Adulting - #11 We are all human with Kojo Apeagyei

Episode Date: July 29, 2018

This week I speak to spoken word poet, write & social activist who works for Shelter Charity, about homelessness, activism, privilege and more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Or visit connectsontario.ca. Select games only. Guarantee void if platform or game outages occur. Guarantee requires play by at least one customer until jackpot is awarded or 11 p.m. Eastern. Research and supply. See full terms at canada.casino.fandu.com. Please play responsibly. Hi guys, welcome to Adulting. This is a podcast where we try to work out all the things we're supposed to know when we're supposedly grown up.

But I don't really feel that grown up yet, even though I'm 24. And today I'm joined by Kojo. Hey. Hey. Good, thank you. How are you? I'm well, I'm well. Still a bit hungover. Yeah, I know, we're both now seeing slight hangovers. But it's fine,? Good, thank you. How are you? I'm well. I'm well. I'm still a bit hungover. Yeah, I know. We're both now seeing slight hangovers.

But it's fine. We'll get to it. It's probably an adulting experience. Yeah, exactly. That's so true. How cool are we that it's like 11.11 and we're up, out, and hungover? That is hashtag adulting for sure. So I got Kojo to send me a little bio just so that I, and it's amazing.

I'm actually just going to read it all out because it's really cool. So Kojo Apieje, is that right? The human. Is an experimental writer, poet, and social activist working for the housing and homelessness charity Shelter as a campaigner. Kojo mobilizes and organizes the public to help tackle the housing crisis faced by millions across the country in various forms. Having experienced sofa surfing for months on end, Kojo's work in housing is rooted in a deeply personal and

emotional place outside of his work at shelter he produces his own podcast called outliers x need to listen to that which discusses the weird and wonderful topics of fringe culture a thriving monthly poetry night in covent gardens london called painting poetry he can often be found in a corner somewhere coding reading or writing about the awkward idiosyncrasy what a great word of life that is a really good word yeah and what it fundamentally means for a human on this little ball of dirt and water that we call home i love that last bit that's so cute a little ball of dirt and water i'm actually gonna i wrote that as you asked me for a bite i was like shit i need a bite and then wrote it at work. I think I'm going to start using that more often.

Yeah, I think you should. You just had that your tagline in all your emails. Yeah. And then we're like, I'm so swag. So basically, one of the things that I want to talk to Kojo about is part of growing up, obviously, a lot of people, well, not a lot of people will have felt like growing up is all about kind of spreading your wings and becoming independent but for quite a few people you don't have that starting place where you've got a home

above you you've got food you've got shelter and you've got all of those basic necessities so we kind of wanted to figure out what it's like growing up when actually your starting point is really different from other people in society and how important it is for us those people who haven't had these um situations to understand our privilege in that place if that makes sense yeah yeah so i just wanted to like what's your experience yeah um okay so my experience i'm like i've privilege is an interesting concept because i mean i'm always worried about getting into um sort of the oppression olympic side of it where like i've dealt with my own issues and compared to other people with their own issues and various there's

always kind of levels to it but everyone kind of has deals with it quite quite differently um so from where i was born i mean i was born in like to work in the last family um had a home home i had for most of my life um and i was fine you don't really you don't i didn't really notice anything um sort of negative coming from there as a child everything just felt perfect i mean most of my life. Um, and I was fine. You don't really, you don't, I didn't really notice anything, um, sort of negative coming from that. Everything just felt perfect. I mean, you have nothing to compare it to.

Like this is just a standard. Um, I think I didn't really realize, uh, my own, um, it's just how, how difficult things were for myself and my family until, uh,

about 2015 when we lost our home and um ended up in temporary accommodation and i was uh staying on my gran's couch and my auntie's couch and in spare rooms and different things like that where it hit me that how important it is to have a home in that I was self-serving for about maybe for March of 2016 to November of 2016, which is when I officially got my first job, like first career job at a shelter and was able to actually start renting a place for myself. So how old were you? I was 24. Okay, same as old were you when i was 24 okay yeah yeah i was 24 and um and i think the most the most difficult part of the experience was really trying to

i mean have you heard like manzo's hierarchy of needs no tell me i don't want to i don't want to butcher this but basically it's a psychological principle about to achieve our, for humans to achieve their fundamental potential and to be, like, happy, in quotations. There's a certain hierarchy of things which need to be met before that happiness can be achieved. Right at the bottom is basically what we all need, which is sort of food, shelter, security. Like, that's the basic, basic, basic things people need. And then above that you have, social needs of like social interaction. You have, uh, things like, um, I don't know, you feel fulfilled or just, just other like

a step towards that, that happiness. And, but the fact that at the bottom of what we fundamentally need is that shelter, security, food, safety kind of stuff. Um, so for me not to have one of those fundamental blocks yeah was it it fundamentally flips your entire life and i said i felt extremely just uh grateful in a way that i wasn't homeless homeless up on the street i think a lot of people think homelessness is just street homeless just when it's much more than that um and i wasn't i wasn't on the street i was like i said i was sofa surfing i had a roof over my head the entire time but because it wasn't a stable

