They sleep in old toilets, derelict factories and holes in the ground. Richard McComb goes on a tour of Birmingham's secret squats.
There is a stack of information leaflets called “Hypothermia: What you need to know” inside the neon-lit foyer.
A cartoon-style character, who resembles a pink Shrek, flags up the warning signs of the potentially fatal condition. Hypothermia strikes when a person’s core body temperature falls below 35C. Victims become forgetful, drowsy and tired. They might stumble, their skin turns blue and their pupils dilate. Shivering becomes uncontrollable.
It is a sight with which Carole Fox is all too familiar at this time of year. Just this morning a rough sleeper exhibiting the tell-tale signs of hypothermia came in for breakfast at SIFA (Supporting Independence from Alcohol) Fireside’s drop-in facility in Digbeth. The night before, the temperature had dropped to -2C, the first big chill of the year.
Carole says: “We sat and watched him for a bit as it was borderline to get him to A&E. We got him gloves and layered him up with clothes, gave him warm drinks, and he was all right after a bit.”
It was a good save but the homeless aren’t always so lucky.
It is not as cold tonight, about 1C-2C, but there is a trade off for rough sleepers. It might be warmer but it is lashing down with rain. By the end of tonight, I will be soaked. But I am fortunate. Having seen what I see, in my home city, I have no doubt about that. For sometime in the early hours, I retreat to my dry, clean, warm bed. I feel safe. There are no needles casually discarded by heroin addicts, no rats or lice, no threat of being fire-bombed or robbed in my sleep. The lost souls I meet in Birmingham’s darkest places are afforded no such luxury.
I join Carole, operations manager at SIFA Fireside, for a tour of the city’s hidden squats. We are joined by her colleague, Derek Sparkes, the charity’s alcohol practitioner, and Ian Sturmey, of West Midlands Fire Service. The team started night visits 18 months ago and the purpose is simple: to offer help to the city’s homeless community – and potentially save lives.
One of the first places we visit is in Aston, just a minute or so from a major road. The area is thought to have the city’s biggest concentration of empty, domestic properties used by rough sleepers. Slovakians, Poles, Romanians and Britons bed down in this ghostly, abandoned estate of small terrace houses. The properties can no longer be described as homes; they are decaying structures. The doors and windows are blocked with metal sheets, but the desperate find a way in.
Using a torch to light our way, we stumble and slip through the slimy back garden to gain access to a house in a derelict block. The property was attacked by an arsonist a fortnight ago. One of the two Polish men living here was upstairs at the time and escaped after being alerted by a smoke alarm. Ian had fitted the detector during a previous visit. I put it to the firefighter that he probably saved the man’s life. He shrugs.
The Poles’ few belongings lay scattered on the blackened floor of the fire-ravaged bedrooms. The windows have been blown out but the fabric of the building is impregnated with the smell of smoke. A pair of melted shoes lies fused to a wooden shelf.
Downstairs, the rooms are rammed with empty bottles of Frosty Jack’s cider, a tipple of choice within this community due its high alcohol content (7.5% abv) and price tag (two litres for less than £4). I am puzzled by the presence of old bottles of handwash and learn hardcore drinkers have started downing the alcohol-based sanitiser in search of a lift. “It is like drinking poison,” says Derek. “It is like drinking perfume.”
“I’ve seen that,” says Carole. “I was walking along the street when I saw a man drink perfume from a bottle. Fortunately, he vomited.”
Sensing my surprise, Carole adds: “These are people who have come off the radar. They are so disillusioned. They don’t even want to claim benefits.”
Just round the corner, a homeless Polish woman, aged in her mid-20s, died recently. She was known to SIFA and had seemed optimistic about her future when she secured work as a fruit-picker during the summer. When the season ended, she returned to the squat in Aston. She is thought to have been fitting for a few days before she died.
Coincidentally, ITV airs a show on squatting, presented by Richard Madeley, on the same night I take to the streets. I watch it later. Madeley Meets the Squatters purports to show the unseen side of squatting. The organised squats and legally clued-up and politically-savvy protagonists portrayed in the film bare little resemblance to the people and sights I encounter.
