Proposal by the City of Westminster to introduce a byelaw preventing 1) soup runs from distributing food and 2) rough sleeping in a designated area of Victoria

Thames Reach has taken the decision to support the proposal by the City of Westminster to introduce a byelaw in Victoria that will prevent rough sleeping and the operation of soup runs. The proposal has caused considerable debate and we feel it important to explain our position on the byelaw issue.

1)Background to Thames Reach

Thames Reach has been working with street homeless people since 1984. As an organisation we played a key role in reducing rough sleeping in London during the 1990s through the Rough Sleepers’ Initiative and later worked closely with the Rough Sleepers’ Unit to help achieve further reductions in the number of people sleeping rough in the capital. Working closely with colleagues from a range of charities and with local authorities and other statutory services, we have collectively helped over 20,000 rough sleepers off of the streets in the last ten years.

Our focus is on helping people find secure accommodation and to address all their needs: housing, health, employment and personal relationships. Around 100 of the staff at Thames Reach are former homeless people.

Thames Reach provided a soup run service until 2000. The soup run was a way of engaging with rough sleepers to help them take the step off of the streets into hostels or other accommodation. Unfortunately, what we found by 2000 was that our soup run was not helping people off the street, but rather it was maintaining people on the street. No longer were rough sleepers responding positively to our offersof accommodation or help with health issues. Instead our soup run, by this stage joined by dozens of others, was making it easy for people to avoid taking a decision to move away from rough sleeping, even though life on the street was clearly damaging them greatly, both physically and mentally. With support from friends and funders we transformed our soup run into the London Street Rescue team. London Street Rescue operates seven days a week across most London boroughs, meeting rough sleepers referred to it by the public, churches, voluntary agencies and others. The focus is to help people inside where their full range of needs can be addressed. Where we provide people with food, it is as part of an engagement that seeks to help people leave rough sleeping behind for good. The salaried staff who run the service are supported by a group of highly effective and dedicated volunteers.

2)The soup run byelaw

We are supporting the City of Westminster’s proposal to implement the soup run byelaw for two reasons:

a)In the 21st century, giving out soup is not enough

Firstly, we do not believe, from our own experience, that soup runs help people escape the devastating experience of rough sleeping. Too often we hear from people who, having escaped rough sleeping,believe with hindsight that the vast range of different handouts offered on the street prevented them from facing up to their situation. As one ex-rough sleeper told us:

‘It was far too easy. The soup runs arrived at my feet every night giving me limitless food and drink. I didn’t even need to move. It was only when I was coughing up blood that I decided to come off the street. But my health will never be the same. I should have come off of the street earlier.’

Soup runs also bring people back onto the street who have been helped into hostels or areliving in their own homes. Some people walk considerable distances into central Londonto line up in a queue for soup and food. On one occasion we came across a man who had walked to the Strand from his flat in Newham to receive a handout from an organisation which was based in Newham. This does not seem to us to be an effective way of offering services to people in need.

There are undoubtedly people, both rough sleepers and housed, who struggle to eat properly because of their very limited resources. Thames Reachabsolutely supports the provision of nutritious food to homeless people and the food we provide in our hostels is of a high standard. However, soup runs require people to queue in the open air for food and, unlike the service offered by excellent day centres in Westminstersuch as the Passage, other kinds of assistance are rarely provided. The provision of food is important, but helping people with health, substance misuse, legal, accommodation and employment issues is essential if we are really going to help people escape homelessness for good.

b)Services to the homeless must be balanced with the needs of communities

The Victoria area has received soup runs since the 1980s. As the number of rough sleepers has declined, the number of soup runs has increased. In the area around Howick Place and the piazza outside Westminster cathedral, soup runs are frequent and regular, often driving many miles to reach Victoriafrom places such as Harlow, Woking,Wimbledon and Lewisham. Soup runs attract dozens of people and undoubtedly create problems for local communities in terms of the detritus they leave behind (cups, food trays, split food etc) and are unsettling for people going about their daily business as a large group of people can be intimidating, particularly when arguments arise in the group waiting to receive soup and food. Homelessness organisations such as Thames Reach advocate strongly on behalf of the people we help and support, but it is also crucial that we understand and are sympathetic concerning the impact of rough sleeping and street activity on local communities.

