From the archives: Written back in 2002, when I was a journalism student at Strathclyde University
The first time I met Tony, he serenaded me with a Lionel Ritchie song outside a subway station.
“Hello,” he said, as I pressed a pound coin into his hand. “Is it me you're looking for?”
He was wearing his usual uniform–dirty blue canvas trainers, baggy denim trousers and three layers on his torso: a blue button-down top, a dingy tan fleece pullover, and a slate gray jacket with a big hole in the right shoulder. His eyebrows sprouted out in every direction, and the few remaining hairs atop his head danced in the breeze.
It was about 1pm on a Sunday in December, one of the busiest shopping days of the year. All around us, people bustled by with bags, at least one per person. It was cold. I craved coffee. I invited him along.
At first he furrowed the untamed caterpillar eyebrows. But then the 5’4” 39-year-old charmer smiled, mischievously and agreed.
Half an hour later, sitting in a shopping center food court with an amiable yet possibly psychotic homeless man, I wondered what I had gotten myself into. Nearly every day I passed Tony on the street, but never before had I actually dared to make eye contact, never mind stop for small talk. I, like hundreds of other pedestrians in Glasgow, would do my best to avoid people like Tony: homeless people, selling the Big Issue.
There are about 250-300 Big Issue vendors on the streets of Scotland on any given day. If that sounds like a lot, consider the amount of people sleeping in Glasgow Council hostels on any given night: 2,000. Triple that figure to get the estimated number of people who find themselves homeless each year: 6,500 – 1 in every 100 Glaswegians.
The Big Issue vendors are the most visible reminders of one of the biggest social problems in Scotland, one that most of us would rather not cast our eyes upon. Yet they are also the success stories.
Tony may not seem like much of a success. Born in Denniston, William Anthony Walker is a recovering alcoholic with a history of failed relationships and dead-end jobs. Of his 16 primary school classmates in Black Hill, he is one of two who are still alive. Most died of drug overdoses.
He's been selling the Big Issue off and on for 10 years, and has spent most of that time living in hostels deemed so dingy and dangerous the government wants them closed down. He owns four pairs of socks, three pairs of pants, three pairs of trousers, two sweaters and two shirts. He eats lunch every day at a homeless canteen near Central Station, and spends his evenings in the pub, playing snooker or bingo.
Details of his personal life are scattered, just as he is. As we talk, he stops mid sentence, straining to hear the words of the elevator music pumped over the loudspeakers.
“Hey there gorgeous,” he says, turning his attention to a pigtailed three-year-old girl dressed all in pink, who was chewing on the ends of a plastic hair elastic bauble. “You hungry? Ask your mum for some sausages. Better than baubles.”
The toddler grins. So do the parents. Within minutes, little Megan's father has turned completely around in his chair to discuss football.
Then Tony spots a five-year-old redhead who grins shyly and spies on us behind a McDonald's cup.
“Hey there, wee man. You gonna eat all that? You better. You want to grow up all big and strong like your mum and dad,” he says. “You won't learn nothing in the streets. You gotta go to school.”
It later comes out that Tony has a three-year-old daughter he doesn't get to see very often. It was the rocky breakup of his marriage to her mother that sent him spiraling back into ruin after his alcoholism and a poorly timed eviction initially sent him to the streets.
When I ask about his family life, his eyes turn glassy and he stares off into space.
“My mum is dead, my dad I never knew. I don't like my brothers, my ex-partner was, how should I put this? A bitch.”
He pauses for a bit before whistling to a couple wandering aimlessly through the crowded tables. They look over at him, and he points wildly to an empty table nearby. “Run, run! You can get it!”
He lived in Liverpool for a while. He apparently went to college a few years ago. He has worked in the circus, sold lingerie, and is supposedly a licensed chef. But he says the best job he has ever had is selling the Big Issue, and he's good at it. The day I ran into him, he had already sold 43 copies in four hours. He estimates that he sells an average of 60 to 70 copies a day, buying the magazines at 40p per copy and selling them one pound, this nets him 36 to 42 pounds a day. He works nine hours a day, six days a week.
