This is the first time Nicky Hudson has lived on the streets, and she is not doing well. She has been sleeping for the past couple of weeks in a tent underneath railway arches at Forster Square in Bradford, West Yorkshire.
The arches are home to about a dozen people, sleeping in tents, mostly in camps of two or three, split across five arches. It is the most sheltered place in the city centre for rough sleepers but, even so, it is damp in the November weather and the nights are bitter.
Is she coping? Her face screws up and tears flood out: “Not at all.”
The other rough sleepers call Hudson “Stuart Little”, because of the rustling noises she makes while tidying her tent, though it might equally fit the 47-year-old’s slight stature.
She is already vulnerable – the previous day a mugger took all her money – and today she is unable to find her phone, fearing someone has stolen it.
Without the tent, “I wouldn’t have survived,” she says.
Most people here agree. There is a great deal of concern at plans by the home secretary, Suella Braverman’s, to curb the use of tents by homeless people in towns and cities – a controversial measure the prime minister does not back and that Braverman failed to get included in the king’s speech to parliament on Tuesday.
Defending the policy on Saturday, Braverman wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “We will always support those who are genuinely homeless. But we cannot allow our streets to be taken over by rows of tents occupied by people, many of them from abroad, living on the streets as a lifestyle choice.”
Her comments attract ire and derision from the homeless people speaking to the Guardian – none of whom are from abroad – at the railway arches. “A lifestyle choice?” questions one woman. “How could someone believe that?”
Tim, a tall slim man with glasses, was evicted from his flat about a month ago after being made redundant from his job in a post room and falling into rent arrears. At lunchtime on Monday, he is getting ready for an appointment at a recruitment agency, although he says: “We can’t get a job because we don’t have an address.”
People can be cruel, he says – there are stares and some people take photos or make videos. “We’re stigmatised.”
He points to black marks on the side of his tent caused by fireworks the previous night. “And look at this,” he says, opening the tent to show a hole the size of a dinner plate where the groundsheet has melted. “Someone fired a rocket in here and it ricocheted off the wall of the arch and landed here. I was inside at the time.”
His neighbour David has rheumatoid arthritis – he uses a mobility scooter – and suffers pain sleeping on the cold, hard ground. “If I turn in my sleep, you’ll hear me scream out because of the pain. Friday it was that bad I got up about three o’clock and went wandering around town.”
He is homeless because he could not pay his maintenance charge on a council flat and was evicted. “We don’t have a choice,” he says.
To get into temporary accommodation, rough sleepers need to prove they are sleeping rough, which in practical terms means waiting for a council assessor to visit and see them sleeping in their tent.
Like Husdon and Tim, this is the first time David has lived on the streets. He has been here for five weeks, which is “long enough, especially when it’s like this”, he says, gesturing at the rain.
Next door, a blue tarpaulin and green sleeping bag are strung across one of the arches, creating a makeshift curtain that hides three tents. Outside one of them, Lee explains how he was evicted owing to rent arrears that built up after he was sent to prison for shoplifting “because I was hard up”.
Lee got his tent from a charity that gives out food twice a week at the arches – these volunteers would face court under Braverman’s plans to create a new civil offence for handing out tents. Other charities are already reluctant to do so because they want to get people into more stable accommodation. Lee describes this as a “vicious cycle”, since most people are on the streets only because they have been evicted.
His message to Braverman and the Tories is: “Come and sit in my shoes for a week and see how tough it is. Half of them would crumble after a day. Governments have forced us to do this shit. We’re not stupid. It’s not about helping people, it’s about lining their own pockets. They’re millionaires as it is.
“Take all their stuff away from them, all their money and see if they change their tune. Because believe you me, they will.”
