Sermon: Homelessness Sunday

Here is the sermon I preached today for Homelessness Sunday at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. This passage from Isaiah (9. 1 - 4) which we have heard throughout Advent and Christmas provides a paradigm through which we can consider our current experience of homelessness. It enables us to reflect on the journey that those leaving the streets make from darkness to light and to consider what the breaking of the yoke of oppression in a nation in order that all people experience abundance and joy might mean today for those who are homeless.

To be homeless is in a very real sense to walk in darkness. Those who are rough sleeping are exposed and vulnerable in the darkness of the night. It is difficult to avoid slipping into hopelessness and despair. In the dark you are invisible and that cloak of invisibility is what seems to cover people who embarrass society (us) with their need, their lack of a place to be, their unbelonging. Our Christmas Appeal told the story of Richard, whose story shows how quickly and easily people can move from relative stability and security into the dark place that is homelessness. Two and a half years ago Richard was a stay at home dad living in a nice apartment, in a nice complex in a very nice part of town. His relationship with his wife broke down and he started sleeping rough over the road from where he had been living so he could look after his children and take them to school. From that point onwards, he says, “Things started going downhill.”

When people are in this dark place it is very hard to then move back into the light. It has taken Richard over two to get to the point where he is leaving the support of The Connection at St Martin’s in order to stand on his own two feet. With the help of staff at The Connection, Richard is now living in Building Prospects, affordable housing managed by The Connection in Westminster, where he sees his children regularly. He has also worked hard to gain skills, completing the Build a Bike course, passing the European Computer Driving Licence and completing a year-long course in massage therapy – all to be able support himself in the future, as his eyesight declines. He has also sought solace by working in the Art Room, alongside Mark, Art Tutor at The Connection. “I do a lot of art,” he said, because “you have to do something which takes things out of your head… I now do it four mornings a week and it helps. It really does.” Richard’s next step is to work as a trainee in a hostel for homeless women, putting into practice some of the skills he’s learnt while at The Connection.

Richard’s story is of a slow but steady return from the darkness but the experience of trying to leave the darkness is not always so consistent. I recently talked and prayed with another homeless man who has had support from The Connection and from our church. He has had periods of getting clean from drugs and as a result being able to find accommodation and hold down jobs, as well as periods where he has relapsed and lost the positive progress he had earlier achieved. This man was very aware of how easy it is to relapse and of the extent to which he was in a situation where the temptation to relapse was very strong and surrounded him constantly. It was for that reason he had sought prayer and the support of a regular worshipping community.

Our reading from Isaiah promises the light of hope, the lifting of burdens and the smashing of oppression. Homeless individuals can be supported into new homes, as we have heard, and vulnerable people prevented from becoming homeless. That is a message which has been part of our history here at St Martin’s as well as being part of our ongoing ministry. Our worship on Homeless Sunday is an opportunity to celebrate work that tackles the problem of homelessness and the stories of people who are no longer struggling with their housing. Here, at St Martin’s, we particularly celebrate the work of The Connection, the Vicar’s Relief Fund and the Sunday International Group which is differing ways bring the light of hope into the lives of those who are their users and guests. The Connection helps by providing a range of specialist services, all under one roof, which enable people to address their homelessness and make the necessary steps away from the streets so they can re-enter society and live ‘normally’ again. The Vicar’s Relief Fund provides a rapid response service by awarding small but essential grants to help alleviate housing difficulties for vulnerable people in their time of need helping prevent homelessness happening in the first place and our Sunday International Group provides hospitality to those who have no recourse to public funds.

This means that our engagement here with homelessness is extensive and significant, but the paradigm provided by our passage from Isaiah suggests that by themselves these organisations and services are not enough to prevent homelessness occurring. For that to happen, our society and our social and political structures need to be transformed in ways that prevent homelessness happening in the first place. The passage says that before a sense of abundance and joy in which all can share can be seen and felt within the nation, a yoke or rod of oppression has to be broken. That yoke or rod of oppression is the social and political structures which cause homelessness within our society. The extreme growth in the numbers rough sleeping across the UK and in Westminster is not attributable simply to the individuals themselves but also to political policies that have left those individuals unable to remain in the security and stability of their homes.