environment that it took up the bulk of my energy and time at that at that period it was difficult to deal with i think that's really interesting when i met with becky also works for shelter what she's explained to me she was like what people don't realize is that you know people sometimes might see someone who they think is homeless and they're like oh they definitely live somewhere that's not the same as having a home like having a house and having a home are two really different things and like you're a very normal guy just meet you and day to day life and probably like make friends and think it's completely normal i would never understand never realize coming from my privileged position that you could have been in a place where

you literally feel like you don't have anywhere to go and that would be so unsettling and i think what we appreciate is people understand homelessness when they see it on the street they didn't realize that to be at risk of homelessness i think it's you just have to be spending more than 40 of your income isn't it on your rent and that puts you at risk of homelessness which is lots of people who worked in like public sector jobs so like nurses teachers etc it's it's a massive problem that doesn't just affect these people inside that we think are other because it's not an othering thing it can happen to anyone yeah i think that's that's that's you never believe what happened to you until it actually does yeah you know someone who who like until you personally

know someone who's connected to i think there's there is that sense of othering of oh it's those people or is that there's a certain type of person really it can be anyone at any time i think um at shelter we've done like one of our campaigns we were running was um to uh was really to tackle some of the stigma around welfare and just some of the some of the interviews and just general sentiments we and conversations we had with people across the country. I think there's a, there's a sense that welfare or benefits as currently looked at as being like, uh, people see it as the deserving and undeserving. So,

or people more see it as, as a system which is abused and the scroungers are on benefits and et cetera, et cetera. Um, like the person that the stereotypical person, like 21 kids or something like that, taking money from the state, um,pical person, like 21 kids or something like that, taking money from the state, which is, I mean, I'm not going to come and say

that that doesn't exist, but it's in terms of, like, there are so many people who need it and are receiving it and work extraordinarily hard and work multiple jobs. And people who just use it to keep afloat, but are just working so creamly hard and don't get the coverage that that that that they need it's a really weird thing in the media

like with this victim-laving things that happens also with like um victims of rape they'll always kind of there's always this argument and like other women make up or like and actually it's i think it was something like not what i'm gonna get this stack completely wrong but it's the tiniest figure of rape allegations are proved to be false. Yeah. But for some reason, that's what sticks. I think it's like four out of 100 or something. Yeah, it's like 4%.

Non-existent. Yeah, which I think, when we're talking about this, it rings exactly the same as this benefits idea. It's like, oh, they're taking our money, and it's just the oppressor. Like, in this situation, if it is a man raping a woman, the male oppressor with the privilege is the one going no it's not me and the wealthy people are saying oh we don't want to give our money away and it's we really need to change this idea of like entitlement yeah and and like why

people don't want to pay taxes is beyond me like this kind of idea that we we need to like hoard money yeah it's so weird it's strange i think about this a lot because i really i'm i'm i'm wondering like how how do you even tackle that i feel like is is is a fundamental issue in just a monetary like capitalist system yeah it's rewards which rewards like greed so people don't want to give and i don't i was like okay so if we if that's the issue i'm thinking okay how do we change that how do we change thelement I think it's really difficult I think in the really top echelons of society where people are really super privileged

that's going to be hard to tackle but what we need to do is and I noticed you said it in your bio like human, we need to humanise people like I think it starts at like I've said this before on the podcast but you know on the tube when they play that thing like beggars and buskers are operating on this tube, please don't.

And I'm like, they are not, they're treating them like you're not human. Everyone's sat there on their £700 iPhone and won't look up. That idea, they put things on park benches to stop people being able to sleep. How are we, as just general humans, also everything is luck. I happen to be born into a family

that happened to give me certain things. I didn't deserve this. There's no reason that i've got it other than like luck yeah so we need to start looking at everyone and realizing that someone's had some really shit luck someone's had some good luck homeless people on the street and homeless people in any kind of situation yeah are not they're the same as you i think that's where it needs to start it's just being more um empathetic yeah just realizing that we're all on the same page i don't know it's so start it's just being more um empathetic yeah just realizing that we're all on the same page i don't know it's so yeah it's just very tricky i think you hit the nail on the head with the whole making it we need to make we need to make humans what you like in a way um and just

just going about about doing that is um is an interesting one because i feel like the the people who like who are really bought into this issue already understand that it comes down to luck at the end of the day you see someone begging you can understand that we're all a few bad decisions away a few unfortunate decisions away from ending up in the same place

kind of thing but whilst we recognise that there's a large portion of society who just, who see as, oh, they made that choice, they put themselves there,

they can pull themselves up by the bootstrapping, is that, which is really archaic mentality for me, I think, I don't want to demonise anyone, but like the baby boomer generation, or like,

the generation before, the pre-war generation, who see, like, that hard graft, or you can work yourselves out of these issues, which,

to be honest, you can work yourself out of these issues which to be honest you can work yourself out of many issues but not everything fits into that box of pull yourself up especially when it's a structural thing so if you're put in a position where structurally you actually can't even get to the place where you could get a job and also when people see people on the street who maybe look like they they're inebriated they're taking drugs or whatever they're like oh that's why they're there a lot of the time people on the streets are drinking and taking drugs because they live on the freaking street. Exactly.

