We go out on the street in Edinburgh with Cyrenians to talk about homelessness and rough sleeping in Scotland and The Scotsman's support of this year's Cyrenians Winter Appeal.
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00:00This is Janet Christie at the Scotsman. This year we're supporting the Sirenians winter
00:03repeal. We're here on the streets with Nick Harrold, who's one of the homeless navigators.
00:10There are over 13,000 homeless in Scotland now. How many will be sleeping on the streets
00:15here in Edinburgh tonight?
00:16So it's hard to give exact figures for that because the population isn't static. They
00:21don't necessarily always sleep in the same places. But the last time earlier this year
00:26that a rough sleeper's count was held, 42 people were counted on that one night. That
00:33is about an average. I would say that it's probably on the increase just now. I would
00:38say the real figure is probably a wee bit more than that.
00:41And why is it on the increase?
00:42There are multiple factors for that. There is the cost of living crisis has definitely
00:49had an impact. Changes to legislation around foreign nationals after Brexit has definitely
00:56made an impact. Edinburgh has declared a housing emergency. We just literally do not have enough
01:03social housing available. We have lots of people in temporary accommodation, but there
01:10are still lots of people waiting on temporary accommodation. And because people aren't being
01:15able to move through temporary accommodation into permanent accommodation, it means that
01:20that system has got a bit of a bottleneck. So it's hard for anyone to move away from
01:26homelessness because of the lack of social housing and the lack of ability to access
01:30it.
01:31Okay. And you're one of the homeless navigators. Can you tell us what you do?
01:35Yeah. So my colleague Mark and I, we are deployed five days a week, Monday to Friday. We are
01:40out predominantly in the city centre, but we do cover further afield than Edinburgh,
01:45but mostly we work in the city centre. And our job on a daily basis is we walk the streets.
01:51We will engage with people who are sitting begging or who are rough sleeping. We will
01:57respond to calls from businesses if they're concerned about people that they see rough
02:03sleeping. We work quite closely with the community police, the officers who's based at Edinburgh
02:10and the West End. We do monthly patrols with him. We do a lot of partnership work with
02:20other agencies that are other homeless organisations. Mark and I, we can't operate in a vacuum getting
02:28anyone accommodated. It's not us that provide the accommodation. It's us that help people
02:32navigate their way through the system. I think that's where the name comes from. It's very
02:37much we try to be the mortar between the bricks to try and help people make their way
02:44through the services, because people will generally have quite negative experiences
02:50dealing with housing and social work and things like that. Homelessness, despite what some
02:57politicians might want to say, is not a lifestyle choice. There are not very many people in
03:03over 20 years working in this field that I've met who have chosen to be homeless. It's one
03:08of these myths that you hear people expounding that they've decided that they want to do
03:15that. Nobody moves into sleeping in a graveyard or stuff like that because it's a lifestyle
03:26choice. Okay, and how about what we can do to help? There's the practical things like people
03:37need the stuff that you need to sleep rough, but frankly my priority is not helping facilitate
03:45people rough sleeping. It's helping them move away from rough sleeping. I think to help what
03:51we need is pressure on government, local government, Scottish government. Recently they changed
03:58the rules so that it enabled people from all over Scotland to be able to access services
04:04anywhere in Scotland. It used to be a case that they called it local connection. If you
04:09were a homeless person in Edinburgh, that was where you got a service. If you were homeless
04:12in Glasgow, that's where you got a service. It stopped people travelling around taking
04:17advantage of slightly better services in different cities. They've removed local connection
04:22so it's brilliant because it now means that any Scottish person can get help anywhere
04:27in the country, but that hasn't come along with an increase in the resources for Edinburgh.
04:34So many people now are gravitating towards Edinburgh because they think we have good
04:38services and we have more available here. In theory we do, but because we have so many
04:43more extra people coming to Edinburgh from other parts of the country, not just Scotland
04:48but also Britain as well, we are really creaking under the strain here of the services. Temporary
04:56accommodation, you're lucky if there are two or three beds available every day and they're
05:01gone by half nine in the morning. So that's partly why it's on the increase here then.
05:08What will happen if people give to the Winter Appeal, how would that help?
05:13I think Sirenians as well as the Navigators, we are one very specific part of someone's
05:19journey through homelessness. We are very much at that cold phase, that hard end. Sirenians
05:24as an organisation, we look at homelessness more holistically and we have projects that
05:32are more attuned to things like employability, helping people move on, helping younger people
05:39not fall into homelessness, a lot of preventative stuff, but also stuff like recovery work,
05:46so helping people move away from addictions, also things like volunteering opportunities
05:51for folk that are ready for that. And also I have a job as well, so it would be nice
05:57to get a wee bit of extra resources for us as well. But I think by helping Sirenians
06:03it's not just the people that you can visibly see on the streets, because there's a lot
06:08more to homelessness than the people you see begging on Prince's Street.
06:12Thank you, that's great. So if you want to donate to the Sirenians Winter Appeal you
06:17need to go to sirenians.scot