Outside your door
When bestselling author Marian Keyes moved back to Dublin, she found the homeless problem quite literally on her doorstep. Getting to know the man living in the doorway of her flat proved to be a life-changing experience.
"About four years ago I moved back to Dublin after a decade in London. As one of the thousands who had emigrated from Ireland in 1986 to look for work, I was delighted to return when the country's economy boomed. Unfortunately, I soon realised that not everyone could share in the success story.
"While my husband Tony and I were looking for somewhere to settle down, we rented a flat above a shop in the middle of the city. There was a step up to our doorway where a man used to sleep. In fact, he lived there. His name was Phil and I had to pass him every time I went in and out of the flat. Initially I felt I had to give him money each time, but I wasn't happy about the situation - I'd be going out a night and on the stairs I'd think: 'Oh hell, do I have a pound for Phil?' It wasn't the money I objected to - it was the hassle of having to find a coin twice or more each day. I wasn't really thinking of him as a person but as a bit of a nuisance.
"Phil could obviously sense how weary I was becoming. He'd been treated like a beggar for years and he wanted something else. One day, he stopped me and said, 'Don't be giving me money all the time. Why don't you just stop and have a chat?' It was then that I realised how sensitive he was, that he was simply craving normal human contact. So of course I did stop and chat and eventually we became friends. And, just like a friend, he started to notice things about me. If I bought a new coat or had my hair cut he'd tell me I looked nice.
"In the same way I started to notice what was happening to him - which was usually bad stuff like getting a black eye. I'd see him on a Saturday night when he was a target for the stag parties in town: he was a figure of fun and it used to make me so angry. I tried to intervene but there was no point in arguing with drunk people. I just wanted them to leave him alone. I felt I was one of the only people looking out for him at all.
"It's always horrible when a homeless person is hurt in some way, but I felt particularly bad about Phil because he was such a nice person. He was interested and interesting. He didn't drink and he certainly didn't touch drugs. He'd been in a bit of trouble as a youngster and was sent to an institution for children who had 'problems'. Phil had no experience of stability in his life, right from the start. He'd never had the safety net that a family can bring. He had an awful time at the institution and was deaf in one ear from the beatings he got there. He found it difficult to talk about his childhood as it had been so horrific. He looked as if he was in his late 40's but I'm sure he was younger than that. Life on the streets is so hard, it ages you permanently. Phil's eyes were young and full of fun but he had no teeth left.
"The episode that really opened my heart to the homeless happened one night when I was going out. Phil was sitting in the doorway, looking really relaxed as he read a tiny little book. I had a look to see what it was - an encyclopaedia of mushrooms."
'What are you doing reading that?' I asked.
"I realised then that it's not just the cold, the hunger and the dirt along with the casual violence you experience on the streets. It's the boredom - the tedium of sitting there day in, day out, with none of the things we have to break our routine. You can't switch on the telly or pick up the phone or check your emails. You have none of those little things that we use to fill up our days and amuse ourselves. Human contact is so limited.
"Maybe I should have been braver, but I'll admit there were limits to how far I was prepared to go to help Phil. I didn't feel able to invite him into our flat, for instance, but one night when it was raining I thought he should come into the downstairs hall. The shop below us used it to store sweets, however and I wasn't sure it was my place to tell him to move there, so I didn't. Although my inclination was to help, I can't say I did anything brilliant.
"All along I could see the person that Phil could have been. He was intelligent, sparky and, best of all, fun. He wasn't a weirdo. He was broken emotionally, but he was always up for a laugh and he never complained, apart from on one night when somebody had attacked him and he was badly hurt. He was so upset that night - I suppose it was the shock of being beaten up - that he couldn't stop crying and it just tore me apart. I couldn't bear the fact that to whoever had attacked him, Phil wasn't a person, just an unidentified target.
"Before I moved back to Ireland, I hadn't realised that there was such a homeless problem in the city. But when I came to write Sushi for Beginners, set in contemporary Dublin, I couldn't have a character living in the city centre who wasn't aware of the problem. I hadn't been waiting to write about homelessness, but I felt it would have been dishonest of me not to. In the novel, Boo is a young man who sleeps on the doorstep of Ashling, one of the main characters. Of course, I was able to manufacture a happy ending for Boo, but that's not the case with Phil.
"When our lease was up and we left Dublin for our present home, I felt as though I was abandoning Phil. Every time I go back to Dublin now I try to hook up with him - there's a chemist where he can pick up my messages. He's moved on from 'our' doorstep although he's still on the streets, but I catch up with him when I can. Whenever we meet, we're delighted to see each other and he never has anything but good things to say to me such as: 'I say you in the papers - I'm so proud of you!' I'm always relieved to see that he's all right. Unfortunately, he's become so used to his life that I doubt there's any other option for him - he's so desocialised and broken down from his time on the streets. At least you can see that there's still a chance of plucking the younger ones out of their situation and saving them.
"That's how I became aware of what homeless organisations such as the Simon Community do to help. I contacted them initially when I started to write my novel. I wanted to get the facts right, so they gave me statistics to put the problem into context. I've stayed in contact with the staff and, realising the incredible work they do to re-house and rehabilitate rough sleepers, I decided to give the royalties from my latest book to the charity. I could have done it quietly and said nothing but I wanted people to stop and think. When I was giving Phil money, I didn't think I was doing much to eradicate homelessness. At least now I feel I'm helping more than one person.
"We want to think that things aren't so bad for rough sleepers to make our guilt more bearable, but the truth is that nobody wants to be homeless. It must be torture to sleep on a cold, hard pavement. The Simon Community told me that 20-30% of the people on the streets have problems with drink and drugs, but that means 70-80% don't. So many of these people are the product of a social system that has failed them from the beginning. Not many come from stable backgrounds. From the word go, life hasn't worked for them.
"Phil humanised the problem for me - he made me see that rough sleepers aren't just faceless, made old men with beards and dirty coats. It may sound sentimental, but they were once somebody's little boy or girl. They were loved before life intervened and they were swept to the edge of society."