Full transcript: Steve Douglas on London Real
0:42 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Steve Douglas, the CEO of St. Mungos, a charity dedicated to ending homelessness and rebuilding the lives of those that have experienced time on the streets. You have more than 25 years experience working in the housing sector and were awarded a CBE in 2019.
1:20 St. Mungos operates one of the largest outreach services in the country, offering a bed and support to nearly 3,000 people each night with the goal that everyone has a place to call home and can fulfill their hopes and ambitions. You began your new role at St. Mungos in July of this year in which must have been an extremely challenging period and have promised to further the ambition of your no-going-back and home-for-good campaigns. Steve, welcome to London Real.
1:46 Thank you. Great to have you here. You know, on a personal level, about a year ago we had an experience here with the Spitalfields Crypt Trust and we ended up cooking Thanksgiving dinner for about a hundred homeless people and my whole team got together and my wife cooked the turkeys and it was an interesting experience because for the first time, Steve, I got to really see firsthand what it’s like and what these people are like and I think a lot of people might be surprised to learn that some of these people, you know, were one or two paychecks, you know, from being housed to being homeless and there was also a lot happening here from childhood trauma to mental health to drug addiction and homelessness wasn’t always something I think people understand and that’s why I’m really glad you’re here today. I think a lot of people also don’t understand that there’s homelessness and then they’re sleeping rough on the streets and that’s only a small percentage of those people but it’s still an issue that everyone faces and it was a real eye-opener for me and my staff and it was an emotional day and we really connected with a lot of people there and and gave them this American Thanksgiving spirit but it also showed me that there’s, you know, there’s a person behind the face on the street and I think sometimes we forget that and we forget that they have a story just like you and me and a lot of times they could be back on their
3:03 Feet if they just had the right resources so I’m curious about your thoughts on that Steve and did I get insights that were that were right or were there more things that I need to see? Ryan, you summed it up incredibly well. I’ve been with Sir Mungo since July and I, like you, spent some time with our clients as we call those that we provide support to and that range of experience for those individuals is incredible. You’re actually right, there are some for whom it is just about a home, an affordable home. Circumstances may have meant that they’re unemployed, they were super surfing and have been kicked out, they’ve ended up on the streets and have nowhere to go and then for others indeed it may be personal trauma, personal experience, it may be domestic abuse, it may be alcohol, drug misuse, issues, complex health issues, all of those factors act upon different people in different ways and so when I joined Sir Mungo’s I took some time early on to go out on the streets to do an outreach session with our outreach workers to talk to individuals to find out their stories and their stories were personal. Each and every story is a person’s story and I think you’ve summed it up really well. Understanding that a person sleeping rough is a person who is sleeping rough and we are very careful to talk about rough sleeping as being asleep, not a trait. For some it’s only a couple of paychecks away from rough sleeping is absolutely correct in some instances and
5:00 We are truly mindful of that. Our work is about supporting those who are on the streets, supporting those who are rough sleeping but as you said then moving them through hopefully to rebuild their lives. In some instances it’s just about dusting off, in some other instances it’s about long-term advice and support. Let them rebuild their lives that once again they can live independently and successfully. Yeah that’s a really good way to sum it up Steve and I like how you use the word clients. Language is everything you know and if you have the right language it gets people in the right perspectives so I appreciate you saying that. It was interesting to see also the struggle with addiction and I’ve struggled with addiction in the past and it was a state that I was in that at the time was really hard to get out of but I did and now I’m able to be productive and I see that with a lot of these people but when you’re sleeping rough on the streets you know a lot of times it’s really hard to get out of that because there’s not much to look forward to, there’s no stability, you can’t have a job if you don’t have an address and it seems like this downward spiral and yet that could be your aunt, that could be your former next-door neighbour, that could be the the postman you know and I talked to people that were literally, there was two paychecks they lost and there they were so it was like you said real stories
6:19 And real people. Yes, agreed entirely and you’ve described what we do, 3,000 clients we work with every night, almost 33,000 last year, our outreach team are out there having the patient conversations because for some it’s actually difficult to talk about at the state, for some actually it’s really really tough to acknowledge that something has caused that person to be in a position where they’re unable to effectively support themselves and our outreach team, this is not just some mongos, some mongos is one of a number of homelessness charities that operate across England and in the UK that provide advice and support for accommodation for the many homeless people and in some instances it is families as well across the country and it is about that humanity, it’s about that conversation recognizing that individuals are individuals, each person has a story to tell.
