Media Storm - S1E7 Homelessness: The hidden figures - with Kai Samra

Episode Date: February 10, 2022

Warning: Strong language Official homelessness statistics are a fraction of the numbers that charities claim to exist. Is someone sugarcoating the data? Is it a genuine mistake? Or are we looking in wrong places? With fines and sentences for sleeping on the streets, the UK and many other countries make no apologies for targeting rough sleeping. Temporary accommodation facilities earn private contractors hundreds of millions in state benefits every year. But are they actually helping, or just keeping the problem behind closed doors? This week, Media Storm speaks to people who are and have been homeless. They expose some disconcerting truths about these state-supported lodgings, systemic attempts to remove vulnerable people from public view, and the catastrophic levels of homelessness lying hidden in the wings. Comedian Kai Samra joins us in the studio to take a look at some of the latest headlines on homelessness, and discuss what reporting on the topic often gets wrong. Your hosts: Mathilda Mallinson @mathildamall Helena Wada @helenawadia Your guests: Kai Samra @kaisamra Benjay Crossman @benjaycrossman Earl Charlton @earljc78 @nehest2014 Kerri Douglas @kerridouglas18 Paul Atherton @LondonersLondon Sources: Introductory statistics: (official 1) https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/rough-sleeping-snapshot-in-england-autumn-2020/rough-sleeping-snapshot-in-england-autumn-2020 ; (official 2) https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1050291/Statutory_Homelessness_Stats_Release_July-September_2021.pdf ; (Crisis) https://www.crisis.org.uk/about-us/media-centre/227-000-households-across-britain-are-experiencing-the-worst-forms-of-homelessness/) Profits for accommodation providers: https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/27/hostels-from-hell-the-supported-housing-that-blights-birmingham Care leavers: (Guardian) https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/nov/11/we-are-failing-children-in-care-and-they-are-dying-on-our-streets ; (official) https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8429/CBP-8429.pdf Vagrancy Act: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7836/ Prison releases: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1006474/2021_Q4_CPT_publication.pdf Get in touch Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/mediastormpod or Instagram https://www.instagram.com/mediastormpod or Tiktok https://www.tiktok.com/@mediastormpod like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MediaStormPod send us an email [e-mail] check out our website https://mediastormpodcast.com Music by Samfire @soundofsamfire. Artwork by Simba Baylon @simbalenciaga. Media Storm is brought to you by the house of The Guilty Feminist and is part of the Acast Creator Network. Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/media-storm. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Helena, you know how you're, like, completely obsessed with who wants to be a millionaire? Oh, harking back to the first episode, are we? See which of our fans are really fans. That's right. It's quiz time. And this week we're looking at homelessness. My question for you is this. Which of the following figures represents the national homeless population count in Britain? I'm going to round to the nearest thousand. 3,000. B, 68,000. C, 227,000. There's a very wild disparity between A and C there.

I'll go down the middle, I'll go B. Well, the answer is actually all of them. So it's interesting you point out the disparity. I'll tell you the methods. So one way the government measures homelessness is by counting the people sleeping on England streets on one night of the year. And the latest count was less than 3,000.

The government realized a few years ago this wasn't a very efficient method, so they also started publishing the number of households assessed to be homeless by local authorities, and that latest figure neared 68,000. But the charity crisis did some troubling research with Harriet Watt University and found closer to a quarter of a million people in Britain were homeless. They think 62% of homeless people don't show up in official counts. Wow. And why would some homeless people not show up in those figures? Because they're hidden. In cafes, libraries, sleeping on the night bus, they could be in airport terminals, and that massively distort the figures.

And then there are people behind bars. Do you know any really outdated laws that still exist where you wouldn't expect them to? Like in Singapore, you can be fined £50,000 for chewing gum. I'd probably save money in the long term if I pay the 50 grand fine. and then stop buying gun. You are addicted to chewing gun. Did you actually know that in London, but excluding the city district, it's illegal to walk down the street while carrying a plank of wood? How am I going to get my plank of wood home?

