Day 6

Day 6: It really is beyond belief.

I was tired last night, I had an almost idyllic spot, safe, unseen and clean St Mark's church, Grenoside, Sheffield. But I didn’t sleep. I dozed and kept dozing but that was it and in the end I just counted down the time until there was no point staying there. I even felt a bit sorry for myself because, to be frank, I wanted to be at home where I could stay in bed with the curtains closed and the door shut. But the truth is that this homelessness of mine is easy compared to the experiences of others and, thankfully, it will remain that way. Just another nine nights for me.

But imagine if when I’ve finished I find that my home, the one I left, is no longer mine. Some people are on the street not because they haven’t got a home but because they can’t use the one they have. Chris was one of those. He was cuckooed. Having been on the street, he took pity on someone who said they needed his help and he let them stay. But it was a con for a gang to get a foot in the door, “they used my kindness as a weakness to systematically destroy me…. How could I be so stupid!” They took control until Chris was bullied into submission and left, back to the street but with all the responsibility of paying for the rent and other costs of the flat in his name. “How do you explain this to the council? (that you LET them in!)” he said. 

I remember the first cuckooing case I dealt with. Stephen took a few days to tell the whole story. He was ashamed. Admitting he had been bullied and victimised wasn’t easy. He felt weak and stupid. Even worse, after putting the story on the table he was left with choices he was afraid of. Housing services could do nothing until he had reported it as a crime. But that meant naming his abusers and tormentors. He was too afraid of them. They would find him on the street. And he was afraid to give the tenancy up because that would mean they would be evicted and they would blame him. More fear. All the time he was accruing debts. Everything was in his name. What a mess. What should he do?

Chris did report being cuckooed to the police but he was told that because he had invited them in they could do nothing. 

It would be easy at this point to just blame the system. The big bad system. And there is just cause but we keep reducing the size of the system so that it creaks when it has to deal with less common issues. And cuckooing, however you look at it, is complicated. The frontline team of the ‘system’ cares, I’m part of it, and most of the time we get there even if we sometimes say ‘eventually’. 

I’m not being cuckooed, thank God, and I won’t be, but if you saw me on the street today you wouldn’t know that would you?

If you want to know more about changing the lives of people who are homeless visit www.archerproject.org.uk 

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