Brendan and benefits

Tim and I were a bit late going to sleep last night. I had taken our neighbours some tea and had a good chat with Mary as she approaches her seventh winter outside, when along came Brendan. He had seen my photograph and the article in the paper and seemed pleased to come across me in the street.

He appreciated what we were doing but wanted us to know that people are homeless because they chose to be. He is also homeless and sleeps on the sixth floor of a nearby car park. He reckons there are 40 people sleeping out in Coventry and offered to take us to meet some of them. It was a good offer and something the Cyrenians may find helpful when they do their rough sleepers count. But we didn't go last night.

He was a friendly guy and was bemoaning the fact that people don't smile and say hello if they walk past someone they don't know. In the summer he goes on the festival circuit with friends in a van and enjoys the feeling of community but when the season is over he goes back to sleeping outside.

He talked about how people get into problems because housing benefit is now paid directly to the person and not the landlord. It takes several weeks to come through and so when the first payment arrives it is a large amount of money. For some people the temptation to spend it on something other than rent is very great and then they get evicted and housing benefit won't help them again until they pay it back. They become homeless.

We are aware of other problems people experience with housing benefit when they get temporary jobs. This is particularly an issue for refugees who have their status and therefore are allowed to work and want desperately to work having been barred from working while they were waiting for a positive decision on their asylum claim. But it is an issue for anyone on housing benefit who finds temporary work. Of course you have to inform housing benefit that you are now working but very often by the time housing benefit stops the work has also stopped. Again people find themselves getting into arrears through not filling in the complex forms in the right way.

Brendan seemed annoyed with homeless people and what he saw as their victim mentality. It was hard to find space to put an alternative viewpoint but we had a few attempts. He often repeated that if migrants can come into the country and get a house straight away then so can British people if they get their act together.

Eventually we shook hands and he started to go but he was worried about us sleeping in such an open place and took Tim off to show him a much safer space for us to bed down. We thanked him but explained that we needed to be seen. He said he wanted to read his name and about our meeting in the next article in the paper, and left.

It was colder last night and being Saturday it was quite rowdy but we managed to sleep.

It is not surprising that some poorer people feel the most put out by migrants - whether forced or economic. It is in the poorer areas they live and it is the low paid and temporary work they tend to do. In this recession it is the poorest who suffer most.