The secret of his success? Humor.
“I'm a happy chappy,” he says, “I get guys laughing. I enjoy myself.”
Most vendors go with the pity approach. ‘Help the homeless, buy a Big Issue. Tony clears his throat and in a booming bass announces, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Big Issue! Don't be shy. I'll take your money, honey.’
Most homeless people are not as optimistic about their lives. There were nine suicides, 19 attempted suicides, six fatal drug overdoses, 96 non fatal drug overdoses, and 48 incidents of violent behavior in Glasgow Council homeless hostels in 1999 The latest figures available, according to a report released in October 2000 by the Scottish Executives Glasgow Street Homelessness Review Team (GSHRT), the Glasgow City Council accounts for more than 1/3 of total homelessness applications in Scotland.
The problem isn't about bricks and mortar. In fact, there's a surplus of council housing in Glasgow. It's more an issue of economic deprivation, social exclusion, mental illness and drug and alcohol abuse.
Recent regeneration measures may have been successful in rejuvenating Glasgow shopping center, but they have not done much to eradicate the deep-seated poverty and disadvantage within the city.
“Although it contains only 13% of Scotland's population, the Glasgow local authority area accounts for more than three quarters of the country's most deprived neighborhoods and 25% of its long-term unemployment,” the GSHRT report states. “There are now an estimated 48,000 working-age households in Glasgow with no adults in work, and more than a third of the city's children live in such households.”
One consequence of such severe deprivation is drug use: It is estimated that Glasgow has between 12,000 and 15,500 problematic drug users, which is five times higher than the rest of the UK.
Over the past decade, drug injecting has been the most common cause of death among 13 to 35-year-olds in Greater Glasgow.
According to the Office of National Statistics, 41% of the homeless population under age 25, and 70% of those aged 25 -34 have drug problems; 61% of those aged 35 and over drink at hazardous levels, and 37% of them have severe alcohol problems. With average three- to nine-month waiting lists at residential treatment centers, it's nearly impossible to get sufficient treatment.
More than 40% of the homeless population also has some sort of neurotic disorder.
Like Tony, these are people who have problems dealing with the demands of everyday life. Most report a lack of social support: 37% have a support group of three or fewer closer friends or relatives. All it takes is one event to create a disastrous domino effect that lands them on the streets. And once they are there, they cannot spring back as easily as we might. Even if they are given housing, they won't necessarily be able to cope with the issues that made them homeless in the first place. Nearly a quarter of those given tendencies end up back on the streets.
Drug and alcohol abuse is the big issue
There's no point pussy-footing around the issue. Katie Caskie tells me. The Big Issue public relations director is surprisingly frank.
“There's lots of drug and alcohol abuse in the homeless population. If you're living that miserable life, it's difficult to wake up in the morning and feel good about yourself. It's a human impulse. If I was homeless, I would not hesitate to take anything that would take my mind off it. I'd be pissed out of my mind every day.”
She points to Maggie, the brusque receptionist who was barking down the phone line at someone. Maggie had a horrible heroin habit, she confides. She now works twice a week at the Big Issue offices, begging on the streets the rest of the time. Another success story.
“You need counseling and help, but you also need something to do,” Kate says.
That's where the Big Issue comes in.
Founded in June 1993 by journalist Mel Young and community worker Tricia Hughes, the magazine sells an average of 41,255 copies each week, and estimates its readership at 255,000.
According to its handy brochure: “The Big Issue is about work, and its focus is on getting homeless people economically active and therefore enabling them to take responsibility for their own housing.”
The operation is housed in ‘Mir Village’, a large pink neoclassical building on Oxford Street in the Gorbals section of Glasgow near the Sheriff's Court. Kate takes me on a very brisk tour of the facility, down hallways decorated with photos, artwork made by homeless people, and banners woven by South Africans on one of Mel's many visits across the globe, doing fieldwork for the International Network of Street Papers. Kate is very keen on this “Very important, little known side of our work,” and dedicates a whopping five minutes of her speed-talking 15-minute tour to the topic.