Considerable effort has been expended over at least ten years to bring a level of order to the work of the soup runs so that pressure on local communities can be relieved. It is our view that there has been little progress towards achieving this, indeed the range of soup runs, if anything, seems to have increased. We accept that after many years of trying, a byelaw appears to be the only way of reducing the impact on the local community in Victoria. This is, of course, a byelaw relating to a specific area of Westminster with a long-standing residential community. The giving out of soup and food is not being criminalised and soup runs can continue to operate in other parts of the borough, for example, on the Strand. However, we would urge soup run volunteers to think seriously about how their volunteering commitment can be used in other ways, for example, supporting people in hostels and day centres, which we believe would be far more effective.

3)The byelaw as it relates to rough sleeping

We are also supporting that part of the byelaw that relates to the prevention of rough sleeping.Our reasons are, as follows:

The part of Victoria covered by the proposed bye-law zone has been a locality commonly used by rough sleepers for decades. Some of London’s most long-term, entrenched rough sleepers are to be found in this area. Most of these men and women are not new to the street but have been sleeping rough for months and sometimes years. They are met day after day by outreach workers on the street and in day centres and given many offers of help. This includes not only assistance with accommodation but help with a great range of other issues. Most of these people are not on the streets because they do not have anywhere to go.They are individuals who are often very unwell; they suffer from poor physical and mental health and may struggle with drink and drug problems. Again, the impact on the local community from this high level of rough sleeping over decades is considerable.

We believe that a targeted byelaw in this residential area is justified under certain circumstances. These are as follows:

  • Every long-term rough sleeper in the area covered by the proposed byelaw must be identified and given at least one offer of accommodation (and other help, if necessary) before the byelaw is imposed
  • Westminster and the organisations working with this group of rough sleepers should monitor the progress of the rough sleepers helped to move out of the area and seek to avoid them simply moving beyond the zone to continue sleeping rough.

We would note that there is a history of very successful approaches of this kind where a locality with a large number of rough sleepers has been targeted in order that people can be helped into accommodation, and so that rough sleeping in the area can bebrought to an end. Some of these initiatives have been in Westminster (Embankment Place, Savoy Place, Charing Cross Underpass) and others in Lambeth (Waterloo‘bullring’) and Camden (Lincolns Inn Fields). In the case of the bullring and Lincolns Inn Fields, the motivation was similar in that people living and working in the area were unreasonably affected by the extent of rough sleeping. The solution was to give rough sleepers the opportunity to move off the streets into decent accommodation with additional services attached, according to need. The majority of people accepted an offer of help and only a small minority were displaced to sleep rough elsewhere. This humane approach must prevail in Victoria in advance of the byelaw implementation.

4)Summary

Thames Reach supports both elements of the byelaw

Soup runs

  1. In the 21st century food and handouts for the homeless should not be provided out-of-doors in an un-coordinated and ineffective way.
  2. Rather than helping people off of the streets, this approach can unwittingly help maintain people on the street.
  3. We believe that food should be offered inside a building and that wherever possible there should be other help on offer to meet the accommodation and health needs of homeless people.
  4. The energy and commitment of soup run volunteers which we admire greatly can make a far better impact if the engagement takes place in settings such as hostels and day centres, away from the street.

Rough sleeping

  1. A byelaw to prevent rough sleeping in this part of Victoria, a residential area which has been a focus for rough sleeping over decades is justifiable as long as a clear plan is in place to ensure that every long-term rough sleeper is given at least one good offer of accommodation and other help so that they are not simply displaced to another part of Westminster, or further afield.
  2. There is a long history of this kind of initiative leading to people being helped off the street which have been crucial in the ending of ‘cardboard cities’ in London.
  3. Thames Reach would at no point support a borough-wide byelaw as this would be tantamount to Westminster pushing the problem of rough sleeping elsewhere
  4. We believe that the implementation of the byelaw can lead to a reduction in rough sleeping through people being helped into accommodation and will also bring respite to the local community who have had to cope with the problem of high levels of rough sleeping in their locality for decades.

11/3/11

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