Up to 50 people are standing in an orderly line at the Carrs Lane soup run in the city centre. It is 8.15pm. Over the road is the new Hotel La Tour, where two-star Michelin chef Marcus Wareing has been advising on restaurant menus. The hotel, by all accounts, serves an excellent afternoon tea.
Back here, in a wind-blasted concrete overhang, volunteers from Halesowen Churches Together hand out plastic cups of tomato and pasta soup, sandwiches and tea. Martin, who smells strongly of alcohol, says he doesn’t like the soup but it helps to line his stomach. He says he got £200 “sick pay” today and blew it buying drinks for his mates. “I can’t help it. I love people,” says Martin.
There are small huddles of Afghans, Poles, Scots and Portuguese. Lots of people stand on their own, ruck sacks at their feet, their faces barely visible under hoods, baseball caps and scarves. They eat in silence and drift off.
Matthew, 38, from London, has been sleeping rough for four years. He had a flat, a partner and a job working in a kitchen for Unilever. But he and his girlfriend struggled to pay the rent and she moved home to Bristol. Matthew stayed with his parents in Surrey for two days but “it didn’t work out” and he found himself homeless.
For a while, he carried on in his kitchen position, eating and showering at work. “Then I did something silly and took something I shouldn’t have and got the sack. I found myself on the streets without an income,” he says.
Matthew slept in doorways in Piccadilly Circus, Marble Arch and Oxford Street before he came to Birmingham in the spring. He did some painting and decorating jobs but the work dried up and he says he relies on £110 Job Seekers Allowance every fortnight. He fritters cash by betting on the horses and the dogs; he plays roulette on betting office fruit machines. He asks if I gamble. I say I don’t. “Good. Don’t. Don’t,” he says.
Matthew opens his neatly-packed ruck sack to show me his sparse belongings – a sleeping bag from SIFA, a blanket, some toiletries, a can of cola, two sandwiches, a packet of crisps and half a packet of Minstrels. “That is my world possessions,” he says.
“Without SIFA I would be in dire straits. Before I found out about them, I was washing in doctors’ toilets. SIFA is brilliant. I get two hot meals and it is somewhere to stay out of the cold. Without it, there would be a lot of people worse off than they are now.”
Matthew, who is wearing a yellow fluorescent jacket, plans to move to Yorkshire. He likes travelling. “I am going to try to get some work and get out of this situation,” he says. I tell him he is remarkably optimistic. “You have to be. You have to crack on with it,” he says.
It is 10pm when we arrive in the Jewellery Quarter, across the city. Ian points out a disused redbrick factory building with a tiny ragged hole in the front door. He says a Zimbabwean who lived there was the cleanest, politest squatter he has come across. “He wrote to thank me when he moved on,” says the firefighter.
We drive along a warren of narrow streets and look inside another known squat. The door is ripped off; inside there is squalor, collapsed ceilings, litter, evidence of fire. A soaking wet sleeping bag lies outside in the rain.
A minute later, we are in a cul-de-sac at the heart of what was the city of a thousand trades. Ian leads us behind a row of metal fencing, through low-hanging branches and waist-high weeds to a secret door. We step into a huge, empty factory, the ground floor of which is exposed to the elements. There are great pools of ink black water on the old shop floor. A sleeping bag is airing on a makeshift washing line in one of the few covered areas.
We go upstairs to the broken down office area. Ian shouts: “Fire service! Fire service!” and says some words in Polish. Only one of the two “housemates” is in, a 57-year-old Pole who does not speak English. I ask if I can take some pictures and he says: “No problem. No problem.”
All things considered, the squat is scrupulously tidy. The old office kitchen has been spruced up and there are plastic bottles containing fresh drinking water, not cider. The man has built a dressing table by his bed and put up some Toy Story stickers. One wall is dominated by a hand-drawn map of Europe, showing Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Holland and the UK. Major towns are marked, but there are other initials too. Such maps are a common feature of squats and the initials are thought to mark the home towns of some of the men and women who have travelled to Birmingham seeking a better life.