Well, exactly. MPs can be arrested if they wear a suit of armour into Parliament. I mean, it wouldn't be the most ridiculous thing in MPs ever done. Did you also know it's illegal to shake a carpet or a rug in the street, except for a dormant Matt before 8 a.m. I've definitely done that. Have you? What are you shaking carpets in the street for? Yeah. And I did it out a window and I dropped it. I've dropped so many things out window. That's probably why it's illegal. Nearly hit pedestrian. Okay, but why are we talking about so-called ridiculous laws? Yeah, good question. Well, among these ridiculous laws, arguably, is the Vagrancy Act 1824,

which criminalises being homeless. So if you find yourself out on the street, you are actually breaking the law. Wow. That's just one of many reasons why homelessness is hidden in its true scale. So if the problem is so much bigger than rough sleeping

and if so much of homelessness isn't reflected in the data, how can we create accurate solutions and are we trying to eradicate homelessness or just keep it out of sight? Well, I've been investigating hidden homelessness and what goes on behind closed doors. I'll be heading into temporary accommodation facilities speaking to people who've been

taken off the streets by force and looking at what the media is missing when it reports on this problem. And I'll see you back in the studio with a very special guest to discuss everything around this media storm. If you give the money all the time, all you're doing is encourage them to stay where they are and carry on begging. I would give the home as my last pound if I knew they weren't. A hand up, if not a handout. In this sleeping bag lies a homeless strait. addict, ignored by all those who passed on. They were the wrongful killing of their father. The man was homeless at the time of his death.

Welcome to MediaStorm, the news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. I'm Matilda Mallinson and I'm Helena Wardier. This week's investigation. Homelessness, the Hidden Figures. Who do you picture when you hear the word homeless? I was sleeping in a doorway, covered in the blood from the intravenous drug use. an embarrassment to human crime.

Do you think of Kerry, a sleeping bag on the pavement, cold hands begging on the station floor? I guess you don't picture what you can't see. They're in libraries, they're in pubs trying to have a coffee or something. A motorhome, to me, that was a home. Slum accommodation, so dirty. There was bugs everywhere, cockroaches. These are the people who are sleeping in their cars.

These are the people who are sleeping on night buses, on night tubes, at the Heathrow airport. If you don't see them, you don't notice them, but they're out there, you know, they're everywhere. It was almost like a great separation at about midnight. I felt like Cinderella. When everyone's going home from these places like Weatherspoons or something, and I was going out on the street.

Homelessness is bigger than we think, and the vast majority is behind closed doors. This helps the optics, but does it actually help? I was safe I run the street and I was in the homeless hostels. I've had people die in my arms. I've had to drag people out there because ambulance people won't come in. During the pandemic, a hostel in Coventry was shut down due to knife violence. But one man inside, artist Ben J. Crossman, kept a documentary of his time and he shared it with a media storm.

When you arrived at the hostel for the first time, what were your first impressions? Honestly, I was very relieved. You know, I felt appreciative there was food. I had my own room, a microwave. Part of me thought, man, this is, this is luxury. And then I met the people and I was immediately concerned for my, for my safety. Wow, there's fucking crack heads here. They're fucking heron heads here. It's fucking mental, Brad, that thinks he could go around robbing people's rooms. Jenny, the mad crack granny,

Aaron, complete another lawyer. And then you've got a car, he just keeps himself to himself. His brain is full night of his head. Gone. Threats and boisterousness. and yelling and screaming and I was overwhelmed at the drugs man if you want me to smoke a fucking proper spliffing let me want surely they would have at least you know an n-a meeting downstairs in the hall

like once a week for the people that want it they just pull out a rock pipe out their pocket to start smoking crack cocaine right there in my room I didn't get a choice of being exposed to that stuff it's quite draining I just wish there was like a a buddha zen shelter for all the the chilled out hobos, you know? So do you think many people go in clean or relatively clean and develop addictions while in these hostels?

Yes, and I can speak from my own experience. When I got put into the hostel, it was one month in, and I literally, I couldn't handle it anymore. It was just violent and aggressive, and there were people showing up to the building, throwing rocks at the windows, where's my fucking money, I'm going to kill you, yelling at drug addicts that owe the dealer's money and it was just like, I was like, oh fuck this. I smoked a few spliffs, I'm going to admit, and it took the edge off, you know. I've been told that dealers will target these hostels, knowing there are vulnerable people inside who can be roped onto addictive

patterns. Is this something that you witnessed? We literally had dealers yelling up to the windows offering us shit. There were just so many drug deals right there in that parking lot. The staff, most of them, turned a blind eye. Ben J, in your documentary, some of the women in the hostel

turned to prostitution to pay for their addictions. Oh, just stay outside of our rooms to what to do, then, mate. Have respect. That's all I fucking ass. I feel really sorry for, for example, like Sophie.

Be two in the morning and she's out there in the street trying to find a customer. to make a little bit of money just so she can have another hit because her skin is literally crawling, you know? So in effect, have these hostels, organisations paid by the state to support vulnerable people? Have they become places of business? I'd say yes, absolutely. I mean, I think it was pretty standard.

