{"id":2438,"date":"2023-11-14T21:59:04","date_gmt":"2023-11-14T21:59:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/?p=2438"},"modified":"2023-11-15T12:03:55","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T12:03:55","slug":"a-thought-on-suella-bravermans-brutal-comments-on-homelessness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/a-thought-on-suella-bravermans-brutal-comments-on-homelessness\/","title":{"rendered":"A thought on Suella Braverman\u2019s brutal comments on homelessness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"On 4 November she posted a series of tweets<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\nThe British people are compassionate. We will always support those who are genuinely homeless. But we cannot allow our streets to be taken over by rows of tents occupied by people, many of them from abroad, living on the streets as a lifestyle choice. 1\/4 <\/p>\n

Unless we step in now to stop this, British cities will go the way of places in the US like San Francisco and Los Angeles, where weak policies have led to an explosion of crime, drug taking, and squalor. 2\/4 <\/p>\n

Nobody in Britain should be living in a tent on our streets. There are options for people who don\u2019t want to be sleeping rough, and the Government is working with local authorities to strengthen wraparound support including treatment for those with drug and alcohol addiction. 3\/4 <\/p>\n

What I want to stop, and what the law abiding majority wants us to stop, is those who cause nuisance and distress to other people by pitching tents in public spaces, aggressively begging, stealing, taking drugs, littering, and blighting our communities. 4\/4\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This was picked up in the press with suggests that she plans a crackdown on the use of tents by homeless people and fines for some charities providing tents.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The realities (1) \u2014 mental health and homelessness<\/h2>\n

The web site of the charity Crisis<\/a> puts it better than I can: <\/p>\n

\n\u201cPoor mental health is both a cause and consequence of homelessness. For example, the onset of mental illness can trigger, or be part of, a series of events that can lead someone being forced into homelessness.<\/p>\n

\u201cFurthermore, housing insecurity and homelessness is stressful and can exacerbate or cause mental health problems. This means that there is a higher rate of mental health problems amongst people without a home compared with the general population.<\/p>\n

\u201c45% of people experiencing homelessness have been diagnosed with a mental health issue. This rises to 8 out of 10 people who are sleeping rough.
\nMental health issues are deeply connected to the trauma and adversity people who are homeless face.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I could add individual stories of people I\u2019ve known who are homeless, but in each case I also feel I should respect their privacy. <\/p>\n

Some of these stories are around mental health crises in people\u2019s lives. As I write, various people come to mind. It\u2019s possible that some would see these as \u201cexceptions\u201d, but there seem to be rather a lot of exceptions. We can\u2019t get away from the fact that the NHS is under strain, and mental health comes off badly in this. We\u2019re dealing with two stigmas \u2014 of mental illness and of homelessness. That\u2019s tough for anyone to handle.<\/p>\n

On Remembrance Day, John Simpson joined up the dots<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n\u201cRemembering today not just the family members who fought and died in two world wars, but also my handsome, charming great-uncle Harold whose life was ruined by his injuries in WW1 and who died, homeless and alone, on a bench at Waterloo station in 1960; not a lifestyle choice.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The realities (2) \u2014 housing<\/h2>\n

There are serious problems with housing provision in the UK. I could write a lot about why this is the case, and how hard the problem is to solve. It is undoubtedly complicated. But there are places where this goes from \u201clong term policy\u201d to immediate pain. One of the harsh points is where money issues turn into people losing their homes. I\u2019ve heard lots of comments about evictions of people who get behind on rent or mortgage payments is if they are \u201cto blame\u201d. But what happens when things go wrong? Someone loses their job, there\u2019s a divorce? The label \u201cmental illness\u201d get put on some of these things, but how many people are a lot closer to being in difficulty than they are comfortable saying?<\/p>\n

A path back<\/h2>\n

I\u2019ve heard people talk of the cost of the benefits system \u2014 with the implication that the state should act to minimise what it is paying out. <\/p>\n