7:32 Steve, what is your biggest challenge right now? I’m just in this current point in time and then I’d love to find out about what the last six months were like because what a very challenging year but also you know a lot of incredible opportunities but right now what is your biggest challenge with the current state of things and then facing what could be a long recession and potentially even more people on the streets, what’s on your mind right now? Yeah, so you can’t describe what’s on my mind now without looking back over the last six months and actually over the last five years and so if we take a it’s almost a period of two five years potentially with us at the start of the next five year period, we look back over the last five years and we saw rough sleeping in England rising year on year and we were very clear the solutions were around funding for accommodation and funding for support, the work that our outreach teams do provides advice and support and provides a route through work that our hostel workers, so we provide accommodation in our hostels and in longer term accommodation and we also provide routes through to that accommodation homes for people. Some of it needs support as well. Over the last five years we’ve seen an increase, we’ve had austerity, we’ve had recession, we’ve had tough times particularly for local authorities and then coming through that for our clients as well and we saw year-on-year rises in homelessness and
9:09 Rough sleeping and in London with one year except for year-on-year rises. The last year alone it saw a 22% increase in rough sleeping. Then we had the pandemic, so the last six months and the reason that it’s worn to frame that, so we had five years rises year-on-year. Then we had the pandemic and we had the Everyone In initiative that you may have heard of, so this was effectively a response to a public health emergency that saw government provide the funding to local authorities that was needed, bringing homeless charities like ours, bringing local authorities together, bringing public health together to actually just get everyone in. Brian, you look too young but there was a time when EasyJet, the budget airlines, used to have a policy of you couldn’t book your seat. You got your ticket, you turned up, they opened the doors and then everybody rushed in and just dived for the seat that you could find. Well, Everyone In was a little bit like that. It was a swoop everybody up, get them into safety, do the assessments, work out what their long-term solutions are. A little bit chaotic first but what it proved was that local authorities, housing organisations, homeless charities like ours, public health authorities, all working together could make a huge difference and there was a huge volunteer effort as well. We had GPs who were coming off their general practitioners, nurses coming off their shifts and then coming and
10:52 Volunteering in some of the hotels that we were running. During the height of the pandemic, we were managing 15 hotels, effectively what Everyone In did was move everybody off the streets, move them out of communal shelters into self-contained accommodation in hotels, bed and breakfast and the like, where we could provide the support that was needed, the assessment, what we called triage, so it was working with the local authority on what the housing options are, working with GPs on what their health needs might be and then working through so what does that mean in terms of accommodation and support and it was an absolute success. We are clear, anybody who’s worked on the program is clear that it saved lives. That’s and you pretty much dropped homelessness down to zero for a while there, right? I mean you almost got everyone in accommodation. Yeah, there’s a debate around whether it was 90% or whether it was 80% or but it was a significant so absolutely right Brian, it got the vast vast majority of those who were sleeping rough off the street. That might have been an incredible moment to know now and to come to your question, that’s a very specific question about what are our priorities now. Our priorities now are long-term accommodation, what does that look like? Winter, we’ve got winter on its way, we always know that there is a height and increase in rough sleeping at this time of year. We’ve got potential austerity, so we’ve got, there’s an evictions ban which
12:35 Means that people won’t be evicted, that might have been evicted until spring next year but we know that there is that most assured of Damocles hanging over many of those people, so they need to be long-term solutions for those who are in arrears, those who might be evicted for whatever reason in months to come. So for us the challenge is okay how do we make sure that we provide the solutions for those from the Everyone in Initiative, provide them with secure long-term accommodation and the support when it’s needed but also to stem the flow of new rough sleepers coming onto the street, both during the winter and for the future. Credit to government, so this government has put in over 700 million pounds between a spending review, that’s quite unusual, specifically to fund support and accommodation and that accommodation will start to roll through over the coming months. It’s a four-year program and that’s quite unusual for governments to do, so it’s really welcome. So our challenge is making sure that that money and other homelessness charities and local authorities, making sure that money is allocated spent, that the accommodation comes through and support is provided and our immediate is making sure that there’s enough of the right accommodation, enough of the right support for those who are facing winter over the coming weeks and months. Yeah, which I guess is the most challenging time for everyone, right? And so you had this kind