I mean, I even heard of one of the staff members part of it. The sounds going throughout the shelter, and sometimes there's kids. staying there amongst all of this shit. Do you think the staff should be doing more to intervene in these situations, or is that way beyond the remit of their job and training? I remember one day when there was some violence going down, and yeah, I just remember the staff member on duty, just like really distressed, just saying like, man, I'm not paid enough for this shit.

They've got to not only look after one vulnerable crazy person that might be acting out that day but a whole building full of them and there's one staff member on duty at a time and i mean things get really scary when the bigger guys start getting drugged up and physical and threats of murder and meet me in the parking lot so i held absolutely zero responsibility or blame on the staff members i can only say from my own experience that they've just been wonderful sharing their own food, time, resources with these people. 90 euros a day the government was paying for my room, which was not worth that. This guy has multiple hotels converted to shelters.

So you can get more money for a shelter than you can for a hotel. You can't rent out a 15-room, one-star hotel every night of the month, where you can do it if it's a shelter and the government's paying your top rates. He's a very greedy dishonest people as far as I'm concerned. That's what I observed, based on how the places were running, you know. There are two agendas at play here, keeping people off the streets and profiting from it. So what happens when they come into conflict? I suffer with chronic fatigue syndrome.

When Paul Atherton's housing benefits stopped due to what the government later admitted was an administrative error, the homeless hostel that had been putting him up, said it couldn't continue to do so without paying. So they wheeled me out in my wheelchair and left me on the street. Now, I was just left there to die in the cold. Goodbye, not our problem. The government allocates different budgets for different types of spaces, different areas of the country. Landlords accepting tenants with certain vulnerabilities

can also be financially rewarded. But how that money is spent is not enforced. In fact, many of these sites have failed basic standards checks and still remain on the market. the market. There was one, for instance, I saw which was called a flat, but it was difficult to actually walk in there. So really, you had no space between the bed and the kitchen area and the bed and the window. You couldn't actually put anything in there because the toilet door would open. It was ridiculous. And that was about £1,100 a month. I was offered a room that was bigger

than these places for half the money, 550, but I wasn't allowed to take it by the council because they said it was exceeded the housing allowance rate for that category, which was a room category. And that's the absurdity of the system, these policies that, you know, they may make sense to some people, but to homeless people, they make no sense at all. And I ended up on the streets for longer. These hostels play home to people with a wide range of needs, some of which are very complex. Charities say it's not enough to house them. There needs to be more support. No after care, no support to defend from myself with a breakfast pack. I had to sort all medications out, I had to store benefits out. I didn't know how to do. How to budget bills and that,

didn't have a clue, man. Like Earl Charlton, several of our sources spent their childhoods in care, which makes them particularly vulnerable to homelessness. I have mental health issues and no one ever came with me to break it all down. You know, No, it was like nobody ever came and took me through the stages. They expected me to fend for myself, given my chaotic background, surely they would have thought differently if they had been doing their job properly. But hey, my opinion. In 2019, the Guardian reported that one in four teens leaving care ended up homeless.

But government numbers are much lower, lately listing only 1% of careleavers as becoming homeless, though their records show eight times as many with accommodation unknown. One reason for this discrepancy could be the difficulty many careleavers face holding on to the accommodation in the long run. But they may only get one shot. And then because the tenancy failed, I was then classed as intentionally homeless and then discharged from the council list.

No one's going to help me anymore and I found myself off sleeping again on the streets. That's the issue with the term intentionally homeless. So say if someone's been antisocial and got kicked out of their property or, hey, what if someone's fleed their property because they're scared? of the environment they're in because it's too chaotic. It's so easy to judge someone that's sitting at your feet, taking drugs, begging. You need to know what their story is.

You need to know what's gone on behind that. It's never a nice story. It's mainly because there's been breakdowns in the system, breakdown after breakdown after breakdown, and that's what you need to be judging. That's what you need to be fixing. Accessing homeless accommodation can be a tricky game. You have to prove that you're connected to the local authoritative.

You have to prove that you're homeless and not by choice. Now, this can literally mean you have to be seen sleeping on the streets multiple times over a certain period. But if you do do that, you could end up somewhere else. He just grabbed me round the neck and in one second had me on the ground, cuffed my hands behind my back and popped my freaking shoulder out of joint. If you fail to pay, you will be arrested in put in prison and by definition you'll suddenly be housed.

Right. The nurse and doctor was grabbing me, pin me down, inject me in the backside or something. They put me in a cell with blood on the floor. It was disgusting. There was one cup I used to always go out his way whether he was in uniform or not and come and move me, bother me, arrest me. Your cups take my cell phone away from your homeless man, my lifeline. From homelessness behind closed doors to homelessness behind bars.