People who don't live on the streets take drugs and drink. So why would you not do it if you're on the freaking... I don't understand that mentality. I find it so weird. It's like, obviously, you're going to want to try and elevate your situation in any way you can. This is something, like, an issue I've dealt with is, A, working for a housing charity or for a case. in any way you can like i this is something like an issue i've dealt with is what a working in for

for a housing charity or okay so i'm i'm doing this to help people that might be on the street or people who need houses and whatnot so i'm helping in a way and i spoke to a colleague about whether we should be giving money to homeless people on the street because um they might just go and spending on drugs or drinking or not like are we making the situation worse is really what i was driving at and then i think she made a really good point where she was like at the end of the day if you're on the street you're on the street like you if your life's a bit shit and you want to you want to drink the pain away or whatnot or you want to and it is your money that you should you should it's not up to me to then make that decision to say yeah and to judge you and say okay you shouldn't

do this because like i'm here with a hangover like i was drinking for like absolutely no reason i'm not perfect and it's wrong for for me like we talk about privilege a lot to come in a certain position of yeah you shouldn't be doing that so i'm gonna i'm gonna judge you in this way um one of what i think you mentioned a point about um uh it was i think it was about how we view how we view people in certain like difficult situations or really understanding that like an unfortunate situation can lead you to where you are or not and um when i was living in temporary accommodation uh like a really shitty hostel with my mom and my brother uh back in 2016 for uh about two months um like i had to number one the room was

probably smaller than this living room now we had a bunk bed and a double bed a chest of drawers a table which was constantly leaning, the floor was uneven a bar stool which had the cushion peeling off it and a wardrobe which fell

and narrowly missed my mum it just wasn't a wardrobe which fell and narrowly missed my mum. Oh my God. It just wasn't a nice place. Yeah. And that general building was shared by about 15 other groups of people. Some single men with drug issues,

some families with four kids. Was it, how did you, was that, you were paying to stay in the hostel? Yeah, you have to pay, it was like, you pay like a reduced sum. Is it for, is it for people who have housing issues yes right yeah yeah it's only for

people with housing issues um so you can basically everyone every everyone we spoke about how like anyone can be a few steps away from being in like a difficult situation everyone is in those sort of places and it's not great to to like to be a single mom raising a child and then have to deal with someone who actively has drug issues and maybe like a violent history and stuff and not saying anything's wrong with that person but those two groups necessarily shouldn't be in that same environment all the time and that's just one yeah i'm talking about one hostel this is all across the country um so i had to watch like my brother during that time revise for his SATs and his exams on the table and listen to the neighbor screaming

and all sorts going on at the time. And me just watching him go through that was difficult because I already knew how difficult it was for me to process as an adult something, and as a child, what is that really doing to him to revise for exams? And then now, if we say we jumped it now imagine how someone in a really

difficult situation now could have been affected by things like that in their past but obviously we don't see that, we don't understand this and we don't know what they've gone through but that's one thing that just kind of it put me in the mindset of okay let's take a step back and

give people the benefit of the doubt. Oh, 100%. But yeah, you're so right. You never really think about that. Because the other thing is, I think the homelessness that we're affronted with often are the people who are maybe intoxicated. And we don't generally see the single mothers or women and things because they don't generally probably put themselves on the streets

and in other situations. And I think that's where, because as a society, we do deem people that look a certain way as other we then can really easily kind of separate ourselves from their homeless and we're not and they're different but I think if we could see people like your mum and you and

really get like humanise it and I know it shouldn't take that to make it a difference but it does unfortunately a lot of the time we have to be able to assimilate or see ourselves in someone to be able to feel that empathy and recognize that actually that could be anyone yeah i think that's one thing shell tries to do with a lot of our campaigns is um when we're launching a campaign when we're pushing like a certain like a general campaign to change government's policy or something along those lines we always try and put our service users or just

people just people at the forefront of the campaigns we try to try to really show how um it's not always the sharpest end it's not always the person who uh has had the hardest issue in like to deal with in life because i didn't they um there are millions of people dealing with housing issues across the country and um we all we all say we all relate to um we relate to each other so it's important to kind of show those stories and say like you aren't the only person experiencing this and to make those stories believable and realistic we're not going to show like i think we're not going to show the hardest hardest hitting story because that's the most emotionally grabbing but we show no this is a common thing and this person

also experienced uh housing issues just like you and really trying to put those stories at the forefront and humanize them i think there's a really other like the whole other side of it is shame i think like there's so many people probably in society who have really normal jobs and like literally killing themselves to be able to afford their rent but it's like seen as kind of embarrassing to not be able to get by and and i don't know if that's the kind of bourgeois culture is made worse by social media and flashiness and everyone kind of having this like aspirational idea to be like living your best life yeah and i don't know if that pressure means that people then are also this catharsis i don't make you want to have more and then you're just struggling to even like you said you're not fundamentally providing those happiness those relationships and just the

