CT: There are a lot of churches that have taken them in and are taking care of them. Are you supporting churches in that?
AM: Definitely. That is part of the imperative. I think the hand-out isn't to be sniffed at. Meeting someone's immediate need for shelter, food, clothes, companionship is important. It's baby and bath water, you shouldn't throw those things out.
But at the same time we need to recognise that these needs may be as a result of other needs and it's good to work out what else is going on, what other services there are, and what other help is available, to try and steer people towards the professional and good help that there is.
That's the responsibility of the church as well, to sign post people - not to try and do everything themselves but to signpost people to the resources that there are.
CT: Housing Justice has highlighted growing tensions between the Christian or faith approach to homelessness and the Government approach. Can you outline some of those tensions?
AM: The faith approach is responding to the Good Samaritan model, here is someone and here is their need. The structural approach taken by the Government is a much more structured one and moving much more towards enforcement as well. And there are tensions there because many churches feel quite uncomfortable about that.
It's difficult when you see someone who has been a victim of circumstances and is struggling for survival and may have a mental health issue or other circumstances, who may not be very good at managing their lives, and then they are being further victimised by for example anti-social behaviour orders, or have been evicted from a borough because they've been making a nuisance of themselves, and I'm not saying homeless people are saints because I know they're not. Many of them are difficult and challenging people. But churches are more uncomfortable with that kind of enforcement regime that's being introduced, in particular in Camden in London and Manchester.
And there are definite battles emerging between local authorities that want to see the end of soup runs, for example. Soup runs are where a lot of this argument takes place, which is why I set up a forum for soup runs in London in November 2005. It's beginning to make a bit of progress in coordinating soup runs and reducing the perception that there is overprovision, which there really isn't. In a big city like London, on most nights of the week there are probably at the most seven or eight groups covering the main central points and moving with the guys who use them.
The authorities criticise soup runs because they say they don't know who they are serving, that they don't know the needs that they have, they are complicating the situation and muddying the water because they are acting outside of structured services. Some authorities are very upfront about this and they say we only want services that we have commissioned.
In a sense we are starting from the same point, we both want to help homeless people. But local authorities are more about a structured approach: stop somebody from rough sleeping, don't give them any options, get them off the streets and into some sort of basic hostel-type accommodation, do an assessment of their needs, and move on them as quickly as possible.
CT: And presumably there are things about that you don't agree with?