The 1824 Vagrancy Act criminalises sleeping in public and begging in England and Wales. In 2019, the latest published figures, there were 926 prosecutions for begging. Most convictions result in a fine. Some people are sent to prison. I've been arrested twice due to the Vagency Act. One of them is Kerry Douglas, who's now an author. Now, the first time I ever went to prison, I think I was around 20, 21. It was because I was sat, not even begging, but sat in my pitch, not being aggressive.

I used to just sit there reading, just chilling, and people used to drop me money because I wasn't bothering anyone. But I still got arrested. The second time, I was like, no, I'm not going back to jail. So I pleaded the mental health card. Big mistake. So I got sent to the Gordon's hospital in Victoria, and I was sectioned for 48 hours. I kicked off like a wild animal because they put me in the shower.

Not one, not two, but about six of them, all big, bigger than me. And they scrubbed me, and they pinned me down. It was horrible. So I kicked off like a wild animal, obviously. So then they shut me up the backside with... A shot of clopromazine, which is a drug that literally sent me into paralysis. I couldn't speak, I couldn't do anything. It's disgusting the way they treat people that are homeless.

They don't understand that the trauma that we've already been through, and now they're layering more and more on by pinning me down in the shower, scrubbing me and then shooting me with drugs to knock me out. Are you kidding me? Few European countries directly criminalise homelessness in the same way as the UK, but legislation against begging or trespassing, which is often levied against rough sleepers, is common, as is careful urban design that creates a hostile infrastructure for those without

home, like metal arms on park benches, spikes on flat surfaces, or a lack of public wash facilities. The USA is a prime example where being out of a home quickly finds you outside of the law as well. There are still warrants out for my arrest right now in parts of Texas because I illegally drove my motorhome. Meet Chase Archer Ever. who campaigns to legalize homelessness from a position of lived experience. Fundamentally, it begins with the requirement of a permanent physical address, which immediately places those of us without a residence outside of legality. And it presents a huge barrier to identification,

which in itself can be a barrier to every facet of our society, from gaining employment and traveling to enter housing or even some homeless shelters, and using a friend or family member's address where one does not actually live is perjury. It can also be tax fraud if you file your taxes from an address that isn't yours as well. How does one renew their vehicle registration? How does somebody open a PO box to get mail? Because you need both valid ID and a permanent physical address in order to satisfy the requirements. And all of a sudden, you can't get a job, open a bank account, continue to use your private motor vehicle, enter housing.

Some homeless shelters require that identification just to get through the door. Cities all across the nation ban things like solicitation, camping, feeding other people. There are parking laws, penalties for trespassing on public property, sit, sleep, lay down laws that can punish people for sitting down in certain circumstances. It's truly mind-blowing all the ways cities have been creative in criminalizing homeless, this. In yet another catch-22, being thrown into prison tends to increase your chances of ending up on the street afterwards. 16,000 people released from prison between 2020 and 2021, ended up homeless or with no known accommodation. That's twice as many as were housed in

bail or probation accommodation. It's a situation journalist Claire Barstow knows all too well. When I first came out of prison, I went into a women's hospital. in Reading. It was very difficult because they charge you a service charge but then you have to pay but then you don't get your benefits for six weeks so most people can't pay which was something that I really found devastating

and a lot of people end up getting recalled back to prison because they couldn't find any way suitable to stay. I know this girl, Mel, she's been in prison for 27 years I think. I don't know if she's ever, you know, she's going to get out because they can't find suitable accommodation for her. So she's been out and been in? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think it's three times she's been out.

And each time they haven't found a suitable accommodation for her. Is the hostel exclusively for people coming out of prison? Either coming out of prison or being known to the criminal justice system. Yeah. When you leave prison, what do they give you? They give you £42 and that's it. And they expect people to survive, which is why a lot of people end up back. in prison again because they can't survive.

And so can you apply for regular benefits? Yes, but yes, you can, but it takes at least six to eight weeks to come through. And you can't apply six to eight weeks before being released from prison? No. So you have six to eight weeks outside of prison where you have no benefits. Yes. And 42 pounds to survive on. Yes, that's right.

This discharge grant, as that allowance is called, was actually increased to 76 pounds last year, which in its totality covers about two weeks in the hostel. So when you were in the hostel with other women who'd come out of prisons and had no money to pay their service charge, how did they keep their place in that hostel? Well, a lot of them ended up working as prostitutes stealing or committing crime. And the hostel knew about this, the staff, but they kind of turned a blind eye as long as the women played the service charge.

