Opposite one of London’s most famous theatres, and in the shadow of one of its grandest commercial buildings, people are sleeping on the street in tents. This juxtaposition is typical of the capital today, as one of the world’s richest and most coveted cities finds itself in the grips of a homelessness crisis.
A man who lives at the encampment near the Adelphi Theatre, who wished only to be referred to as Eric, pointed up at the grand Grade II listed building looming over the camp. “Look at what’s in front of you. Look where we are,” he said. “Check the housing register. See how many people are waiting. It’s all a scam, basically. There’s a reason why this is happening. How is it that we’ve been comfortably living here for this long?”
The ‘system’, the 45-year-old added, ‘makes sure that this stays like this’. “You ain’t going to get rid of homelessness, mate,” Eric said. “There’s no way a prominent building like this is going to have something like this outside.
“So why are they tolerant? It’s all by design, my friend.” He then described how, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the authorities ‘got rid of every single person off the streets’. Eric said: “There’s isn’t no homeless problem, man. I’ve got health problems. Every now and then, they put me inside because of weather conditions. It is for two or three days, and then I’m out again. It’s for show.”
He has been living at the encampment for more than a year. Now consisting of around 10 tents, it used to be larger, Eric told , comprised of up to 25. People living on both sides of the Adelphi Terrace made the area feel like a ‘village’.
“This is why they put the plant pots,” Eric claimed. “There’s a lot of things being put specifically to restrict (where people can put tents). That would be okay, if you were offering an alternative option.”
‘This country doesn’t have its priorities straight’
Describing himself as a ‘resilient person’, Eric explained how he had come to the UK from Uganda when he was 10-years-old with his mother and sister. The DJ – Eric runs an online radio station called Streetvybz – left home in North West London when he was 16.
“I was so independent I went straight into private renting,” he said. “Only when I was about 22, I started to get to know about all the benefits and stuff and all that. I never liked the idea of benefits.” He has worked in ‘everything from security to removals’. “I’ve always had work, and obviously my music,” Eric added.
“I’ve seen the best of what the world has to offer before coming to this country. I grew up where I thought every household had cleaners – that was standard. Coming here, it was backwards. This country doesn’t have its priorities right.”
He added: “Put me anywhere and I can survive. I have to leave my stuff right here. I know at the very least there’s cameras here. (I’m) 100 per event safe, but I always feel safe wherever I am. If I didn’t (trust the other people living at the Adelphi encampment), they can’t stay here, and that’s for my own personal protection. I’m not having people that I don’t know sleeping next to me. There’s a lot of mental health problems out here.”
He described them as ‘rampant’ within the homeless community. Eric said: “Can you imagine putting a five year old out here and telling it to look after itself? I’ve seen people get destroyed. Nine out of 10 people need a place where you’ve got 24 hour support. Like, you’ve got a nurse, a doctor on site, a psychiatrist.”
‘It’s actually a melting pot. It’s so dangerous’
On rough sleeping support, he said: “They’re designed to keep the mechanism rolling. The machine has to be fed, and, for that to be fed, you need a clientele that’s using their services.” Eric also said: “There are so (many) problems out here.
“It’s actually a melting pot. It’s so dangerous. You’ve got a lot of people out here you, and you don’t know what’s going to tick them off.” Eric also described how he had seen people ‘get their heads caved in and all kinds of s***’.
When asked about Sadiq Khan’s promise to end homelessness in the city by 2030, he said that he had once seen the Mayor of London get out of a car near to the encampment. Eric shouted at him. “These people are f****** actors,” he told . “You’re being fed a lot of bulls***. You can’t fix this. I’m not afraid to tell him (Mr Khan) straight. I’ve been on the streets long enough to know you’re not trying to do something.”
During a subsequent visit to the encampment, spoke to a man named David Dewan, 56, who was squatting on the floor with bags containing his possessions, rolling cigarettes. He claimed to have been kicked out of his flat in 2021.
Since then, he has not had a permanent home. Mr Dewan, who says he grew up in care and is from Hanworth originally, said he ‘moves around’ and he can ‘look after himself’. “It’s not a good environment to be around people that are constantly drinking all the time, because it just doesn’t do you any good,” he added.
Mr Dewan, who ‘smokes a bit of weed’, added that drug problems have lately got ‘a million times’ worse. He said: “This spice stuff at the moment, they’re all smoking. Not only that, it’s different. It’s a different formula out there now for whatever it is they’re doing.”
It ‘blanks everything from them’, he added. “The drugs have been changed into something else. They’re making this new formula that they call cocaine, and it ain’t cocaine. And then, this stuff they’re calling crack isn’t crack. So they’ve got these formulas, a lot of synthetic stuff.
“Because what’s going on is you’ve got a law saying ‘this chemical formula’s not allowed’. So they’re getting round it by making another formula that does the same trick, but it’s a different formula.” This apparently includes ‘fish tranquilliser’.