14:13 Of an April, May, June where you housed all these people and dropped this you know sleeping rough rate almost down to zero, but then you have to get back to this reality now moving forward where that option isn’t always there and that’s what you’re kind of preparing for, how we can create this long-term housing for people moving forward. That’s exactly right, so it’s the when you say the option isn’t there, the option has been there but not a complete option, so one of the things that we’ve been talking to partners into government about is a long-term homelessness strategy that ensures that all of the successes of everyone in, all of the positive lessons that have been learned from everyone in are taken forward into a long-term strategy to end homelessness because we believe it is possible to do that and everyone in has proved that if all the key organizations are working together they could make a fundamental difference, the issues of rough sleeping and homelessness. It must have been a beautiful moment to see all of these departments come together with the funding and the government and the hospitality sectors to just show that you could make these great strides and it must have given you some optimism of what a future world could look like, like you said where you could actually end homelessness, where most citizens would probably think that’s impossible, there’s always going to be those people, but you actually saw a vision and you could
15:45 Even prove to people that this could be a reality in the future. Yes, Brian, the beautiful moment was actually talking to clients, some of whom had been on the streets for years and were scared to come in but came in and we were able to provide assessments and we were able to provide that secure accommodation and we were able to have conversations with them about what their longer-term needs might be and then to see them actually positive rather than just terrified, which is what the feeling was for many of our clients during that period, that was the smile moment. But you’re absolutely right, it proved to us that and I’m as you say, I’m 25 years in housing of one sort or another, affordable housing, always social housing, so it’s always been housing for those who are most in need but I’ve got colleagues who have been working in the homelessness sector for decades as well and for them to see that actually we could achieve it, we could get to the point where rough sleeping was pretty much eliminated, where solutions to those who are homeless were being thought through was very heartening. Now we must make sure that we don’t lose those lessons and we think about another wave, potentially, as we think about winter, as we think about the longer term. Yeah, you said something that reminded me of something I learned last year, you know, when I was spending time, you know, at this dinner that we made, is that that communication factor is something I
17:39 Think a lot of people don’t understand, that if someone’s sleeping rough, you know, I remember I was working with Gary Davidge over there and he said, Brian, you know, the first maybe 20 times they come in for a coffee and a breakfast roll, I’m just building a relationship to get their first name and then hopefully we start a dialogue and maybe down the road they might admit that there might be a problem with addiction or substance and then maybe after that we might be able to talk to them about what a future might look like and maybe then we can get them housing and then maybe they can get back to some normalcy. That’s why I saw it and it was really eye-opening to me, that it’s not just about giving someone a house and saying, here you go. I mean, it’s a social rehabilitation. There’s a lot of moving parts in the work you do there and again, the long-term housing is really important, right, because that’s the only way to get people kind of back in the workforce. Did I get some of that right? We talk about rebuilding lives and some of it is just about giving back the dignity to an individual. As we as citizens walk past somebody who is rough sleeping, somebody who is on the streets with just a blanket. They might have a pet, they might have another person sleeping rough close to them and we just walk past them. For our society it’s a sad thing that almost there’s a lack of humanity and if you are that person that is sleeping
19:15 Rough, that is being walked out by these bustling busy people, there’s a real challenge around dignity. The first thing we’re trying to do is just to be confirmed that each individual is a person, each individual can have personal dignity. They may have had personal experiences, traumas, all sorts of things that may have impacted upon the reason why they are sleeping on the street but let’s enable them to have that dignity back and so yeah, that’s about building relationships, that’s about building trust, that’s about acknowledging that sometimes it takes time. There’s an initiative called Housing First and we’re one of the biggest providers in the country that provides that service. The essence of it is that firstly if you’ve lost your accommodation, if you’ve lost a home, let’s get you back in a home, so let’s get you back into secure accommodation and then sitting alongside that there is, you might need support to sustain that tenancy, you might need support to rebuild your life, you might need support to get back into employment, you might need support for a drug or alcohol or mental health set of issues, let’s provide that support alongside it.