The hospital had had any positive intention. They would have said, well, look, you don't have to pay your service charge until you get your benefits. That's what they should have said. But I got a letter saying, oh, you will be made homeless unless you pay your service charge. You know, they're threatened to put me out on the street, and I was in a wheelchair at the time. It's pretty awful. A lot of them die within a month of leaving prison. So it's a death sentence, really, for some.

They end up with sexually transmitted diseases, syphilis, and obviously hypothermia, pneumonia, bronchitis, hep C, hep B. It's very scary. Where does responsibility lie? Is homelessness an individual responsibility or is it a fault of the system? That's the final question I asked our sources. For too long, people at the bottom end of society have been ignored and I think they've been exploited. I think that people have been paid too little. People at the top are paid too much. There is a single point that we're all united in is that the welfare system didn't work. The people that we went to for help weren't helpful remind the public is systemic. It is not an

individual problem. It is not been created by drugs or alcohol or gambling or anything else. It has been created because we have legislation that allow for rental prices to be insane, for a whole ownership to be a complete dream. It's a fight to be the best, to be the richest, to have the most. Who cares about a couple of kids on drugs who fucked up their own lives? Who really cares? In 10 years' time, you're still going to be making podcasts about homelessness in Britain. Now, the reason there's a rise in homelessness is because people at the top have failed to

allocate the right funding, the right staff and the right training. Everything is so outdated now and no one's taking accountability for the mistakes. And also, they don't know what they're doing. I'm not being funny, but how can you understand how to end homelessness if you've never actually been homeless? That takes us back to the studio. Thanks for sticking around. Welcome back to the studio and to MediaStorm, a podcast that puts people with lived experience at the centre of of reporting. Today we are talking about homelessness and how the media reports on people affected. With us is a very special guest. You'll thank us because he's a comedian and an award

winning comedian at that whose five-star sellout show Underclass is now taking to Amazon Prime. He has performed on BBC Asian Network, BBC 3, ITB2 and more. It's Kai Samra. Hi Kai. Thank you guys so much for having it. We've just listened to the investigation that I did into Hidden forms of homelessness that don't normally make headlines. Is this something that you're aware of and do you think that we're given an accurate sense of the scale of homelessness by the media? 100%. I think there was a guardian article a few years back, which I was referred to, which said a fifth of young people in the UK are homeless at that time. You just can't see them. And I was kind of thinking, yeah, maybe you're just not looking for them. Or they do seem invisible because I think

I think the issue of homelessness is so multifaceted. It's, you know, I've got personal experiences of it. I was like sleeping rough when I was a kid and I stayed at a center point when I was younger which is like a youth homeless shelter. And the idea of homelessness of a person sitting a sleeping bag like outside is just like one aspect of it. So many people like couch surfing or you know who you know just saying in like libraries and 24 hour Mackey D's over the night and staying up in the middle of the day. It's so much more than that. And I think the deafiness to be more of a light on that as well. I think that's a really good point. And I think a lot of that is to do with the mainstream media's use of certain language and imagery when they're

talking about homelessness. Most news outlets are at least superficially sympatheticetic towards homeless people. But, you know, as a public, we have managed to massively depersonalize the issue. You know, we avert our eyes when people are asking for money on the tube and we don't really know how to help. So I guess we have to look at how we got to this point. And the mainstream media you will often use terms like the homeless or if it's kind of connected to a crime story that often use a vagrant. They use stock imagery of faceless people in doorways or people looking particularly disheveled. Does this language and imagery allow readers to more easily otherize homeless people?

100%. I massively agree with that. And I think there is a massive fetishization, especially in the mainstream media. There was a, I don't know if you guys saw this, there was like a, there was a program called like rich kids go homeless and it was on channel 5 obviously and i mean we didn't even need to say that and it was just essentially just like rich kids like just going like sleeping rough on the street it's a it's it's just it's such a fetishization of that and it was like i'm doing it so i did a documentary about like youth homelessness and obviously i want to do something which is slightly different to the way that it's

normally portrayed one because it was a personal thing of me going back to center point and and talking to the people that i spent time with there and what they're doing now and that's so to like how someone like Louis Theroux would do it because essentially what they would want is like well we need a good story we need someone who's like on the streets that are like doing heroin and you're like well that's like I I'm like I'm not like that and it's it's you know I think there's a they need to be a more honest and open look at that issue yeah we we look to fulfill the stereotypes we already have yeah telling these stories in the press one of the men I spoke to in the investigation Paul so he's a filmmaker and he has in his past done professional style headshot photo shoots and he always makes