Shelter recently claimed that two families in London are made homeless every hour. Their prediction, based on government homeless statistics, is that 1,260 families in the capital will lose their home in the next month and 7,370 over the next six months - the equivalent of a household every 34 and 35 minutes respectively. The number reported sleeping rough in England has more than doubled between 2010 and 2015. In 2015, the last year for we currently have figures, the increase was 30%. There was a time in the UK when rough sleeping seemed to have been nearly eradicated but we know, only too well, from our own experience here in Westminster that that is now far from being the case.

What has changed in that time? The government’s reforms surrounding Welfare have included caps to the local housing allowance, possible reductions in the amount paid to supported accommodation providers, individual sanctions and caps on the total amount of benefit for individual households. The effects of these Welfare reforms have been wide-ranging and impactful. While welfare reform is certainly a threat to increasing homelessness, cuts to revenue budgets in local authorities, with consequences for staffing levels in homelessness services, social work and related departments have also bitten hard. On Friday it was announced that Sunderland’s budget for homelessness services is facing a 100% cut. In the next round of austerity cuts other councils will be forced to take similar measures. The pressures of cuts in local authority budgets don’t just affect the homelessness service itself. They are being felt in lots of areas which meet (or should meet) the needs of homeless people, such as mental health care, substance abuse and recovery services, educational welfare services etc.

Welfare reforms and austerity cuts have been introduced at a time when we are not building enough new places for people to live: ‘Current rates of housebuilding in England are below half the level needed to meet existing and anticipated demand for new homes’. A further factor in this mix of government policies is the fact that migrants from the Eastern EU countries must first work for 12 months before they qualify for any state benefit. Should someone from one of those countries become unemployed, they are therefore at greater risk of becoming street homeless. This is reflected in the fact that 36% of rough sleepers came from one of those countries; a 188% increase since 2009/10.

While political policies are not the only factor causing homelessness in the UK, the combined effect of welfare reforms, austerity cuts, immigration controls and a lack of affordable housing has come at a time when there has been a considerable increase in rough sleeping across the country and especially here in Westminster. Therefore I do see this combination of government policies as a yoke of oppression causing homelessness and making the journey back from darkness to light more difficult to achieve. As Isaiah states, the yoke of oppression must be broken before there is any widespread prospect for rough sleepers and sofa surfers to experience abundance or joy within our nation.

Yet our reading insists that the light of hope remains. Where can that light be found in relation to our current political and social situation? Our worship on Homeless Sunday is intended as an opportunity to take our engagement with homelessness a step higher. How can we do that? Our newest initiative funded by our Christmas Appeal is the St Martin’s Frontline Network, through which we are seeking to find ways of transforming the social and political structures which cause the increase in rough sleeping that we see all around us.

The Frontline Network is the network of support workers who request grants from the Vicar’s Relief Fund on behalf of their clients. These support workers are on the frontline working with vulnerable housed people across the UK and they are, as a result, able to identify the issues and policies which cause homelessness to occur. The Frontline Network seeks to harness the ideas, energy and experience of those at the frontline working alongside homeless and vulnerably housed people in order to make a positive change in reducing homelessness in the UK. I wonder, therefore, whether we, at St Martin’s, can work together with the Frontline Network to build relationships, develop ideas and communicate the experience of the frontline to policy makers so that our social and political structures can be transformed in ways which prevent homelessness happening in the first place.

Were that to happen, we would see in our own day and time the light of hope, the lifting of burdens and the smashing of oppression of which Isaiah spoke. We would enable the journey, from darkness to light, that those sleeping rough, like Richard, have to travel, to become less burdensome and difficult. The story Richard told for the Christmas Appeal ended with him saying, that “in the next couple of weeks, I’ll be out of The Connection … [but] everything I’ve learned here, everything to get into work, everything for the skills is down to this place.” If the yoke of oppression caused by current government policies were to be broken, more rough sleepers would be able to say the same and the flow of people joining them on the streets would reduce. May that become our experience as we support not only The Connection, the VRF and the Sunday International Group but now also the Frontline Network too.