real things that matter rather than a new top or whatever it is yeah you know what i mean yeah the idea of shame is interesting to me because that's one thing i like i dealt with as well is is it's only recently i've become comfortable kind of talking about the experience at the time i told nobody yeah no one not like my best friend or anyone i just lied about how we ended up in a situation even now i'm not completely comfortable talking about the entire story but there's a sense of shame and i'm now i'm just thinking about where that comes from um like it is it's a weird one well i think it's probably a little bit in the narrative of the way that we say that you're supposed to have like even even when i was younger i think it's like my parents had an argument i'd be like embarrassed about that

because you're told that you're supposed to have this perfect family. Everyone's supposed to get on. That's Disney's dream, yeah. And I think it's in literature. I think it's in films. I think everything that you see isn't dysfunctional. It's perfect. So I'm not surprised as a child, especially when every book you read is Goldilocks or whatever, you know?

It's all about having a home, having a family. So no wonder as a kid, or, like, even not you as a kid, but being younger, you're assimilating information like, this isn't like this isn't what it's meant to be you've never been told anything else the fun thing about that

is though in all those stories they all the main characters always went through a really tough time yeah you're right it ended up happy

you always get a happy ending but they always went through a really tough time and I think maybe this just comes from a whole like as a human we can only

we really only see the present and the past we can't really see the present and the past. We can't really see the future. You don't see the entire journey ahead of you. So whilst you may get the happy ending, as far as you know right now, the present is the ending and this is a shit situation,

so you can only judge it based on that. Because I'm just, yeah, I'm just wondering, like, all those stories, all the characters all end up in a really, like, Cinderella was being abused and whatnot. Actually, random, I heard the original Cinderella story was a lot darker than the Disney one.

Oh, yeah. No, I haven't heard what happens, but I've heard someone say that a time ago. All I know is I think the stepsisters, when they were looking for Cinderella with the glass slipper and trying to slip her on different people to see if it was a princess or what, I can't remember the story too well, they were chopping off people's feet. If they didn't,

oh my God. To see if it fit in or something. It was dark. Now you've said that, it's so true, because it's like Sleeping Beauty is really dark as well. Even that Hans,

Jack and Jill, Jack and Jill fell down the hall and got really, they broke his crown. Anyway, so I surrounded her with something else. Okay, so maybe my point is a bit redundant about the happy family.

You just got that completely wrong. Yeah, not got that completely wrong it's an interesting idea of like still of trying to unpack where we had this idea that everything should be everything should be great and we're not allowed to experience rough times because there's a fundamental cloud of shame which comes

especially housing issues especially the idea that you should be able to provide for yourself and at the time i felt um while dealing my own issues but like i can now look back and see just think about how my mom must have been dealing in the sense of of almost failure around that of not being able to provide them or not and um and but yeah just looking at your peers and seeing that everyone else seems to be handling things things fine but that's the other funny thing though because you've got this not funny but like the odd thing is like you might feel shameful so you're not telling on so no one really knows

what's going on it's not spoken about it's just it's a very weird way of kind of like appeasing everyone yeah it's almost like you can't talk about things are uncomfortable yeah um and that was like another thing i think we were gonna british thing if anything yeah that's so true yeah yeah it's like british people feel uncomfortable talking about like what we earn is like in terms of paychecks or just things which might make someone slightly uncomfortable it's like you see you see weird things on the train you know i shouldn't say let me just keep my head down and kind of focus on what i'm focusing on but yeah I just think it's a very core part of British culture is keeping that down and mind your business.

Yeah, that is very true. But, yeah, another thing we were going to kind of talk about is like growing up, like those growing pains, that self-introspection,

learning who you are in society. Because I definitely, I had this when I suddenly realised about my privilege. Yeah. And it's funny because you get a front and at first you're like this is weird no that can't be right I haven't just been doing this but you realize that I said something before in another podcast it was like you're not

just your actions you're your inactions as well so I never thought that I was actively oppressing anyone or actively being racist or actively being homophobic or anything like that but structurally the way that my life works i am kind of by proxy doing things that put other people in a shitter situation okay do you know what i mean can you can you so like explain a bit just by the fact that i might get like ahead of someone else in my career for instance because i'm white because everything the industry is whitewashed doesn't mean that necessarily better than a friend who's a woman of color yeah but just so i need to be platforming more women of color in order to try and like help people to understand that we need more platforming

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So it wasn't I wasn't doing anything wrong, but by proxy of not kind of seeing that my whiteness was allowing me to have more opportunities, that is in and of itself still being a little bit oppressive. So it's like that saying, equality to the privilege feels like oppression because you realize that you've actually got to step down and that's a way of helping. So that kind of to me was part of my

self-introspection and growing pains and realizing like i need to do do more to be to feel really comfortable in myself now yeah i can't just watch things happen like even like changing my language so i won't say things like retard or gay or like stuff that you do when I was younger and I thought it was fine. And you have to readdress that. Yeah, that's a really interesting point. Yeah, I'm trying to think of my own growing pains. I don't know. Like I said, when we emailed and I made a point, I was a very weird kid growing up.