these photos available to press that do coverage on him but they will always go for an anonymous man in a sleeping bag on the pavement over the GQ style photo shoot he's got of himself you know he even even sympathetic press he says does this and it is frustrating that we don't want to portray these people as whole humans with often careers and you know, you know, know, families, it's just like the homeless person trope. 100%. It also means that we kind of forget about all these different kind of intersections, not just hidden homelessness, but intersections of like,

you're more likely to be homeless if you're LGBT or you're more likely to be homeless if you've kind of come out of prison or if you're disabled. And so then we don't also get to see any of these intersections of homelessness. 100%. I massively agree with that. Because at Centrepoint, it's a huge plethora reasons why so many people are there. Like, maybe they're from a particular, their family don't accept their sexuality or their gender. Even people that come out of the military, things like that with PTSD.

And I think what happens is, yeah, you distance yourself away from that issue when actually you realize it's so easy to become homeless. And really, that, if you boil it down to a really succinct thing, it's essentially people just don't have a network to fall back on. that's essentially all it is like I mean I think we probably so many people are listening to this or in the industry have probably been in a

situation where they're in London say in the arts and they've run out of money and they're like I'm going to have to be back with my parents whereas if you don't have that you then you go to then you sign on and you use benefits but then now it's the way that universal credit is it's like this Kafka

S system just to get any money and then if you turn at five minutes later to a meeting then you won't get that money then you're homeless it's so, so, so easy if you just don't have that network. Like, it's not a meritocracy. And I think it's kind of weird because a lot of people at Senterpoint, especially young people, they want to get into the arts because it like presents itself as this

very left-wing liberal meritocracy. And then I remember always thinking, oh my God, if I'm just good at standard, it doesn't matter how rich my parents are. It doesn't matter what university I go to. And then I realize that's very wrong. And then I think that's kind of what I, you know, I think it's really important to portray and highlight those people without some fetishizing them or sort of diminishing them. Yeah, you said it, meritocracy. Again, one of the interviews I spoke to,

he said that we're really obsessed with rags to riches stories. One of the most common tropes, or one of the most common stories you see told about homelessness are these rags to riches. I mean, headlines like, this is from the sun, I grew up in poverty and was homeless as a kid. Now I'm a multimillionaire at 25 with a Lamborghini and designer clothes. There was that whole Molly May scandal a few weeks ago. Why do we love these rags to riches tropes? Because it's It's also in our, in our film and TV, it's in our fairy tales. But does it kind of drill home this idea that, you know, if you're born into poverty, all you need to do to get out of it is hard work.

I always take some of those stories with a pinch of salt, because I think, you think, oh, were you that, like, were you really that? Are you just trying to maybe, like, portray yourself as making your story a bit better? And I think it's kind of funny, because when I did the show, so many people, like, who came up to me, like, oh, my God, I'm so jealous of you. you've got a story and I'm like, no, it's pretty traumatic, actually. Like, and it was like, it's a really weird thing because I, so I'll tell you this. I actually never told anyone about me being at center point in sleeping off when I was,

um, when I left. Um, like even ex-girlfriends that I was with for a long time. I never did. I never told, I just didn't tell anybody about it. Um, I think if you come from that environment, you, you, you never say things like, oh, I deserve this. Like, I think it's the opposite. Like, you kind of, like, I found it so tough. And I, and I, I've, I've been to super honest like I still do when I started doing salad but no one really knew about my story and then there's only once I did the Amazon special that I talked about that and the difference that the way people treat you is so negative in quite a big way I was literally like sleeping rough out on the same road as Soho Theatre because Centrepoint's on the same street and like I literally

went from sleeping rough outside so theatre like you know literally going up to strangers just saying the same thing over and over again and I hope they give me a bit of money to do in stand-up comedy which to be fair it doesn't sound like a big difference to be fair it's essentially just the same thing just begging with banter that's all stand-up comedy is except on one your posters outside Soho Theatre yeah but like people don't realise

like that was a huge head fuck like a massive one because it's like do you feel like the same person but you feel like the world just twisted and like shape like just completely like gone 180 on his axis and everyone's treating you differently five years ago you weren't even giving me a quid when I asked for it and now you're like you know like

oh, I saw you show. Like, there's a huge unconscious bias, and a lot of that is down to the media, because obviously, oh, as we know, on the media, all people with people who are homeless, like, do you crime and do drugs and stuff like that. And I'm not saying that isn't the case,

like, because obviously at Centrepoint, there was, like, hard drugs were so prevalent. And I'm not making it out like it was a nice place to be in. But you can't taint that all with the whole issue of homelessness. Or that every, oh, you've been kicked out of your house because your family don't agree with your sexuality. Oh, you must be a bad person. It's like, hold on, that's not the case.