20:43 So that is the providing the accommodation support when it’s needed but for others that we work with, actually sustaining a tenancy in the first instance is really tough so there it may be a meal space, it may be a hostel, it may be the intense support that our teams provide which is helping you to rebuild your lives. Then the final bit is we have something called recovery colleges and we’ve been very fortunate, we’re a charity, some of our income comes through contracts where we’re managing services but some of it comes through donations as well, so it’s through sponsorship and advice from the public and from corporate organisations. We have something called recovery colleges and the idea of it is that if somebody is rebuilding their lives sometimes they need to learn new skills, sometimes they need to develop skills for employment whether that’s interviewing skills or whatever, sometimes it’s retraining and so we see that as a key part of the Rebuilding Lives agenda. We’ve had sponsors who have supported at work and have enabled us to develop the content to a point where not only are we engaging with those clients that we directly support but actually other clients as well and we think there’s more work than we can do on that going forward to have something that is a hub, a communal resource that enables clients in our hospitals but also in our hospitals and our homes and our accommodation but also clients more
22:25 Generally who access that resource for their own future lives and I think that’s something that we’ll be working on going forward because we do see it as an essential part of the Rebuilding Lives aspect of the work that we do. Sounds like a very important resource to have that piece there. Steve let me ask your question, what should someone do when they walk by someone sleeping rough? So the first thing, if you’re in London there is something called Street Link and if you just click on to the Street Link app and notify them that you’ve seen somebody that is sleeping rough, they will get an outreach worker out to that person and they will do it in pretty short order. What they are able to do then is to have the conversation with the person that is sleeping rough around what the options are. All of our outreach teams, all of the homelessness sectors outreach teams are out doing exactly as it says on the 10.
23:35 Talking to clients, identifying clients, working through what their solutions are, working through what their issues are and coming up with options for them. So Street Link is the first, just kind of click on the app or contact Homelessness Charity. So Bongos is yes one of the biggest operating across the country that there are others that are providing support and you can find those fairly easily. There’s an organization called Homeless Link, it’s a membership organization for homelessness charities and they have links to lots of local charities and so if you’re not quite sure, Homeless Link and they’ve got a website, they’ve got a portal to enable you to access that. But what you shouldn’t do is to give money to those who are sleeping rough because if you’ve got complex needs, if you’ve got complex issues, if you’ve got drug addiction, if you’ve got issues around spending money and things like that, providing of money directly to that person doesn’t necessarily help them. If you want to provide some food to them and during the pandemic, volunteers that we had that were organizing food parcels, working in food banks, providing and sometimes it was the most basics, whether it was sanitary wear for some of our clients that didn’t have it. We did a big piece of work with some of our technology sponsors and supporters who provided mobile phones because what we found with many of our clients was that they didn’t have just access to communications and that
25:21 Is discriminating in two ways. One, it means that they can’t access their family, friends, but also if they don’t have access to the Internet and if they’re on benefits or if they’re on welfare then they actually can’t access the system so they’re being doubly disadvantaged. For us, giving them money doesn’t really work. Giving the advice and support, the volunteering, the providing of food absolutely makes a difference and then connecting those people, our clients, with the services and the professionals and in some instances the very well-trained volunteers who are there to provide that advice and support is what we would advise is the best way to make a contribution to Yeah, I appreciate you saying that, Stephen. I had this similar conversation with someone from the the SCT and it’s counterintuitive and a lot of people are kind of shocked to hear that you actually don’t want to give them money because that’s probably not going to help them as much as someone coming outreaching, talking to them and starting to provide solutions because that money might be a short-term fix but it also might be going to the things that further the circumstance so I really appreciate you saying that. I think it’s a really important thing for people to know and again you can put the link there you can get someone that someone will come and talk to them obviously there could be places they could go nearby buying them food is a
26:50 Great point but yeah giving that money out is probably not the right thing to do. What else can people do, Steve? You know if there are a citizen that’s hearing this and learning about this I mean obviously they can use the straight link obviously they can potentially contribute to the charity what else can they do you know to further advance the idea of this problem in this country? Yeah so in England we’ve got a government commitment and rough sleeping within this Parliament and that is really welcomed then you have other things that come along so you have potentially so we’ve got Brexit we then have a pandemic which kind of compounds we then have a recession or austerity and so there are a whole host of priorities that kind of sit on top of that it’s then they’re easy that you’re then competing for homelessness as an important agenda so if people are continuing to remind almost their MPs and their councillors and the politicians and policymakers of why it is so important for us to end homelessness not only because it’s economically bad business but actually it’s a humanitarian crisis disaster it should be no response to a society that regards itself as civilized in the 21st century and so continue to help us we and other homelessness charities need to make the case for investment in homelessness solutions and if you can help to raise the profile that helps us because politicians do listen to the public
