Call to alms

‘We don’t offer conditional help and you don’t have to sign up to be a Christian,’ says Major Harris. ‘We take the people that no one else is prepared to take.’

The Salvation Army is unchanged from when it first began working with the homeless in 1875. Then, as now, it offered support to people who had nowhere else to go.

However, the tarnished image of stony-faced Victorian austerity has gone. The tambourines have been traded in for i-pods and the bonnets for baseball caps. The ‘coffins’ – wooden boxes in which homeless men slept, 700 to a dormitory – have long since been replaced by modern single rooms with ensuite bathrooms.

The mindset has also shifted away from the warehousing of homelessness and into resettlement – helping to rebuild people’s lives so they can begin to operate independently.

‘When I first started managing a hostel, in 1989, there was someone who had been there for 20 years and who had absolutely no expectation of moving on,’ says Major Harris. ‘That sort of institutionalisation wouldn’t happen any more.’

This big change is taking the Salvation Army away from hostel accommodation ‘because it’s not a natural environment’, says Major Harris, and into floating support.

‘We’re trying to help people through their period of crisis, help them to stabilise their lives and then to achieve independence and sustain their own accommodation. Essentially we’re trying to help people succeed in that independence by recognising that the worst dangers are isolation and loneliness.’

The goal may be clear, and the organisation has public support and political clout in the shape of good relationships with MPs. But it’s still a stony path. The main obstacles are a lack of funding and a paucity of move-on accommodation. ‘In London we have a bottleneck of people stuck in hostels. We’re bringing people off the streets, but unless there is somewhere for them to move on to, they just get stuck in hostels. It is a huge demotivator when we say to people, “Right you’re ready to fly, to go and live your life”, and they know, and we know, that there is nowhere for them to go. ’

In its recent report, A home for all – homelessness policy challenges for Labour’s third term, the Salvation Army claimed that nearly half its hostel residents were ready to move on but were stuck because of a lack of appropriate housing.

It also accused the government of focusing only on the most voter-visible sign of homelessness, rough sleeping, while not doing enough to help the country’s significant hostel population.

The government, says Major Harris, has ‘done well’ getting people off the streets. But that’s only half the job. ‘We’ve got to go further, to create the opportunities for independent living. There is a definite need for more funding for social housing,’ he says. ‘There also needs to be more affordable accommodation particularly in inner cities. We can’t just continue to shovel people into hard-to-let, poor quality accommodation and then abandon them.’

This tactic has eroded community spirit and helped to propagate homelessness, believes Major Harris.

‘We feel there has been a noticeable breakdown in community over the past few decades. We’ve moved into an environment in which society expects the state to take control. But society should be responsible for itself and we can play a part in that. We’re trying to put the community back into community.’

But rescuing society isn’t cheap. Despite its massive public profile and an army of collection-box wielding Salvationists, money is tight. Every September supporters take to the streets for the social welfare wing’s annual fundraising push. This year’s target was £2.7 million. But despite the public donations and statutory funding, services are stretched.

‘We’re working on a 30-day cash turnover and can fund things for a month ahead. It’s a huge issue for us to keep the money coming in and circulating.’

The problem of balancing the books has been exacerbated by supporting people, the government programme intended to provide housing support for the most vulnerable. ‘Supporting people says that someone entering a centre should move on to more independent living within 18 months or two years and that’s a line we totally agree with. But cuts to the budget have certainly made life more difficult. [The money] is not enough and it never will be enough to tackle the problem.’

The failings of supporting people extend to more than just funding. Centres funded by the programme can only work with people who have access to the UK state benefit system. That includes European Union nationals, but it excludes asylum seekers.

‘This is one of the real challenges we’re facing. Asylum seekers who aren’t accepted simply fall through the net. We can offer them emergency accommodation but after that we can only put them in touch with people who are able to work specifically with them. It is such a politically difficult issue as the government doesn’t want to be seen to be helping failed asylum seekers to stay.’

Since Major Harris started working in homelessness in 1989, the demographic of the people using the Salvation Army’s facilities has changed.

‘We are now seeing a lot more young people than we used to. We’re also seeing a lot more of the hardcore street homeless – people with mental health issues or drug and alcohol addiction issues.’

For an organisation whose members are all sworn teetotallers this may seem incongruous. But Major Harris says the Salvation Army doesn’t impose its moral agenda on those it helps.

‘Blackmail isn’t appropriate because who is going to suffer? It’s the people on the street. We worked out that, statistically, 86 per cent of the men in our male homelessness centres are addicted to alcohol or drugs and we are committed to helping them tackle these issues.’

Major Harris sees faith-based welfare services as playing a vital role in pushing society back on track. But how does that sit with ‘lay’ homelessness service providers? ‘We don’t hold ourselves up to be the best,’ he says. ‘We seek to achieve the best, and we take our place and work with other people in the same sector for the same goals.

‘We act on behalf of the community as an enabler to try and encourage its members to seek their own solutions. It’s a challenge, but it’s also a real privilege and one we are passionate about.’