Alcoholic choir lessons and other ways not to help the homeless

Regardless of one’s political leanings or stances on hot button issues in the culture wars, most people in western societies are genuinely unified in their sympathy to the plight of the homeless. It’s such a pity that much of that goodwill is often translated into initiatives that are absurd and/or actually damaging to homeless people.

Back in 2006-2007, I worked for a local charity in Brighton that ran a day centre purporting to want to assist young homeless people between the ages of 16 to 25. 
Very few of our service users (I refuse to call them clients as has now become the norm) were rough sleepers. The vast majority were accommodated in either local homeless hostels or various forms of state funded supported accommodation and were in receipt of state benefits. Our charity deemed them homeless because they didn’t have long term, secure, independent living arrangements. The main barrier to improving the circumstances of almost everyone that attended the day centre was alcohol and/or drug dependency of some form or another. Quite a large number were very heavy, daily users of super strength cannabis that was blighting their potential. This group were actually more problematic to deal with than the small number of heroin addicts who frequented the day centre. Anyone who thinks that skunk weed is a soft drug should spend some time around people who’ve been smoking it throughout the day for several years.

Instead of helping or nudging any of them to address the addictions destroying their lives, the charity offered a “non judgmental” space with a cornucopia of free food donated by various cafes, restaurants and shops. If you were to walk in there on any given afternoon, you would have been greeted by the sight of overfed pot heads languishing on couches as the staff, many of them nearly as dysfunctional, sat amongst them in a spirt of enlightened non-judgmentalism. Apart from the free food, which acted as an indirect subsidy to their hedonistic lifestyles, the help we offered consisted of handing out brochures, but only if asked, for charities and organisations that dealt with addiction along with pamphlets for other services and state agencies. Imparting unsolicited advice went against the non-judgmental ethos and could potentially lead to a meeting with the manager where you would be judged heavily for contravening the policy of non-judgmentalism. There were very few requests for brochures for the charities or organisations that would have helped them to overcome their drug and/or alcohol problems. In effect, we weren’t really helping any of them. Instead, we were facilitating them in their self destructive lifestyles.

I ended up leaving that job as my openly judgmental attitude came into increasing conflict with the charity’s purported non-judgmental ethos. In fact, I don’t believe it’s possible to be non-judgmental as taking a non-judgmental stance is itself a value judgement. Anyway, one of the lessons I learned from my time with that charity, and later on in the public sector, is that the primary motivation of many purportedly socially beneficial endeavours isn’t to find the most effective way to ameliorate a given problem. Instead, many charities, public sector organisations and NGOs are primarily motivated by the people involved wanting to feel good that they’re at the forefront of trying to combat a particular social ill. What’s more, most of the organisations that deal with homelessness, addiction and crime are imbued with a left-liberal ethos and consequently refuse to engage with any evidence that demonstrates the failure or shortcomings of their preferred policies and the damage that they do to individuals and the wider society. As the American economist and conservative social commentator Thomas Sowell has observed:

“It is usually futile to talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.”

 It was having spent six years in various roles working with Britain’s morally deprived underclass that I gradually came to hold more socially conservative views on a range of issues. By using the term underclass, I’ve wrongly been accused of smearing the working classes. Nothing could be further from the truth. Being from the underclass to me is a defined by a belligerent, feckless, anti-social state of mind and concomitant set of personal and socially destructive behaviours that I also encountered in plenty of young people from middle class backgrounds during my years as a youth support worker. In fact, for a brief few years in my late teens and early twenties, I was drifting ever closer into being a fully paid up member of society’s underclass myself. 
My experiences as a youth worker were detailed in my book Generation F written under the pseudonym of Winston Smith and based on my Orwell Prize winning blog.

There are other initiatives to help the homeless that aren’t so much ineffective as just hilariously absurd despite their noble intentions. For example, the Irish state broadcaster RTE had a show from about a decade ago called ‘High Hopes.’ 
The programme took homeless addicts and alcoholics in Dublin and got them to sing in a choir. Again, it was very well intentioned and had some positive elements and consequently I feel a little conflicted about subjecting it to a satirical thrashing. However, just as I believe all ideas should be open to criticism, I’m also a firm believer that no ideas, people or initiatives should be exempt from being lampooned. In a free society, the right to freedom of laughter is bound up with the right to free speech. Also, I don’t subscribe to the censorious left wing concept that all writing, art and comedy should only ever “punch up” and that certain groups get designated protected status in order to shield them from criticism or mockery. Just how is that treating people equally?

With all that in mind, you really have to wonder how the producers ever came up with the concept for a reality show about a choir consisting of homeless alcoholics and drug addicts. Most normal people or indeed experts who work in addiction, if they are walking down a street and they see an addict passed out in a door way or an alcoholic lying in a pool of urine, the first thing they think isn’t, “you know what this person really needs to sort their lives out? Singing lessons.”

I speak from personal experience here as not only did I have a drink problem myself years ago, but my Uncle, let’s call him Mick, was a homeless alcoholic for a period of time. One day, the family got together and discussed the various options of what might be done with Uncle Mick and funnily enough sticking him in the choir never came up. My extended family did what most normal people would do and they stuck him in rehab. Besides, even if there had been any openings in the local choir, I don't think they would have wanted an elderly alcoholic who smelled of urine and swore a lot. I don’t think Uncle Mick in his drinking days would have had a lot to bring to the choir to be honest.

The most shocking aspect of the show for me was naming it ‘High Hopes.’ I mean, if you are going to try and do something to help a bunch of addicts and alcoholics don’t use the word ‘High’ in the title of your initiative. They must have been thinking of getting off their heads all day in that choir. I mean there’s a reason why Weight Watchers is very successful in helping people lose weight and it’s because nothing in their name reminds you of your favourite cake.