Homeless and Sleeping on the streets of London | Rough Sleepers

London is the fourth most expensive city in the world to live in and this is well on social soda we wanted to talk about housing because some people are struggling to pay their rent or to have a roof above their head we wanted to highlight this situation and hopefully it will help someone or maybe it will help the calligrapher and the homeless person who shared without his story of being a rough sleeper he also showed us his workstation at petaburger in Chelsea [Music] my name is Roy Palmer I'm 65 years old and I'm a calligrapher freelance I've been homeless now for three and a half months in total I split up with my girlfriends and she traded me in for a younger model how long did I sleep last night perhaps an hour I don't really sleep it's your cat nap maybe Catch 10 minutes and you think you've been asleep for an hour but you haven't you look at your watches 10 minutes has passed so I guess the most difficult thing is that you become invisible to people and people just don't care even friends when you say you've become homeless they treat it like it's a sickness I'm fortunate and I have my calligraphy and people see me doing that and they come and talk to me about that and if I'm lucky they might buy something off me a lot of people think when you say you're homeless they look at you and they go I don't believe you're homeless and I say why not if I look at what you're wearing so what does a homeless person look like I had a friend he'd let me keep my clothes at his place he had a small studio and go in the morning have a shower change my clothes so that was always well presented if you're well presented that's half the battle people will then talk to you if you're scruffy dirty dirty clothes smelly then people don't want to know at all so [Music] I met a guy a few years ago called Steve he's the CEO of OVO energy he put me up in that hotel Lily for five weeks nearly and then he said find a Studio and I'll front the deposit and the first three months rent I found a studio local to here he paid the deposit and three months rent in advance and I moved in there last week Saturday night somebody had had a bath in the studio above me and water was pouring through my ceiling because it was right above so I've had to last two nights be out in the open again [Music] no organizations have exactly helped Hammersmith and Fulham Council said that I'd made myself intentionally homeless because I had a flat from them and gave that up and to move in with my girlfriend and so they said that's making myself intentionally homeless and because I'm a single male I don't come under their priorities angry yeah I'm angry that they just let people die in the cold virtually nobody seems to be getting any real help it's only a voluntary organizations that seem to be caring about but the councils they don't really give a I should look at them and take a serious look at themselves in this weather and say do we really want people on the streets who can earn a living but we don't give them the opportunity and we put them right at the bottom of the housing list the conservative government they don't give a flying about homeless people if they did there's enough empty buildings there's enough spaces for them to solve the problem overnight but they don't the only time the government do anything is that with homeless people is that they want to clear them out of an area because tourists are coming in it's a problem that's going to go on for years and years and years they'll never get rid of homelessness but I don't think they want to I don't think they care to be honest with you [Music] thank you other people that are homeless through situations similar to mine we seem to help each other we tell each other where to get free food from where not to go it's comforting because you know that other people you're not the only person in that situation and we give each other tips who to go and see and Authority like a Citizens advice Bureau places like that Council when I was 12 I had only one interest in life and that was football my father said to me if you think you're playing football every day this year think again my father was a signwriter so he knew about lettering and he was also a calligrapher so the first week I was mixing paints for him and then the second week he threw a book at me with all different fonts in it a pad of paper and a carpenter's pencil because I had a wide wide nib it's a practice making letters as they'll stand you in good stead one day for years and years it's been there in the last four or five years it's really become a passion well I was a member of the calligraphy and lettering arts society and I passed an exam with them which qualifies me to teach calligraphy whether I ever will but I don't know if I'd have patience to actually teach somebody I sit in prep every day calligraphy and people buy it sometimes but I have other things I I do still screen printing mirror engraving these are all things that I was doing when I was with my girlfriend because we had a shed that I turned into a studio that's all gone [Music] it keeps me satisfied in my mentally sometimes yeah it goes very well I met him lady the other week he's got a gallery pop-up gallery and she's letting me do stuff in her gallery and she's got a load of my calligraphy that she's going to try and sell the pens I use they're felt pens although I have dip pens and the paper I use is a 160 GSM you know I need a ruler and a pencil a pencil sharpener and an advisor and I can work [Music] what do I want to say to people who've helped me I want to say thank you very very much because your help has been enormous and it's also been life-saving it's given me a sense of self-esteem and self-worth where can people find my artwork they can find it on Instagram and my Instagram account is the scribe001 if anybody is out there watching this and wants to help homeless people myself included then please take the opportunity to do something good for somebody even if it's just to buy somebody a cup of coffee every little helps [Laughter]

Channel: Social Soda

Views: 26,410

Keywords: documentary, homeless, population, streets, food, sos, poor, Rough Sleepers, tramp, calligrapher, roy palmer, gruelling, vice, short doc, London streets, help, passion, sad, caring, housing ladder, home, nderground, subgroups, sleeep, freelance, split up, chelsea, cant sleep, cat nap, difficult, invisible, dont care, charity, sickness, pret, artist, London park, story, heartfelt, dirty, smelly, social soda, government, living, oppurtunity, housing list, conservative

Id: _FY8zHhPsVI

Length: 9min 0sec (540 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 15 2023