ESOL citizenship video and interview transcript

Housing

049 Gary Start

The words removed below are the key words used most by this speaker.

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1. Wendy: Can you define homelessness for me? What is it?

2. Gary: Homelessness, by the nature of the word, means the lack of something, it's the lack of this thing that we call a home. There's a debate that surrounds what a home is, and for many years within the [1] there's been a [2] that a home is more than a [3] . And certainly the [4] that we began almost a decade ago to reorder the building, to bring the facilities that we have up to a high enough standard to serve the, the people that we see day by day, was called the More Than a [5] [6] . And it's in the [7] that, that a home is more than a [8] , it's a place where we find our identity, where we find our basic needs met, it's a place where we can grow and [9] , not just on our own but in relationships with other people, whether they be friends or family.

3. So homelessness is the lack of those things that provide us with the context, the atmosphere where we can grow and [10] and find who we are as members of society, I think.

4. Wendy: Yeah, so you would class [11] accommodation as ... somebody living in [12] accommodation could be homeless?

5. Gary: I, I think there's a, there's a big distinction between rooflessness and homelessness. There are a number of people in the city who are roofless, so they will be [13] [14] , and they would be [15] in derelict buildings, in, in public places, in streets, in, in bus stops and parks, that's a small [16] of the people in the city who are homeless.

6. There's a larger [17] of people who are in [18] accommodation [19] by the Local [20] , [21] accommodation [22] in the voluntary or community [23] , [24] accommodation [25] by family and friends, a great number of people who stay for a few weeks with one friend, a few weeks with another, and on somebody else's sofa. But all of those people lack that place that we would call home, and that place where we can grow and [26] .

7. Wendy: One place ... how many people are there homeless in Leeds? Unless it's ...

8. Gary: Oh, the million dollar question. The last [27] headcount by the Local [28] , the city council, which, which we have on record, which was March, April 2006, said that they had identified one [29] sleeper in the city of Leeds. I say nothing about that, apart from the fact that it was the [30] headcount.

9. Those agencies that we work with day by day, we never work alone, we work with all the other people who support those who are homeless in the city, would say that there are probably somewhere in the region of sixty to eighty people [31] [32] . We have an average of a hundred and thirty to a hundred and fifty people a day who come to drop in, to chat, to use the services that we offer here at the Crypt. Most of those, if not all, will be in accommodation which is [33] or insecure for some reason.

10. The number of people who don't come here, who choose not to access our services, is also great. So to establish an exact figure of the number of people who will be classed as homeless is, is really tough to do, but it's probably more in the hundreds than it's in the tens.

11. Wendy: Yes.

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