Ooh! Think Twice

WORDS AND PHOTOS BY VICE STAFF

Clockwise from top left: The tour organisers; the tour group; Sean freaking out the organisers by trespassing; Sean with a statue of a button.

A group of people called Sock Mob has been organizing guided homelessness-themed tours of Shoreditch in east London led by the real-life homeless. I’m not sure if it’s to raise awareness or money or whatever, but I decided to go along. After meeting up at Old Street roundabout with my two homeless tour guides, Henry and Sean, and about 20 other people, we took off on a walk around Shoreditch. Here are some things I learned.

PEOPLE CAN BE SUPER PATRONISING

Judging by how pleased with themselves the rest of the people on the tour seemed, I’m going to take a guess and say either the

Guardian

or

Time Out

had done a feature on it. When Henry and Sean told us that they’d researched all the information themselves, everyone exchanged the kind of “Awwww!” glances usually reserved for when a six-year-old paints something “all by on their own!”

HOMELESS PEOPLE ARE PROUD OF WHERE THEY CAME FROM

Though I’d expected the tour to include “this is a bin where you can get good sandwiches” and “this is a spot I like to sleep in when it rains”, it was actually more about the history of the homeless (which I never even realised was “a thing”). For instance, did you know that, in the 16th century, homeless people were branded with a V?

RICH PEOPLE ARE JERKS

Our first stop on the tour was Bunhill Fields, a cemetery by Old Street station. During the Great Fire of London, people made homeless by the blaze took refuge there. And for over 300 years since, homeless people have been sleeping there. Oh, that is until a couple of years ago when a block of luxury flats was built overlooking the area. Now, if a homeless person tries to sleep in there, a resident will call the police and have them removed. About 60 percent of the tour was made up of sentences that ended with “but then it got converted into luxury flats”.

THE POLICE ARE JERKS

Not content with just making the homeless get out of rich folk’s views, apparently the police will also pour water in sheltered spots so that people can’t sleep there, and have stomped all over a tent that Sean and Henry were asleep in.

OTHER PEOPLE ARE JERKS TOO

AND THEN, as though they weren’t having a shitty enough time already, not too long after the police walked all over their tent, some guys set fire to it while they were sleeping. They both escaped without serious injuries, but the tent wasn’t feeling too clever at all afterwards.

THE GOVERNMENT DOESN’T CARE ABOUT STREET FOLK

According to a 2007 study by the Department of Communities and Local Government, there are 498 homeless people in England. Some experts think this figure may have been “manipulated”. No shit. If it were true, that would mean I walk past 1 percent of England’s homeless population on the 20-minute walk from my house to work.

Clockwise from top left: Henry telling us that the Heathrow gold heist was planned above the Old Blue Last; a cute homeless dog; a combination of my two favourite things: manifestos and graphic design; some kind of squat art that deals with some sort of issue.

ONCE YOU’RE DOWN, YOU’RE DOWN

As a freelance party photographer, you’re probably not aware of the full impact the recession has had on the job market. Henry told us about a time he applied for a job as a part-time kitchen porter in a bar in Hoxton, only to find out that he was one of 350 people applying. Some of whom had degrees. Oh, and then when he finally did manage to get a job, he couldn’t get to it, because the tube is too expensive and he can’t afford to get caught riding it without a ticket again.

BECOMING HOMELESS IS REALLY, REALLY EASY

Despite what most people I’ve spoken to about this think (i.e. that you end up sleeping rough because you’re mentally ill and a drug addict), it’s actually pretty easy to become homeless in London. Henry ended up on the streets when his wife changed the locks on their flat after a violent argument. As he’s from another country, he had no family to stay with, and shelters and housing projects give priority to families and women. This means about 50 percent of the people I know are exactly one step away from homelessness.

LIVING ON THE STREETS CAN MAKE YOU REALLY PARANOID

Did you know that there used to be a secret MI5 prison next to the American Apparel in Shoreditch? Or that the government is building a camp in Derby to hide all the homeless during the 2012 Olympics? Or that the United States lied about the location of Shakespeare’s Globe theatre in order to make money from tourists? No?

SELF-ENFORCED HOMELESSNESS SUCKS

The final stop on our tour was the Foundry, an ex-arts space that was being squatted by a bunch of Brazilian bicycle couriers. Though that would usually rank slightly below the mansion from the first

Resident Evil

on my list of buildings I would choose to visit, I figured I’d give it a shot. Yes, yes, I realise that if the property is standing there empty then why shouldn’t you be able to live in it and why should you need to pay money just to exist and blah, blah, blah, but FUCK, guys! Do you have to be such babies about how you maintain your squat? Writing tragic, misspelled epithets on the wall about society, keeping pet rats and having acoustic singalongs led by people who can neither sing, nor play, nor know any songs. Oh, and of course, everybody is drunk or on drugs or trying to cop off with naive student girls by portraying themselves as enemies to society.

It was like going into that 80s sub-genre of movies where parents leave their teenagers home alone for a summer.

But anyway, I think the idea of going into the squat was to show us that homeless people are just like me and you, but all it did was to show me that if you have a steady income, then you’re just going to have to man up and pay rent.

You’re only allowed to complain about gentrification when it’s not your fault. I know, I know, if you guys were paying for a flat you wouldn’t be able to listen to Tracy Chapman that loud. And your landlord would probably get pissed off if you wrote anti-BP poetry on the wall. And you’d probably have a little less pocket money to spend on cider. And you definitely wouldn’t be able to start a blog to let everyone in the world know you’re a squatter. But these are all small sacrifices to let someone who isn’t just pretending to be destitute have a chance.

As Paul Bearer of the New York band Sheer Terror once said: “Squatters rights? I’ll give you a right, a left, and a kick to the fucking head.”