28:50 They listen to the mood of the public and if the public regard it as an important area of policy making and they do listen there is that as well as the contributing through volunteering contributing through making sure that the right avenues and the right organizations are pointed to those those can make a real difference and we end homelessness and how do we ultimately do that and for people that think well that can’t be true Steve because there’ll always be someone that is going to be on the streets how do you make that argument to them that of how we can end homelessness yeah so um i’m fine as i say i began in july um with some mongos and i was asked that question right at the very start steve do you think we can end homelessness and i look at it like um full employment can we ever have full employment and it’s there’s got to be a reality which is that a personal trauma a domestic abuse case a um being kicked out of a home um may mean that you end up as homeless so without a home um challenge for us and that that may happen to any individual at any time your two paychecks may example exemplifies that what we should have absolutely is the bedrock is that no person who ends up homeless should need to end up on the streets they should have a solution to that homelessness situation so we’ve developed a tree yard system which is that if you are homeless and you know that you’re or you’re about to be homeless there are some options for you
30:38 There is a safe place for you to stay immediately whilst we assess your long-term homelessness needs and your long-term support needs occasionally somebody will all through that safety net or for those who are long-term rough sleepers may be really tough and tough to come off the streets it may be tough to then move into secure accommodation and to sustain that tendency but we see our workers firstly helping all of those who are on the streets in the first place through to safe accommodation support when it’s needed but then hopefully at the end where they’ve got secure accommodation ensuring that that remains secure and they hold on to that tendency and they have the support when it’s needed and then equally in terms of stemming the flow making sure that if you’re homeless you know that you have some options and the options that you have don’t have to be on the streets great thoughts steve great advice as well and i agree it is a humanitarian issue but it’s also simply an economic issue it’s not in the interests of a country to have people sleeping rough or even sleeping on sofas when they could be back productive members of the society and it just means that you have to have that bridge and look we’ve all had tough times we all have had times where we’ve not been on our top of our game and we might have been lucky not to end up sleeping rough but we easily could have and so it’s important when you see these people on the
32:13 Streets to be able to see potentially yourself them in them and think well there’s got to be a solution and i’m sure you have hundreds of miracle stories of someone going from on the streets to being back leading a productive happy life and like you said it’s a sign of a society on how we treat these people so appreciate the work you’re doing steve really do and any final thoughts for you yeah and the the final one i guess is that uh our clients so you’re absolutely right brian um we worked with almost 33 000 clients last year each one of them was an individual person each one we hopefully have provided with advice support an opportunity we don’t think we can do that alone we in fact we know we don’t do that alone we do that in partnership with local authorities with other housing associations and organizations with other homelessness charities with government and with the public and so our key message is that together we believe that we can make the difference together we believe that we can end homelessness and rough sleeping and together we believe that we can rebuild lives for those who either have been rough sleeping or are at risk but it’s a thing that we can do together we yes significant homelessness charity yeah well said i appreciate your passion steve it’s really important and i think the education is such a crucial issue here um i learned a lot like i said last year it opened my eyes up about the
33:58 Whole situation and i think the more people can be educated the more they’ll look at this whole situation different they’ll know what they can do uh what they shouldn’t do great to know about the straight link app great to know not to give money but to try to do something as opposed to just walk by also they can donate to st moon goes and find more information on your website as well um i must say we’re we’re being told we can’t do our thanksgiving dinner this year so we’re a little upset but um i want hopefully we can do it in future years and let us know if we can be a part of that i think it’s also just important because i you know our whole team gets to see that it’s great to connect with these people and um it’s it’s also nice to have this kind of hopeful event in the winter season which i know is important just to keep people spirits up so um appreciate the time steve and again if anybody here is watching this please share this out to people that you think might help to learn about this and again get this app go check out the website and see if you can help too um thanks so much steve i appreciate you and uh best luck with the future and the great work you’re doing my pleasure thank you ron all right my pleasure thanks so much we’ll see you next time on London Real take care at London Real we believe that individual transformation can change the world join us and start your journey today