And, like, I think, think there needs to be a lot more like a spotlight on those sort of people to tell their stories. The mainstream media and the public, we love to deny the true scale of people's economic situations and then blame them for it. Exactly. 100%. I think people are really bad at like acknowledging their own privilege and stuff.

Yeah. And it's much easier to see homelessness as a personal failure than a systemic one because it's less scary, right? Because then it's... And maybe less guilt-inducing. Well, yeah, that as well. Because how many times a day do people pretend not to hear or avoid eye contact with someone right in front of them who is clearly in a position of distress?

Exactly. Because if you think, oh, that guy's an addict, that guy, he must have done, he must have got himself into debt or something, it's so much easier to walk past them than really think about like the lack of affordable housing or the lack of quality education or whatever other things systemically caused homelessness. 100%. things like universal credit and those things like that that has just like increased her with so much yeah i wonder how people are expected to empathize with the person whose perspectives

it's so rarely sees through whose voices it's so rarely hears and when we read news reports on homelessness the blueprint for whose voices we hear is normally a government or local government spokesperson and the CEO of a homeless charity and a lot of the people i interviewed had a huge huge issue with that. Why do you think journalists don't even think most of the time to include the voice of the person directly affected? I think the situation with people who experience homelessness is slightly different to some of the other episodes we've done on minority groups.

So we've done like refugees and transgender people. And I think that the reason is different is because we don't have to convince people that homelessness is bad. Whereas, like, with refugees and trans people, like, they almost have to, like, go this extra step where they're convincing people that they're, like, not evil. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, you would think that that might make it easier

for journalists to get lived experience voices on. Yeah. But I think maybe what the problem is, is that they view the negativity associated with homelessness with homeless people. Yeah. And then they become so otherized. Yeah.

That they might think, it's too difficult to approach a homeless person. Definitely. And I think the thing is, I think it's a human thing. I think everyone needs to look at themselves, you know, and like, you know,

I probably have unconscious biases. And I think it's almost the case of just like everyone trying to be a little bit better and like seeing past those things. And basically every production company have ever had a meeting with or ever worked with and every management company have ever had a meeting with or worked with,

like doesn't even have, and this is genuinely true, doesn't have one person of colour working in the entire company. Out of the 30 of different management and production companies, let alone getting someone from like a Centrepoint or Homelessness so I feel like for example if I'll talk about this Homelessus documentary I'm doing so it was really good

because I went back to Centrepoint met back up with the people that I knew and it was like an interesting multifaceted way of looking at it then suddenly they're like oh no we think it's about this and it's suddenly just like fetish eyes into this thing of like now we need to get this heroin at it if we need to make it more trains point because that's what's going to sell and it's that kind of thing

and I think like people who watch TV shows aren't stupid and they want to see something that's interesting and complex I think you know and I think that's that's the issue it's not just allowing those people to have a voice it's like systemic it's time to talk about headlines or in this case the lack thereof Christmas as usual saw an upturning coverage about homelessness particularly with the cost of living crisis but the most striking thing about our headline search this morning was a that there simply weren't very many. Why does the media's compassion for homelessness seem to be seasonal? Homeless person isn't just for Christmas, it's well-in-life. No, I think, yeah,

I think it's, I suppose, yeah, I suppose Christmas is that time of giving, right? And I think it's so weird that as a society we only feel that bad during Christmas. I suppose it's just that time of you with your family and stuff like that. I think that's obviously the issue. The reason we kind of give as a society is almost like just to make ourselves feel better for a bit or just get like a, you know, just a bit of dopamine in the brain or, you know, like, just to, and you think, no, this is like a big systemic issue that kind of needs to be resolved. When I was at Centrepoint, there was like a scheme. It was mostly like quite middle class people and they were going out giving sleeping backs to

homeless people. And I was like, you're not helping the situation. And that's like giving up to someone who's drowning and giving them a pair of speedos. Like you just like, you can stay there, but we'll just give you a sleeping bag just to make a little bit more comfortable. And it was like, and I think, yeah, I think there's a very cliche thing. I'll be super honest. So when I was,

you know, when I was in that situation, I used to just like sleep in the library in the day and then just like do like nightbus and say like Mackey D's and so. I was only like 17. I was only a little kid. But you say what I wouldn't ever be in a sleeping bag with a cup outside. Like,