In a speech to the Conservative Party Conference in 1981, in the wake of riots in Handsworth and Brixton Norman Tebbit infamously said \u201cI grew up in the 30s with an unemployed father. He didn’t riot; he got on his bike and looked for work and he kept looking ’til he found it.\u201d. Which is fine if someone is able to get on their bike and find something. But what if they are gradually ground down by trying?<\/p>\n

Experiences of severe poverty do lasting harm to people. They make it much harder to be optimistic, much harder to find ways of earning. An acute awareness of the downside if things go wrong make people reluctant to take risks. At the best of times that is bad, but we now live with rapid change. Many people need to change careers more than once: the wounds of poverty make it much harder for people to take the risk of leaving something that seems secure (for now) to train for something else. Yet that is what the country and the economy needs.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s some evidence from neuroscience of hardships having an impact on our brains<\/a>. That backs up what gets phrased in more abstract terms in the psychoanalytic literature around trauma. We might treat some of this differently if we could talk openly about being injured.<\/p>\n

We should be thinking of ways back for people in difficult circumstances, not ways to judge them.<\/p>\n

\u2026 and the brutality of Braverman\u2019s audience<\/h2>\n

What worries me is that labelling homeless a \u201clifestyle choice\u201d absolves everyone else of responsibility. The person who has enough financial security to mean they have no real concept of how someone could become homeless can go on having no awareness. The person who has a niggling fear at the back of their mind gets an incentive to ignore the fear. Both can sleep easier in their beds because they have found a way to silence their fears. Maybe brutal policies towards \u201cother people\u201d who are less fortunate is important for helping them sleep. <\/p>\n

Her evident distaste for \u201cweak policies [that] have led to an explosion of crime, drug taking, and squalor\u201d in the US gives perfect cover for a brutal attack on those who\u2019ve fallen through the system. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s been speculation that Braverman is eyeing an attempt to become Tory leader. Her words horrified many people, but but perhaps not the members of her own party who would be voting in a leadership election. She\u2019d be appealing to many of those who voted for Liz Truss. <\/p>\n

These are people who can be loud, but are also afraid, trying to drown out the voice that says that changes in the world are making life more precarious for all of us. A wise leader would help people address those changes. Donald Trump gives a chilling example of how someone bent on power can get it by doing the opposite\u2026<\/p>\n

An alternative<\/h2>\n

I remember a conversation with a Liberal Democrat peer who spoke of a long conversation with someone begging on The Embankment. His question \u201cWhat would make a difference to your life\u201d opened a long and productive conversation. That\u2019s an approach that might actually help homeless people. It\u2019s also a good approach to government…<\/p>\n

Postscript<\/h2>\n

Suella Braverman\u2019s time as Home Secretary came to an end in the reshuffle on 13 November 2023. For an instant it might have been possible to imagine that things had changed, but Andrea Jenkyn\u2019s letter of no confidence later that day, and Braverman\u2019s letter to the Prime Minister the next day both read like a declaration of war. Braverman may not have spoken for all Conservative MPs when she made these remarks, but they resonated with enough of her party to be alarming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Braverman\u2019s crass comments about homelessness being a \u201clifestyle choice\u201d have rightly attracted strong criticism. I am concerned that this speaks of a fear and brutality in her target audience that should ring alarm bells.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_wpscppro_dont_share_socialmedia":null,"_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"","_twitter_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type":"","_pinterest_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"","_medium_share_type":"","_threads_share_type":"","_google_business_share_type":"","_selected_social_profile":[],"_wpsp_enable_custom_social_template":false,"_wpsp_social_scheduling":{"enabled":false,"datetime":null,"platforms":[],"status":"template_only","dateOption":"today","timeOption":"now","customDays":"","customHours":"","customDate":"","customTime":"","schedulingType":"absolute"},"_wpsp_active_default_template":true},"categories":[2,343,344],"tags":[345,346],"class_list":["post-2438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-suella-braverman","category-tory-right-wing","tag-suella-braverman-homelessness","tag-tory-right-wing"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2438"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2442,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2438\/revisions\/2442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}