I also get a peek at the distribution room, a loud, chaotic place where Tony and other vendors come every day to buy their papers. It's also where their pitches are allocated, and for this reason, there's often lots of arguing. There are 80 designated pitches in Glasgow where the vendors are told to sell the magazine. The most desirable are near shopping centers with overhangs or subway stations. Tony's St Enoch underground pitch is among the best.
Down the hall is Grand Central Savings, a bank branch opened recently through the Bank of Scotland. Around the corner is the Wound Care Clinic, featuring grotesque close-up photos of infected, undressed leg gashes and a schedule for free hairdressing and acupuncture. Then there are the art classes and hiking trips and the odd contract cleaning and security jobs that are offered to the most stable vendors.
Kate emphasizes that the Big Issue is not about handouts, nor is it a charity. It is a private limited company whose owners are paid by salary. It doesn't enjoy much of a profit – it has an annual turnover of about 2 million GBP, but most of the money is rolled back into services.
“It's about giving people access, input. Becoming a part of something.”
Addressing the issue
It seems like a pretty safe business plan, banking on the fact that there will always be a steady stream of homeless people willing to sell your product. But Big Issue sales are actually suffering because of Scottish Executive efforts to tackle homelessness.
About 1.7 million GBP is spent by the government every year on the Rough Sleepers Initiative, a collaboration of social services that coordinates street outreach teams, alcohol, drug and mental health workers, and accommodation projects.
There are no statistics yet to show that this and other government homelessness initiatives of the past few years have had much of an impact on the problem in Glasgow. In fact, although the Scottish Executive has recognized the need for a holistic approach to homelessness, most legislative recommendations have been either very vague or incredibly drastic. And there's still a distinct lack of drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinics.
Legislation introduced earlier this year seeks to help vulnerable people stay in tendencies and tackle homelessness health problems, including addiction and mental health. It charges individual council health boards to come up with ‘Homelessness Action Plans.’ But it is unclear what exactly this means.
Former legislation, such as the Housing Act 2001, suggest similar vague proposals, as well as specific recommendations like closing all large scale council hostels and moving older, hostile tenants into their own tendencies. There are more large-scale (250+ bed) hostels in Glasgow than anywhere in the UK. City council hostels alone cost 9.9 million GBP per year in Housing Benefit expenditure. But their conditions are so bad that many would prefer to sleep on the street.
“They can be volatile and violent places,” the GSHRT noted. “They are too large, basic and out of date to cope with the needs of those they nowadays accommodate.”
The Scottish Executive even earmarked 2 million GBP in 2000/1 to get the five-year process going. But nothing has happened.
Regardless. Kate says she has seen tremendous improvement over the past few years.
“They really are making a difference,” she says of the Scottish Executive. “The amount of young homeless people is going way down. They are getting picked up off the streets very quickly.”
She says the Big Issue is having problems recruiting vendors, and has had to consider other ways of distributing the magazine. It may start employing vendors on salary, she said, and it is expanding into other areas, with plans to launch a newsstand magazine that focuses on fair trade and ethical consumerism.
“Don't get me wrong, it's a good thing. We need to move on as well.”
By the end of our coffee date, Tony has turned the tables and starts grilling me about my personal life. He's full of advice.
“Don't ever settle. Don't stay with someone because you feel you have to. I made that mistake, and look where it got me,” he says.
He then tries to convince me to leave my boyfriend and go out with him. I smile and laugh.
“You think I'm joking?”
He tells me a story about a regular customer, a woman who approached him while drunk one day, got down on one knee and asked him to marry her. Others buy him gifts and take him out for drinks.
He is a popular guy. We run into two of his friends in the five minutes it takes to make our way back to his pitch.
It's cold out there. Tony's smile fades for a minute as he pulls on his black gloves and counts how many magazines he has left to sell. Twelve. We've wasted 40 minutes lingering over coffee.
“A few more hours,” Tony says, waving the magazines in front of him.
Before I go, he has a few more lessons to impart.
“Watch your back,” he says. “Don't take life for granted.”
“And when you dump that boyfriend, you come see me. I’m serious!”
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