It is freezing, so cold you can see your breath, and the Polish man’s only source of light and heating is a small candle that he grasps. Sturmey gives him a larger candle in a secure candleholder. Rough sleepers often leave candles unattended, they fall asleep and accidentally start fires. The problem is exacerbated if they have been drinking heavily or taking drugs.
Fire safety is Ian’s remit during the inspections but it is a politically sensitive area. Squatting in residential buildings (but not commercial properties) became a criminal offence in September and offenders can be fined or jailed. SIFA and Ian insist their work in preventing fires, such as installing smoke alarms and helping rough sleepers, in no way condones the practice.
“We could easily close every squat and tell the police,” says Ian. “But if you close one, another one will open up and you won’t know about it. The idea is to engage with the homeless and try to fix the root of the problem.”
However, he adds: “If I go in a squat that I don’t think is safe I will not put people at risk. I will close it down.”
Ian believes there are at least 30 established squats in the city centre. Most of them comprise just a couple of people.
“It sounds like a small number, but I would class them as regular squats. There are others. People won’t tell you where they are. It could be a derelict house, a derelict pub, a garage, a warehouse, a factory, a petrol station. It can be anywhere with a roof over it.”
The homeless steal a night’s sleep wherever there is space, cover and anonymity. We go to the depths of a popular city centre location and find a tent and two folding beds. They are stationed by air-conditioning units but the occupants have not yet returned for the night. On the overhead concrete walkways it is possible to see revellers going to the German Christmas market.
On the other side of the complex, we come across used syringes and the paraphenalia of drug use – spoons used to cook down heroin and other narcotics. The risks of this way of life become all too apparent at our final visit of the night. It is after midnight when we pull up to a former industrial site in Digbeth. The plot is dominated by a man-made hill of bricks and rubble, the remnants of a bulldozed factory. It is like a scene from the Blitz.
It is here that we meet two men preparing to bed down in a tumbledown public toilet. They include Dave (not his real name), who has served three years in prison for armed robbery. He has been sleeping rough for a week due to the latest breakdown of his erratic relationship with his partner. The longest he has been homeless is six months.
Dave says he wore six layers of clothes and slept under two blankets the previous night, but he was still freezing. The door to the makeshift bedroom in the old toilets is a blue plastic sheet. The floor is carpeted with scores of used needles. There is a sharps box, provided for the safe disposal of contaminated needles, but it is empty. The needles are dropped where they are used.
In the past, the pitch has been booby-trapped with used needles to warn off people trying to pinch the site.
I ask Dave how long does he plans to sleep here.
“I don’t know, man. How long is a piece of string? I don’t want to be here all the winter,” he says. Dave says most people are only a few steps away from a similar fate. “You can be mortgaged with a missus and then bam! The next minute, you are off it.”
I cannot imagine anyone else lives in this benighted wasteland until Ian shows me a collapsed concrete structure, below ground level, where another rough sleeper beds down. Peering down a graffiti-covered brick wall, it is just possible to make out bedding amid the rubbish.
Then I am led to a hole in the ground, near a brick culvert through which the swollen River Rea flows. A square, metal cover has been removed to reveal a steep drop and an underground space. It is dry down there, but what a place to live. An underground prison.
As we drive back to SIFA’s headquarters in Digbeth, my companions flag up a squat in the Alcester Street area. A man died here last winter of a heroin overdose. He was known to SIFA and had just come out of prison.
I learn later that an angry gang of men arrived at the toilet squat after we left. They threatened Dave and his mate and forced them out of their shelter. No one knows where they have gone.
* SIFA Fireside, based in Allcock Street, Digbeth, was founded in 2007 by the merger of two city charities: SIFA and the Fireside. The organisation’s remit is to tackle homelessness and alcohol abuse.
This Christmas it is urging people to donate £5 to help it continue its work. A £5 donation can buy a hot meal for six people, tea for 100 people every day for a week; two slices of toast at breakfast for 80 people; 15 pairs of socks for rough sleepers; three pairs of underwear; or five woolly hats. Donors can either text SIFA05 £5 to 70070, or use the JustGiving link on its website: http://sifafireside.co.uk. The charity is also grateful for donations of clothing – gloves, socks, hats, scarves, coats – particularly any item of thermal clothing.
