Why do we bother?!

Homelessness isn't just for Christmas, its someones daily reality.

Although the nations focus tends to be on homelessness during the Christmas period - which is understandable - homelessness is a daily struggle for those that find themselves court up in it.

Emmaus Sheffield works with these daily struggles, daily.

Homelessness by definition would suggest that once a person has a home there homelessness is dealt with, this couldn't be further from the truth if it tried.

Housing is, and must be, the priority crisis intervention for a homeless person, but once this crisis is met then the real work begins. Not having a home puts a person in a very unnatural state. It causes someone - to a greater or lesser degree - to return to a more primal state of being.

What do I mean by this? There are securities in our lives that most of us take for granted. Shelter, the ability to drink water when we want, the ability to be hygienic, the chance to store belongings and the security of a physical barrier between us and harm. When these securities and abilities are removed we need to view the world in a very different way. It becomes far more dangerous, not just physically, but emotionally, mentally and morally too.

This in turn results in the way we interact with the world and other people, inevitably homelessness perpetuates selfishness, compromised morals, self neglect and isolation. All of these symptoms can bring with them a number of  additional problems, substance misuse, alcohol abuse, mental or/and physical health problem just to mention a couple.

These issues and problems - of which I only scratched the surface - don't just vanish when someone is given a door key. At Emmaus Sheffield we take the view that providing accommodation is the starting point for us and the people we work with and that its a long hail, so please remember that although the weather may not be bad and the time of year is a strange time to think about the homeless there are people struggling daily that have been broken by homelessness.