Jon:Personal story why starting Ehome
From EveryonesHome.org.uk
My Personal story - of why I was homeless, a little of who I am, and far too much of who I was. It's the most boring story in the world, to me at least, but you might find it interesting. It's a story replicated a million times in a million different people for more or less a million different reasons. But I have to be clear and Honest John with you and get down to brass tacks: my homelessness was my own fault, caused through my own lack of care for my mental health, and washed down by alcohol, burned by cannabis and dalliences with other intoxicants, and regardless of that I wasn't completely interested in life or living. Just shuffling along the mortal coil... bored.
My own parents kicked me out. Jobless, Depressed, Drugged Five nights out of Seven, recently separated, getting over a love lost. Smart arse, yet going nowhere, nothing to do, nothing but sarcasm and exasperation to offer. They didn't kick me out cause they wanted to, or because I was essentially aimless and focused on ending s depression formerly existential that had morphed into something more manic after I'd had a bad marriage. In retrospect I do not blame them. Yet it wasn't a nice experience because as a cancerian I very much feel the need to know where I'm staying and prefer my shell, to be, at home.
In retrospect I had been depressed my entire life, but, I lost my depression at the stage of having lost two jobs in 2 months and losing 2 places to stay in that time. I can cope having nowhere, that much I know, but I do like to nest a place out. My first place was lovely, second back when married was getting nice, and third was cold and sparse and terribly temporary. In between a lot of housing problems I did a lot of live in Jobs. And boy do you get exploited, or grossly bored, or both. Very little freedom with living in jobs.
I never did love what I do before I started getting into writing and the idea of EveryonesHome.org.uk as a different, modern and streamlined mission to help counteract homelessness by a housing first solution, to which access, is truly direct easy and open to all. In my short bouts of homelessness and personal story I am not a victim of anyone but myself
You can't really be sure if someones homeless. This is a large part of the problem. People are weary and leary. "are we really helping a brother here, or a scumbag"? they will ask inside their heads. Well you know what? You're probably a scumbag too, I'm sure i am, and no, I don't like to give money to homeless people, because they'll probably just buy drugs with it. And my drugs comes first. The simple fact is, anyone claiming to be homeless who isn't, should be locked up for encouraging the ennui about the situation on our streets when people whom even have jobs can afford to live, or are not ALLOWED to live anywhere.
Homelessness is only second away for anyone, in the wrong circumstances, the wrong frame of mind or a million factors beyond anyone's control. Myself I only ever suffered the slightest of the whole experience - and I hope never to have to repeat it. People can scoff and whine about the deserving underclass all they like, but as a hierarchy of hatred they do nothing to help the problem only re-enforcing it's strictures. My experiences were wide, but brief, I was never homeless for more than a month or two, and being resourceful I got by.
But Mental illness: check, Drugs and alcohol abuse: check, Family breakdown: check, Couldn't afford living on a single income and recieved hours of useless housing advice: Check, check, check, check...
We cannot say that homelessess is just a matter of getting a job and getting to be a sober employed individual whose up at 6am every morning and in church by 7.30 before work. Some people can't or won't. It's more a matter of artificial divisions, misdirected charity and government complicity to rabid exploitation through housing costs which has been going on since forever... the systems of how land, buildings and shelter is established and improved within economic society is a difficult and raw topic for everyone.
I don't care for my personal story. It's boring to me. I'm interested in the complacency of people themselves who don't want to even try and be well housed. I'm interested in why housing is all so complicated when it could be quite simple. I don't want to judge yet still I must question... To say everyone should have a home is a great statement. Yet it means nothing. Some people like the outdoors - they go in when they want to and should have every right to do so - EveryonesHome to me is more than an shelter campaign or site for the sector. It's an idea of never ceasing to ask the questions: For those whom have no home and need one... why are they not home and how could we help get them there.
By creative solutions and people coming together in freedom, no problem is insurmountable, whatever it's source or origin. This is the richest City in the world, but where there was once cardboard cities along the Thames, there are now just walking shadows across every high street, in every London village... living out an obscure life of simple survival in a very cold concrete jungle. Stuck between the fallacies of home orwnership and the governments indebting of the nation to pay over and over again to re-own again and again what is already ours. This land.
Our forthcoming Shelter is a social experiment and a challenge to the local councils of North East London that when someone sits in your housing advice departments and cries and spazzes out through not knowing where to turn to what to do (not that I ever did that) you can at the very least direct them to EveryonesHome. Not just a Shelter advice line.
A capsule in a complex to yourself isn't a home, and never should be, people are not guinea pigs. We treat guinea pigs well except in South America of course, but We treat people like crap... and the bottom line is that when you're sitting waiting for three hours or 28 days in the council housing advice department, and the only advice is, "go find a hostel"... and you can't.... Cause it takes you days to find one, and when you find it costs anywhere up to £30 a day... in the context where the best you can get in London is either a manky mattress if your lucky, or a sweaty bed at between £4-£25...in that context:
A capsule is a great start, to be sure, everyones home for this very reason:
Being realistic Shelter as a campaigning organisation is limited by the scale of it's own remit. It attempts to straddle the questions of poor housing, hidden homelessness and homelessness and would it have amalgamated with Crisis been detrimental to their joint causes. Shelter should be about better affordable housing for all. Crisis is about helping people in a crisis and EveryonesHome is about shelter, online and off.
The online website shelter shows the levels of population in various conditions of housing at any one time - whilst also being a directory for the sector itself - because it's not all about me or us, but everyone. The minute we can close the forthcoming Shelter due to it being seldom used the better- the idea is high turnaround integrated into analysis, engagement, and most of all the quickest referral and gatekeeper puching route out of homelessness for those who require it.
I am asking for your help, involvement, education, experience, and money of course because we've come too far. Civilisation works towards beauty and I'd like to offer a piece of that to you because then it's not going to happen without you.
Because this is not about Jon or his personal story. This is about a shared dream - getting Everyone Home.
