'I thought I was dead' – can Labor use Blair's template to reduce 'shameful' levels of restless sleep? | UK news

Ian Harrison watches a film in which he was begging for money on the streets of Covent Garden 16 years ago.

In the 2008 footage, a fresh-faced 19-year-old Ian is evicted from his apartment, telling the camera he's going to do as many drugs as he can.

“I want to go so far that all my problems will be forgotten, even if just for this night,” he says.

Watching this, 35-year-old Ian slowly blinks.

He nods and sighs loudly. Then his teenage self says something prophetic: “Nothing changes, only time and the people I beg from.”

Ian nods again, “He's right. Look where I am now!”

Ian is still homeless, his face showing traces of years spent on the streets and addictions to heroin and crack, which he still struggles with.

And although he has a room in a hostel for now, his life is on the same brink of the abyss as it was many years ago.

It is significant that Ian became homeless in the late 2000s, at the end of the Blair/Brown era, when efforts to combat insomnia successfully reduced the number of people on the streets by two-thirds and kept them low for an extended period of time.

The 2008 financial crisis and subsequent global economic downturn caused homelessness numbers to rise and continued to rise for a decade until the pandemic sparked a desire to get people off the streets.

But now it's peaking again and last year Ian was among 11,993 rough sleepers in London – the most in the capital's history.

Workdeputy prime minister, Angela Raynershe described the situation as “shameful” as she took over the task of resolving it.

Ms Rayner will lead a new intergovernmental task force to tackle this issue, which reverberates in the so-called Tony'ego Blairainter-ministerial approach.

However, the success of the Blair sleeping unit, launched in 1999, has also been attributed to its focus on trying to address the causes homelessnessand not just finding people places to stay.

This is something Ian is missing right now.

Despite having a roof over his head, his single room looks as if the streets are following him.

The floor is strewn with rubbish, the sink and walls are stained, flies buzz around the small, boxy room that smells much like the cardboard house he lived in under the Hammersmith Viaduct a few months ago.

Ian grew up in care and says he didn't learn how to take care of himself.

He says, “I struggle with a lot of basic things in my life. I never had parents who said: brush your teeth, take a shower, do this, do that. When you grow up, you won't have things like that. “

“It's hard to stay stable in a place like this.”

He has given up drugs and has a prescription for methadone, but says his surroundings are not helping.

“It's hard to stay stable in a place like this because it's a very unstable place,” he says.

“If you pick someone up and put them in a hostel with 26 other people who are all addicts, it won't take long for it to start affecting you.”

He is in a social welfare center, but he says it does not provide him with the support he needs, which is self-care, organization and, frankly, a lot of therapy.

No one ever addressed the root causes of Ian's problems.

“You know, from an early age, I experienced a lot of sexual, mental and physical abuse that continued with me every day for years,” he says.

“They say you need therapy, but to get it you have to be completely free from drugs and alcohol for several years. But it's part of the disease, part of the symptoms.”

Read more:
It takes over an hour for a homeless person to call the hotline
The vicious cycle of mental health among the homeless

“I've been on the carousel for 20 years”

Ms Rayner's cross-departmental team will be tasked with trying to turn the lives of people like Ian around – and it won't be cheap.

But the Sky News producer who shot the story in 2008 and has known Ian since then saw him go through countless shelters (about 30, Ian says) and mental institutions before finally returning to the streets.

The long-term cost of not solving Ian's problems is incalculable.

“I have been stuck in a merry-go-round for 20 years,” he says.

“I became homeless, I get into a hostel, I become homeless. You give up.”

When asked what his 19-year-old self would hope to do in his 30s, Ian replies: “Honestly, I thought I was dead. And I wouldn't even care.”

But now Ian cares.

The wish list written on the wall of his hostel reads: “Stop all drugs, save more money, take better care of yourself, start a business, go to the gym, get into a routine, go camping.”

To achieve this, he will need the help that has eluded him all his life.