Like a really strange kid. I used to dye my hair. I had had afro and i dyed it all red and i used to wear like a jester hat with bells on it and things like that i love that yeah it was i don't know i don't i don't know why but um so this is like it's quite different from what you mentioned about um about like platforming and stuff but i feel like uh there's a sense of growing up of trying to figure out what your role is in society what your role is as a person being a teenager you're almost in a really tricky space of recognizing you're not for a you're not an adult you you know that plain and simple but you you understand adult issues or you have some like some understanding of adult issues

so you feel like you should be in that space, but you can't. So it's really trying to craft your identity. I spent a while just doing weird shit. Like I was a, do you like emo? Do you remember the term? Yeah.

I was like a, in the early kids, I used to be into like a lot of heavy metal, and dark stuff, and life was pain, and everything. Well, not really,

but that's the kind of mentality you walk around with um i spent a lot of time trying to figure out okay what what is my role what kind of person i want to be yeah identities i want to craft for myself and um it's it's interesting being now reflecting on that scene a lot of other teenagers and a lot of people in that were doing kind of similar things and i mean you look back now at like your pictures from back then, you're like, oh, what the fuck was I doing?

But I think it's funny because when you're a teenager, everything is about you. It's about who am I? And then I think what happens is you start to adult. You go up and you're like, oh, how is this affecting

other people? I think that's what it's kind of getting at. It's like, when I was a teenager, it was all about, I want everyone to like me. I'm such an attention seeker.

Like the really annoying one in the class. It's always a class clown. But I couldn't understand why this was a bad thing. I'm such an attention seeker. Like the really annoying one in the class. It's always a class clown. But I couldn't understand why this was a bad thing. I'd be like, why are you annoyed? I'm doing this. This is so funny. And then now you suddenly, I think,

suddenly when you go out and you look back, you're like, oh my God, I was such an arsehole. Why was I doing that? Because I think that's what happens when you grow up. You suddenly start to see that actually, because when you're a kid, everything is about you. Fundamentally, yeah. Fundamentally, you're being looked after. And suddenly I think what happens when you grow up you suddenly start to see that actually because when you're a kid that is everything is about you like fundamentally fundamentally you're being looked after and suddenly I think what happens is that growing pains that change is just realizing that wow actually my actions are gonna have a consequence not just for me but for other people

and then I guess that elevates again when you have children because then you suddenly nothing is about you yeah do you remember the moment where you began to realize like your actions had consequences or like you had privilege or anything do you remember the moment where you began to realize like your actions had consequences or like you had privilege or anything do you remember no I can't remember I know that in my last year of uni I really started to kind of um I got a bit like think I didn't really like myself I suddenly was like who am I what am I doing I was like I was in a relation that didn't really work and I suddenly got like it really hurt but I like started writing a diary about all the things that I did and like if I had an argument with someone or if I said something and I was like why am I being so negative and I kind

of made an active and it was like painful it's the weirdest thing it like really it really like hurt it's really difficult like I just saw myself and was like what are you doing I need to change the way you look I would get upset about things and like be really negative and brave like feel like I was a victim and i wasn't i was just making everything about myself and i suddenly realized that i need to stop kind of victim blaming and from then i felt so positive and life's been so much better yeah it's funny though it took that kind of time to really see yeah you almost have to go through the worst parts of it to come out the other side but i mean it's come down to that cliche phrase always darkest before the dawn and

yeah to see what, blah, blah. But yeah, I just always find it interesting kind of that period of growth usually comes through the times when you feel the worst. Yeah, for sure. You can sort of reflect on it

and say, you know what, I'm going to do something slightly different. And then you just kind of rock it on from that point on. Yeah. Yeah, so I just find that interesting.

No, it's interesting. But then the other thing is so like again i'm talking about this but it's all very like conceptual and easy and i don't have for one i don't have any mental health issues or like any mental illness so for me i could go through a patch where i felt i was a bit down and then come out the other side and be absolutely fine um but what and also i have those it makes so much sense now you talked about that. What was that levels thing called? Uh, Maslow's high run. Yeah. Now that makes so much sense. Cause I've never had any issues with where I'm going to live.

That's done. I know that I've got security from my family. Fine. So obviously I'm only ever really fiddling with that top bit, which is like whatever the most superfluous thing on the top of that triangle is. So I'm probably always going to be able to bounce back. And I think understanding that lots of people, like, as you say that bottom rung can actually be taken out really easily you don't know you could like if someone could be paid really well and they make

a bad business decision and lose their job that could be them but also probably you don't normally see well i find interesting with homelessness sorry just going off a tangent you don't normally see someone who looks like they've just become homeless. Do you know what I mean? It almost seems like they're a seasoned street lover. Yeah, it does. It's only yesterday, or two days ago, where I thought I saw somebody who just became homeless. And I was able to kind of deduce that

because they had so many bags and suitcases and things beside them. But like you said, looking at them, they were sleeping on, I'm not going to judge them but looking at them the clothes they were wearing made them seem like they'd been on the street for a while but they had so much stuff and I'm thinking

yeah, that's just when it hit me, the idea, I was like wait I don't think, you've ever really seen someone who's just become homeless and I think a lot of it goes back to the idea of shame. I think once you do, you're often trying to hide and to not make it seem so obvious.