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Sinead O'Connor - Streets Of London.

The state's retreat from welfare

Chris Mould, who set up the Trussell Trust which works to empower local communities to combat poverty and exclusion through a network of foodbanks, featured in a Guardian interview yesterday:

'Mould is proud of Trussell's growth as a testament to the soundness of its franchise design, and the commitment of the volunteers who run the food banks. But he is uncomfortable with the underlying misery that has spurred that expansion – the "massive change in the number of people in the UK who are living very vulnerable lives, relative to the lives they used to live".

The growth of Trussell food banks also shines an uncomfortable light on the state's retreat from welfare, and the failures and cruelty of the parts of the safety net that remain. The charity's data shows that its expanding client base is increasingly low-paid working families who can't make ends meet. They are people impoverished by benefit delays and sanctions, or those refused crisis loans. There is a surge in demand during school holidays, when free school meals are not available.'

St John's Seven Kings collected harvest goods for the Redbridge foodbank during our Harvest Festival last Sunday and these were delivered yesterday to the foodbank, which is run excellently by Kings Church in Ilford. The article above from today's Ilford Recorder also flags up the current need for such church initiatives.

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Philip Bailey - God Is Love.

Spiritual Life: Support for human flourishing

Here is my Spiritual Life column for this week's Ilford Recorder:

The Paralympic Games are having a major impact on people’s attitudes to disability a recent survey suggests, with 78% of people agreeing that the UK media should do more to promote people with disabilities as role models in society.

I’ve had several conversations in the run up to the Paralympics about using the term differently abled instead of disabled, as the Paralympians show us that those labelled as disabled actually posses high levels of ability and have huge potential to fulfil.

This is also what the Bible says of all people. We are all made in the image of God it suggests and therefore have each been given significant gifts and abilities which can be developed and applied. The presence of God’s Spirit is shown in some way in each person for the good of all.

The issue that differently abled people consistently face is that our society is structured for able-bodied people. We have not yet sufficiently adapted to enable society to enable those who are differently abled to always reach their true potential. Many are also rightly worried that the real advances which have been made to enable those who are differently abled to take their rightful place in society will be eroded through current changes to welfare provision.

To enable God’s Spirit to genuinely be seen in all people for the good of our whole society we need to support the culturally, political and technological developments that were celebrated in the Paralympic Opening Ceremony. The Paralympians are role models showing what each of us can achieve but the examples they provide demonstrate the need we all have for appropriate support and encouragement.

At the same time as valuing the Paralympians as role models, we can also recognise the extent to which we need to do more to structure churches, faith communities and UK society, as a whole, to support human flourishing and wellbeing.

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Extreme - Run.

Disabled people are being betrayed

Ekklesia has an excellent short research paper which maps out the contours of a revolution in Britain’s benefits and welfare system.

The evidence "Karen McAndrew examines and evaluates indicates that, far from enabling and supporting sick and disabled people, the changes and cuts the UK government is making – disguised by a superficial rhetoric of compassion and empowerment, and eased by ungrounded prejudices stoked in sections of the media – are causing real harm and destroying the fabric of national care and genuine opportunity. Putting human impact centre stage, this paper sets out disturbing evidence that disabled people are being betrayed, the public misled, and the welfare system endangered. Here is yet more indication that the 'Big Society' is punishing the most vulnerable and eschewing social justice, by making cuts and implementing an inadequate patchwork of policies whereby under-resourced voluntarism cannot substitute for official, statutory neglect."

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Ian Dury and the Blockheads - What A Waste.

Interrogation

The letter was waiting on the mat for Sally when she got up that morning. She knew instinctively that it was the second summons that she had been dreading. What was it that they knew about her? What was it that they thought she was doing wrong? She left the letter where it lay and went to make a cup of tea.