‘They’re like zombies’
This has ‘got a lot worse’, Mr Dewan says, over the past three years. “Literally, you see them in the morning when they’ve woken up, and you see them and they’ve smoked all that s***, and they’re like zombies,” he said. Addiction services, the rough sleeper added, are ‘put under pressure, so they don’t have the ability to help people in the way that they need it’.
In order to feed their addiction, people are ‘robbing’ possessions of other rough sleepers, Mr Dewan said, such as mobile phones and cards. He has had stuff ‘nicked’ out of his bag, and a tent stolen. “There’s people that even come into London especially to rob the homeless,” he added.
“Because a lot of them have got smart phones. They’ve all got this background story; people are married or whatever. So some of them have got stuff. And when they come here, they’re targeted for it. I would have been a perfect target had I not grown up in the world I grew up in.”
On rough sleepers’ mental health, Mr Dewan – who says he has daughters and grandchildren – thinks that it is ‘unfair’ to put it in those terms. “What’s happening is they’re being targetted straight away by the stress factor of whatever (left them homeless). A lot of people have lost their families; they’ve got no one left. There’s an underlying story for every one of them.”
‘They’ll make the figures look like the Mayor’s ended homelessness’
On Sadiq Khan’s promise to end homelessness in the capital, Mr Dewan was also cynical. He said: “I think they’ll do what they did for the Olympics. They’ll make the figures while he’s still in office, if he is still in office, look like he’s done it. But as soon as the Olympics were over, all the people that they housed to get them off the street to make London look a little bit more presentable, were chucked out before they had the right to have the place given to them.”
He added: “This whole system needs to be broken down and stopped. The elite that are running this place like a game need to be seen for what they are, that’s all it is.”
Businesses throwing away food, for example, Mr Dewan has challenged as ‘people are going hungry’. “Loads of times in the train stations or wherever,” he said, “I’ve asked some of these people, ‘look, are you throwing that lot away? There’s six Cornish pasties there. I’ve got a bit of money; I’ll give you the money for the stuff you’re throwing away, mate. Put it in your bin, if you want’.”
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Over the years, the Londoner added, he’s ‘regulated his body’ to live with minimal food as he buys provisions with benefits, collects grub from handouts set up by charities.
‘You’ve got to be so shattered to the point when you get some sleep’
Before saying farewell, Mr Dewan, who says he is ‘always on edge’ reflected on life on the street in London overall. “The most annoying thing about it is the looks you get,” he said. “I’ve still got to watch my back. I have to watch everything. Constantly watch my bag, being dipped into.
“You’ve got to find your little niche. Some people are quite angry. But, in general, people will look after each other. Always the food thing. If someone’s hungry, everyone tries to offer each other a bit of food and that. Simple stuff like that.
“I’m the kind of idiot who gives away everything. I’ve given away loads of tops and the things people need when they get cold and that. People do look out for each other, but again you just need to watch what they’ve been smoking. Or if they haven’t had a smoke, or what they’ve been drinking, or if they haven’t had a drink. Because they’re not regulating how they feel.”
On the coming winter, Mr Dewan described how he had grown used to cold conditions, and the best way to heat up is to move. “I’m kind of used to it,” he said. “If you can’t put more layers on you’ve got to get up and move; start walking around. You move yourself around, get warmed up.”
He added: “You’ve got to be so shattered to the point when you get some sleep. It used to be you can have a bevvy. But food gets wasted; any food you eat gets wasted, your body’s not preparing yourself.”
When challenged over the level of homelessness in London, Sadiq Khan said: “First of all, thanks to for speaking to rough sleepers and giving them the dignity of having their voices heard, which is incredibly important.” He added: “In London, we know there’s been an increase in rough sleeping.
“We also know that, since 2016, we’ve increased by more than fourfold City Hall’s rough sleeping budget. And that’s enabled us to take off our streets 17,600 people sleeping rough. Those aren’t just numbers, those are people who’ve been taken off our streets.”
The Mayor added that the GLA has funded wrap around care for those with drug or alcohol dependencies or mental health problems. “I do hold the previous government responsible for a lot of these challenges,” he then said, suggesting that homelessness across the country has increased since 2010 because of ‘underinvestment’.
contacted the Adelphi Building and was told that the area was the responsibility of Westminster City Council.
Cllr Aicha Less, Cabinet Member for Children and Public Protection said: “The reasons people live on the street are complex and include family breakdown, evictions, affordability. Some people, who may be traumatised, present to services with a range of needs. Whatever the causes, this is not a safe place to camp and the welfare of people staying there is a significant concern.”
It is understood that the planters were placed in Adelphi Terrace to increase the amount of greenery in the area and deter incidents of anti-social behaviour affecting the surrounding buildings.
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