You don't look like a homeless person!

22/06/2021

Photo of Matt smiling in a sunny garden I’m in my mid-fifties and work as the Coordinator and Community Engagement Manager at It Takes a City (ITaC). My “lived experience” was one of the factors in ITaC’s decision to employ me. When I started in the role, several friends asked why I had chosen to work in the homelessness sector. They were surprised to discover that I had been without a place to call home for much of my teens and early twenties. This is my story.

When I was fifteen the situation at home was bad. Domestic violence towards my mother and I meant we had to leave with just a bag of clothes. I spent the next three years living out of a backpack, bunking down on mates’ floors, moving from place to place.

I was a tired, confused young man, who just wanted a place to call home. I was not in a great place mentally and, after spending a freezing cold winter squatting in London, I got a job in a factory.

“Speak to me and I appear to be a just like any one of you.”

It was good money and I felt safe for the first time in years. I met a lovely woman and we moved into a rented flat together. I started to make plans, thought about having children of my own. Then, in a matter of months everything changed. Our relationship ended, and I was left trying to pay the rent on my own. The company I worked for suddenly closed and I lost the roof over my head. No fixed abode, no job. No job, no tenancy.

This time round I was a little luckier. I had a small circle of close friends who were able to offer a bed or sofa for short periods. But when you are a grown adult, you want to feel a sense of pride in taking care of yourself. I was ground down and deflated. I spent another two years living out of a backpack, adrift.

If there had been the option of a modular home, or other small but self-contained accommodation, combined with support from people who understood my trauma, my younger self may have made different, less damaging decisions.

Fast forward twenty-seven years, half a lifetime. For the last eight years my wife and I have been paying the mortgage on a beautiful little two up two down Victorian terrace. Speak to me and I appear to be a just like any one of you. But homelessness has left permanent scars.

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You don't look like a homeless person!

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