And then eventually once you, because also it is dehumanising because that's so true. Like it's probably only, you're only comfortable being on the streets really when you've got to that point of such desperation where you're like, I actually need to, which is why when people are like, And you reach a point like, fuck it.

Yeah. And you know when people are like, oh, they're begging, they're probably like earning money, they've probably got a house. It are like, oh, they're begging, they're probably like, earning money, they've probably got a house. It's like, even if they've got a massive house down the road, I don't need to sit on the street

and beg to earn money. Yeah. So if they feel like they have to do that, which can't be enjoyable for anyone, Absolutely. And you can't have like, lots of friends and family because people would reckon,

do you know? So you must be really displaced from society to be able to do that or be in such a dark place. And I've just realised a bit of prejudice that I've had myself. Like, comes up to me as a as a bad girl begging and they're wearing really new clothes in my head i'm like no they're not homeless yeah but i've just realized how do i know they haven't literally just just come onto the streets or someone's bought them like how

what how does that make any sense feeling like you have to look the part yeah so maybe that's the other reason why they look see they've done that because people can't tell anything if they've got any clothes on i've spoken to um so many homeless people who talk about how how no one speaks to them how is that yeah the whole dehumanizing thing is um is is interesting because like if i can't give money i thought let me at least ask you how you're doing yeah see how you do the other day i went and brought uh i was i was on the way to go and see my grandma um and i stopped by it was really hot like it's one of the definitely one of the hottest days we've had um of this heat wave and i went to sainsbury's and saw a homeless guy that was just

like sitting outside went inside bought him um i called it a bottle of water and gave it to him. And then he looked up and was like, oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. I was like, yeah,

that's a good kind of conversation. How are you doing? Blah, blah, blah. And he said, this is his birthday today. I was like, oh my God. And he,

but then he felt really, you can see like, he seemed happy that I gave him the water, but he looked really down. He was like, what a way to spend a birthday. I was like,

I felt, I was like, wow. But he was like, no one, to spend the birthday, and he was like, I felt, I was like, wow, but he was like, no one, people don't do these things. This is what I do, there's a girl called Karma,

who I love, she gets really angry with everyone, but she really likes me, and she's always walking down the road, like near where I live, every freaking day, I give her a pound, she never remembers,

she's like, babe, I'm like, babe, I gave it to her yesterday, and I stand and chat to her, and I'm like, we've made really good progress,

she likes me because I'm smiling, I think she gets quite shouty, if people are like, but you went far enough, why not, I always and chat to her and I'm like we've made really good progress. She likes me because I'm smiling I think she gets quite shouty if people are like but you went like far enough like why not? I always just smile at her so she's like alright babe I'm alright babe. She's like give me money I'm like babe I literally gave you a pound yesterday but fine. But then other people I see she gets really annoying because they're being fucking rude

and do you know what? She should like you should be able to just I just don't and also London people don't smile anyway. I smiled at someone on the tube and they got off the next stop. I think they did on purpose like yeah I'm not even joking I'm half Irish

so this is why I'm so friendly to everyone my mum literally is like hi on the tube and I'm like whoa I like people like that

you don't see them enough it's nice it's like a nice bit of energy I mean in London people are just miserable and depressed I always chat to

old people because they'll talk to you and everyone else on the tube will be like what the hell is she doing I had such a great

chat with this old guy the other day had a really cool suit on he was telling me how he loved poetry he was going to

see his mates he was so interesting everyone on the tube was sat there as if I'd just done a massive fart or something they were like

who is this girl get off it seems like you've got something wrong with you people are strange. I don't know, just London culture and,

and, uh, just not wanting to, instead, just wanting to keep, like, to yourself, to yourself,

but like, talking to people, which, I like meeting wacky people, so talking to people, just people in general, but something to say is always interesting. It's so interesting.

But I really wonder, like, if we put in, even if it wasn't like you say, like, if we didn't have the money to fund the housing and all the things, if everyone just kind of got together imagine if every street was like

like every friday we're just gonna everyone bring down some food and we're just gonna cook it up and everyone who's not got a house like why do we not do something that would just make so much sense but it would like it would just be such an easy imagine if there was like a national rule that every friday everyone had to like bring down thing of beans and just all get like a barbecue like i just don't yeah i don't know so many small little things if collectively you did stuff it would be so much easier yeah you know what I think the reason stuff like that doesn't happen is often due to fear of culpability in in some way it's like uh because I mean that would be great if we said okay you're not fuck it everyone just bring down food and we'll just prepare food and whatnot then you get into a whole discussion of

oh what about the health standards I mean granted that is definitely something worth addressing but yeah you just end up on like I don't want to be at fault it's not going to do anything but you're right that stuff should happen the other really interesting thing that I spoke to Becky about