Why did they want to see her and why the threats to cut off her money if she did not attend? She had already been too scared to go for the first appointment. Now she sat and thought how stupid that had been. They would probably be a lot harder on her because of that. She knew what they were like. Sod's! Trying to force her into work she didn't want or need. Trying to take away her money. All she wanted was to be left to bring up her daughter how she saw fit.
Kelly! She'd have to find a babysitter for Kelly. That would be extra expense, that and the bus fare. All for some poxy interview. Now, when was she commanded to attend? She ran for the letter in the hall. They'd spelt her name wrong again. It was Sally Thornton with an 'o' not an 'e'.

*****

It was up three flights of stairs to a pokey, dark hole of an office that five interviewers had been squeezed into. As well as the desks for the interviewers they had miraculously found space for two more desks for the office workers and five chairs for the waiting area. There were ten people waiting when Sally arrived, and three being interviewed.

As she watched another interviewer emerged from a door behind some screens and moved to her desk. A moment or so later one of the three interviews finished and a relieved interviewer vanished behind the screens and out of the door. The female interviewer who had just arrived came to the reception desk, called out a name and scurried back to her desk as though the waiting area was contagious. Sally looked around her. The walls were plastered with gaudy posters proclaiming the glad tidings of how you would be helped to start a business if you already possessed £1,000. Was that what they wanted her for? Would they only give her money if she started a business for them? Why couldn't they start their own damn businesses, if that's what they wanted? What did they want her for?

Someone was asking for her name, someone was asking for her name. Startled, she came out of her reverie. No! she felt like saying. What do you want my name for? What will you do with it if I let you? But then she thought, they get you anyway, and gave in. They took her name and placed it where she thought it had always belonged.

She had felt just so right from her school days, when she had always had less than the other kids and had consistently been in the lower grades. "You thick or something?" was a question she had been asked on more occasions than she cared to remember. Until she had met her boyfriend she had felt it was her role to be thick. He had valued her as a person like no one before or since.
She sat in silent intensity among the other useless nobodies sitting or standing in a tight semi-circle. She longed for them to return her name to her. As others around her ended their wait, she watched her name inch its way towards the top of the pile and back to her.

She was glad she had left her baby with a babysitter. There was another woman who had brought her two kids. They were running around the office, in and out of desks screwing up leaflets as they went. The interviewers were glaring. You could hear them tutting to their neighbours about that woman's lack of control. The woman had ceased to be a mother, the environment had disabled her. Her initial attempts to control the children had not been a success and she was now embarrassed to try further. It was clear to her, as it was not to the others, that with nothing to do and such a long time to wait there was nothing left for children but misbehaviour.

You could clearly hear the conversations from the interviewer's desks. She was sitting not six feet from one of them so it was hardly surprising. These interviewers removed people's defences as easily as a prostitute removes her clothing. Snatches of intimate moments from increasingly desperate lives were wafting from each desk to be retained or lost as each listening person cared. She felt like taking her clothing off and dancing on their desks to show them what they were doing. She knew though that they would strip her more completely than if she were to bare herself. At least if she were to do it she would be in control, but she was not in control was she?

They could strip her because they knew that she and her fragile family relied on the money that they handed out and that she would humiliate herself, prostitute herself to keep that money. In that moment she felt that she could have been led by the hand and made to commit terrible acts that would revolt her but still she would do them. It was her fate.

It was then that her name struggled its way to the front and was called from the desk. "Miss Thornton". As she received her name, a thought formed in her mind. A memory from school. She often remembered bits of information that she had been taught. It was not that she couldn't retain information more that she'd never been encouraged. It was a history thought that she had remembered. She could picture her teacher talking about concentration camps in the war, and disgusting photos of the people that died. Someone who had been in a camp had said that the people who survived were the people with a purpose in life. That had impressed her, a purpose.
She hadn't known what a purpose was, she certainly didn't have one then. She had imagined herself in the shoes of the prisoner awaiting interrogation. It was odd that she could feel the same nausea in her throat that she had imagined that prisoner feeling.

For a fatalistic moment she felt that she was a purposeless person who caved in under pressure and could not defend what was valuable in their lives, maybe didn't have anything valuable. She thought of Kelly and Stan, her boyfriend who loved her for herself, and she knew what she had to defend. She purposefully pulled up the chair at the desk and looked her interrogator full in his stare.

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The Jam - To Be Someone.