him scavenging the streets of Harringay and North Islington for more than thirty years, so he's well practised in the dark arts of the scavenging crow (corvus corbus corone). Expect an upsurge of what you call "supposedly homeless petson's" and their squalid encampments swarming along our footways and impeding our progress. You and I, Your Majesty, know that they would never have noticed their homelessness or their state of amateur or professional beggary had it not been for the bearded prophecies of this doleful Jeremiah, Corvus Corbus. Hang him, I say.
Gambling is a very real and serious addiction - over the years I have worked with many people who have become homeless because of gambling. If you are addicted to gambling then the idea that the you could turn the pound given to you to buy a coffee into £10,000 by buying is scratch card is understandably seductive. Addiction is a terrible soul destroying horrific thing. Good homelessness services support people to overcome addiction, they are facing severe cuts. Obviously people do feel compassion & do want to help so maybe consider volunteering or fundraising for a local homeless service?
Admittedly, the person at the station has never asked me for change. It's the hoards of people during my walk from Manor House to my place that annoy me. Always the same people asking for change just to place a bet. Haringey Green Lanes never used to be like this before the bookies opened all over the place.
I have been living on Green Lanes for almost ten years now, and I don't remember seeing so many people begging and sleeping rough between Harringay overground station and the Salisbury pub.
Mainly three spots seem to be occupied day in/day out: under the bridge, in front of Barclays and in front of Iceland. I guess none of the other businesses would let people set camp outside their premises.
There seems to be a steady rotation of different beggars in front of Barclays, whereas the man in front of Iceland is always the same. As for the bridge, it was a couple for a while and now a man on his own.
Also there is a man on the bench outside the Tesco express who's always pestering passer-bys for change, and there has been a little makeshift box that someone sleeps in just before the Finsbury pub near Manor House station.
I know that Hackney council has recently decided to get heavy handed on rough sleepers, so that might partly explain their increased numbers in Harringay.
This is a bad situation for the people involved obviously, but it's not great either for local businesses and residents, as it gives the area quite a run-down feel (that our local bookies are happy to contribute to).
Not sure what the answer to this problem is, but local authorities surely do not seem to be doing much about it...
What would Haringey Council do which it is not doing, Chris?
Though of course the usual mantra: there's-no-money, is beginning to look more threadbare all the time. But I'm a fair person. Even though they generate a constant stream of propaganda, I'm prepared to be persuaded that this time the Haringey spokesperson has got things right. Anyone know? (I mean someone with access to independent information.)
I don't know, what do the other councils do? Going around London, I do not see the same situation everywhere.
The council had apparently quite a bit to spend on a new logo and website, and it is making a fortune from their cctv cameras recording road offences all over the borough, renting out Finsbury park for all sorts of events and selling off sizeable chunks of public land, as they're about to do with St Ann's grounds, so I doubt they're short of a bob or two...
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