was she was saying how a lot of people think like so I was saying that if we didn't have to fix the housing problem. But even when the housing, so people are like, oh, they've gone into housing, it's fine. She made such an interesting point to me, which I hadn't really thought about. She was like, even if you get a homeless person into housing, if you're like a 40-year-old man who's been homeless for like three years and before that you had a career, someone just shoves you in a house and is like, live here. You're actually going to probably just be like, no, actually know what i don't i just so take so much away from you there's a lot of institutionalization which comes with being homeless especially on the street there's a there's there's a fact there's a few people outside of shell's head office who

are sleeping on the street and people often come and knock on our doors and say like someone just took like your shelter what you're doing if someone just goes to the street sleeping on um sleeping sleeping rough and um but we we know these people i think becky becky's actually the person who who like told me about like their stories and whatnot yeah um she often goes and talks to them and and um the guy and and the guy often people that just don't want like he's very i'm gonna say happy i don't i don't i can't say i guess you adjust yeah it's very well adapted very well adjusted and as it's fine to be in a situation um and i think i come from when you're on the street for years and years at a time is is it's not impossible it becomes very difficult to then like i said to put something at home and

say okay i'll live here because this is as far as like they they can see this is a very new environment it's something i'm not used to and this isn't what i'm familiar with the other weird thing is so we've structurally and there's people we other these people and we're like this isn't they're not us we're not going to speak to them we don't want to give them money that they're this and then suddenly you're like oh we'll fix your problem but you've spent years kind of conditioning them to believe that they are not the same as you but these people are fundamentally not worth your time but then to fix the problem because most of the issue is a lot of people with privilege are just affronted that they're seeing it they just don't want to see it because it reminds you probably makes feel guilty

or you're just like you know i don't want that on my street i don't want that in my borough or whatever so then you can't suddenly have that attitude and then be like oh actually we're just going to make you go you just go in a house now and we'll pay for it like that is so deep and i think it is this problem that people just don't realize it could be your mom your dad your sister it could be you and you are not going to feel like how comfortable would you feel with feeling like you're kind of like a stray and someone's going to put you in a box yeah you wouldn't think so much as well so much of homelessness and housing issues are intrinsically linked to mental health issues um so you can't you can't just take someone off

the street and put them in a house and say okay you go home you're fine now because there's a lot of mental health issues which you then need to unpack and to help um one thing shelter does which i'm which is probably my my favorite part of job, which I'm not even involved in, I just love hearing about it, is our services often provide more than just housing advice. So whilst people might call up the helpline and Shelter helps millions of people on the phone and whatnot, we have various hubs or offices across the country where people can go in and have a more of a one-to-one experience.

And in those experiences, they can see things like DIY help, like learning how to paint your house or something like that. If you're living in a place of a one-to-one experience. And then in those experiences, they can see things like DIY help, like learning how to paint your house or something like that. If you're living in a place of bad conditions, there's a huge wealth of shelter service provision dedicated to helping women that have experienced domestic abuse issues. Like so many, like one issue,

which wasn't even on my radar, I mean, it's all about privilege, but it's when you hear about it, it's like needing to be trained on how or taught how to have a bank how to how to

yeah of course like control of your finances because a lot of say women coming from domestic abusive relationships weren't in control of their money and have then now

once you've have that freedom and have that ability you're like okay I don't know how do you open a bank kind of stuff so Shelf provides that kind of have that ability like okay i don't know how do you open a bank kind of stuff so shelf provides that kind of help um and obviously like signposting to mental health

organization that mind and various things because housing isn't housing is never just a housing issue it's always much deeper than that whether you're talking about access to employment or talking about like mental health issues or you're talking about child care or domestic abuse there's always other paradigms involved in there and um and i think one thing i don't i don't think she'll talks about it enough but that's one thing that's amazing it's so true it's just like those basic things like that you just forget it's just we go from one it's literally we see the extremes we go like someone who's very like been on the street for ages and we just want to put them in the home and no one's looking at that interim period where it's like how are you going to take someone that's been conditioned to this to change and it's true like how to paint your house or how to do just just basic what we would deem as basic things how to

cook an egg i just might like it's used to annoy me when i was uh i go into to uni and i live in certain houses and i had a house where you didn't how to boil an egg and it really pissed me off for some reason at the time. I don't know why. But then, but I think that's more because I saw that as laziness. But there are people out there

who, like I said, who just fundamentally do not, never had those basic skills. And then can maybe take it back to their own childhood. Maybe their parents didn't teach them and it's kind of, you reach a point where you're not,

you're not just going to suddenly get up and learning how to put a name for a lot of people the other thing i was thinking about so random but i went to get um a coil um tmi yesterday like a contraceptive thing and she was like oh can you just write your name down the piece of paper and i thought i wonder what if someone can't write and then what would you just like leave that situation because the other thing is like we're talking about the same thing if someone can't do something a lot of the time people are like well why don't you just ask for help and it's like that's actually really embarrassing in a society where there's certain things you're expected to know how to do like cook certain foods or how to get the bus or how to write how to read and if you can't read or