you know, so it's even those things. It's just like playing on cliche and stuff. And instead of always depicting how much people in like, oh, a sleeping bag and stuff, let us have a more open conversation about how many people are affected by it. What we have seen headlines on is the cost of living crisis as rising

prices are colliding with tax hikes. It's kind of the perfect storm and homelessness projections are really quite scary. One issue that's cropped up in the press massively has been inflation and how it's reported on and that is about to change. Now the inflation figure you'll generally see in the news is headline inflation. It's a raw overall figure that can disguise things like seasonal flux or exceptionally volatile categories like food and energy prices. Food and energy prices are very sensitive to certain factors such as environmental factors which affect crop yields or geopolitics which affects oil supplies. Right now they are particularly extreme due to the combined

efforts of COVID and Brexit's impact on labour, global imports, etc. So the inflation figures you've read about haven't really shown just how extreme price changes in these categories are. So all of these issues were pointed out in a recent Twitter thread that has since gone completely viral by Jack Monroe, a food poverty campaigner and a chef. And as a result of their complaints of how misleading the reporting on inflation has been and how it underplays the true cost of living applications for poorer households, the Office for National Statistics has agreed to expand its data collection methods and publish more accurate figures. Yay. So for those of you who've managed to stay awake through this inflation snooze fest. There's actually a really

good reason we're talking about this on Media Storm, because this is a rare but really great example of the media accepting the superior knowledge of someone with lived experience. Jack managed to break through on Twitter, but the media really responded they were on every talk show, have had loads of opinion pieces published, and so it's just a testimony to diversity of thought prevailing. Kai, were you aware of this story? Yeah, I did actually see it on Twitter. I'm a big fan of Jack Monroe. Like I said, I think it's really important

to have voices like that. And the thing is, like things like inflation and the economics that would have gone a mile over my head before. Right. Yeah, the only thing like, yeah, I know Fredos have gone up from 15p to 35p now and I'm livid. And I'm assuming that's what inflation means.

And that's the only thing that's effect, yeah. But it's... Isn't it a failing of the media that it affects us on a day-to-day life? Massively. Have we missed the market? Even the idea of, like, now I'm a comedian and making my own money, like, paying tax. And I'm just like, no one's ever told me about this.

It's like, no, like, and it's like, even at school, I was like, I was learning about the Tudors. And I'm like, suddenly now I'm expected to do my own tax return. No one's ever explained to me. Like, yeah, I think I'm so economically illiterate. But again, it shows one of the systemic factors that can cause homelessness, which is lack of education around money management. And, you know, those people who are privileged enough to have parents who teach

them about saving or schools that teach them about saving massively you know they have such an advantage huge like everyone says that information is power and it's that type of information for anyone who was affected by any of the issues discussed here our next episode is a mini special in which our sources from this week advise listeners on how to react when you see a homeless person We'll be getting guidance straight from the horse's math. So listen out next Thursday. Kai, thank you so much for joining us. Where can people follow you?

And do you have anything you'd like to plug? Yeah, you can follow me on all the socials. Kai Samra. Yeah, my Amazon specials out underclass on Amazon Prime and Soho Theatre on demand. And yeah, you can watch that there. And then I'm going to Edinburgh again this year. Woo.

And I'll be at Soa Theatre a few times this year as well. I've got a few plugs for some of the sources you have. earlier in the investigation. Firstly, the big issue magazine and its senior reporter on homelessness, Liam Gerrity, were really helpful setting up some of these interviews. For anyone who doesn't know the big issue, as well as being a great read, provides employment opportunities to people in poverty. And some of the interviews personally told me how much the enterprise helped them. So if you can subscribe, there are a range of deals on their website, and if you see vendors selling, please stop and buy one. You can also watch Ben Jay's film Sent to Coventry on YouTube

and by Kerry's book, Gutter to Glory, Pavements to Parliament online. Thank you for listening. We'll be back with the bonus episode next week before our next deep dive into drugs and the war against them on the 24th of Feb. Follow MediaStorm wherever you get your podcast so that you can get access to new episodes as soon as they drop. If you like what you hear, share this episode with someone

and leave us a five-star rating and review. It really helps more people discover the podcast and our aim is to have as many people as possible hear these voices. You can also follow us on social media at Matilda Mal at Helen O'Woddyer and follow the show via at MediaStorm Pod. Get in touch and let us know what you'd like us to cover and who you'd like us to speak to. Media Storm, a new podcast from the House of the Guilty Feminist, is part of the ACAS creator network. It is produced by Tom Silinski and Deborah Francis White. The music is by Samfire.