write or do certain things which if your parents been homeless and you've been then put in shelter or you haven't had care there's so many things where we're not that like society isn't ready to kind of cater for those those things yeah yeah um and i just i just randomly thought about i've never really thought about before i just thought about yesterday i just wonder if someone couldn't write like what would you do this is why there's such a big push for accessibility and inclusivity in a different way where it's not just about having the capability to help but proactively trying to reach out to people because if you don't proactively make the effort it's it's it's almost it's extremely difficult for someone to say help me yes we get i mean there's pride and the shame and there's a feeling of i should be able to do

this myself and and and if you're not practically trying to reach out to people to help them then they just won't do it yeah at all or it just won't be done and um i think there's when we talk about power dynamics and and oppression and and uh privilege and everything else that if you are in a position position of power you should be making that effort to platform and to help yeah and um yeah um so in terms of with shout like what how do you how do we as a population like what's something that everyone can do like whether you've got money or whether you've got privilege or whatever what's something just like i mean fundamentally be talk to people yeah just look at people as a human um don't don't judge them don't come at them with any sort of hidden intentions or even if you're trying to help

just fundamentally just approach people on a person-to-person basis ask them what they want ask them like how they're doing i think that's one thing anyone and everyone can do is just treat each other like actually like human people and that sounds probably corny to say but i think like it just comes down to just being nice i think think other than that, I'm not going to advise people to either give money or to give money to homeless people, give money to charities, because I think there's so many ways that you can unpack that. And some people view each as better than the other.

But I say, yeah, just talk to people, really. And what about if someone is on the cusp or feels like they're in trouble with their own housing or and is scared to talk about it or do you have any advice about what someone could do in that situation uh i'd suggest definitely getting in touch with shelter yeah um shell has an advice helpline which runs um i don't think it's 24 7 but it runs for like ridiculous hours like on christmas day and things so as housing issues crop up i'd just give them a call it's a free helpline yeah i'm sorry just to flag that helpline does get extremely busy so a lot of people won't get through on the first try maybe

not the second try but i'd urge people like if you're experiencing an issue to make that call it's one thing i didn't do at the time well i did but i didn't get through 21 and through to anyone and I kind of took it as, like, okay, I'm just not going to try. And that probably caused more harm than good in the long term because I think Shelter probably could have helped us out massively. In fact, definitely could have helped us out at the time. So I'd imagine, yeah, if you're dealing with a housing issue or an issue which is, like I said, it's not necessarily housing-focused,

but it's related to housing or is causing an impact on your housing, give Shelter a call or seek out another charity which can help. And I imagine as well, it's related to housing or is causing an impact on your housing give shelter a call or seek out another charity which can help and i imagine as well it's not about like you don't have to have the like in imminent crisis i think what shelter is amazing is it's saying we want to prevent so i feel like the thing that i didn't really get or didn't really understand is that actually a better way of tackling things would to be get in there when probably when you're at the height of your shame because when it's just on the cusp of happening that's probably when you're in a place

where you're fitting quite well into society and you're really feeling like I cannot let this break but I think that's probably when you really should just be like actually I might need

a bit of help and there's no shame in saying that. Yeah, there's absolutely no shame and it's one thing I really wish we can tackle more as a culture

is I'm being very hypocritical because that's one thing I have wish we can tackle more as a culture is, is I'm being, I'm being very, um, uh, hypocritical. Cause that's one thing I have an issue with is asking for help anyways, but it's completely entrenched. And, but I think as a culture is also,

this is, this is, is a, is a helpline as a private cause. I think people should feel much more easier about kind of say, I need help. Um, can you advise me?

Um, but yeah, like you said, shelter has a much more preventative start to like let's let's stop you becoming homeless or like let's let's fix this before it gets any worse worse than it is um so yeah i'd urge anyone with housing issues or how or budding housing issues or just even just seeking out advice it's a free helpline just yeah use those services it's amazing i've literally learned so much talking to you and i've really enjoyed it this has been a really good conversation really good so if people want to know more about you where can we find you uh or you don't want them to find you i can't find me um um i you can find me on like uh instagram twitter facebook that's kojo stein k-o-j-o-s-t-e-i-n that's my writing

writer's name nice um on my podcast outlives x uh and poetry and i run penting poetry penting poetry yeah i really want to come along to that it's so much fun oh i love spoken word poetry because that's what you do as well isn't it yeah it's so much fun and we combine it with um like one of one of our um co-hosts is uh is a is an actor so he does like a theoretical kind of it's amazing when's your next event we had one on thursday just gone but the next one will be on the third it's always on the third thursday of every month okay so i think the next thursday in august the third thursday is 16th of august okay cool but if not the third thursday of every month painting poetry on the problems. Oh, yeah, that sounds fab. I want to come along.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much. This has been amazing. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, you're more than welcome. Bye. Bye. We'll be right back. you. I do. Enjoy the number one feeling, winning in an exciting live dealer studio exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario.

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