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There is a stereotype of a homeless person, sometimes called a street- or rough-sleeper, being a villain. He is a man, a loner and a beggar, someone who is mentally ill, immoral and helpless. If he sleeps under a bridge, in a park, or in a shop doorway, he is most likely a drug addict or an alcoholic. He doesn’t have a job, is lazy, and has no family or friends to help him.
In reality, people who are nothing like this are forced to become homeless due to the difficulties they face when they come to the city. In Johannesburg, there is an extreme shortage of affordable accommodation. More than 560 000 people are unemployed in the city and an additional 105 000 have given up looking for work.
If you are not working and don’t have a regular income, it’s almost impossible to find a permanent, decent and secure place to live in a central part of town. You might be able to rent a backyard room, a small space or a shared bed space in the inner city, where the prices are high. But these require payment of several hundred rand a month or more, and some people can’t afford it. Overnight shelters provide short-term solutions for a small nightly fee, but in most of these, families can’t stay together and there are strict rules like daytime lock-out between 8am and 5pm. So some people resort to sleeping in places where they don’t have to pay, or where they have more flexibility.
Many street-sleepers do productive work. Some work informally, collecting waste for recycling, looking after cars, hawking goods or working as drivers or temporary labourers. But often these jobs bring in so little money that those who work them have no choice but to sleep on the street.
Some people sleep rough to be near their place of work so that they can start early in the morning. Others are traders who need to keep a watch over their bulky goods, which they can’t afford to transport in and out of the city each day, so they sleep in their trading stalls or at their regular pavement spot alongside their stock.
Operators of micro-transport such as tuk-tuks, cycle-rickshaws and carts might sleep in their vehicles so that they can be in place early to get their first customers. Recyclers often spend their nights sorting and stockpiling their collections in preparation for selling the next day.
People may sleep rough for certain nights of the week or for sections of the month. At other times they have a more formal or better-quality home to go to, which is too far away and too costly or inconvenient to travel to every day.
Some come to the city to be free of the demands that family make on them for money. Others come to find new opportunities and freedoms in the city, away from the expectations and rules of their family members.
Life on the street is particularly tough for women, because they face great dangers such as rape, abuse and trafficking. One study estimates that 40% of women living on the streets have their children with them, which makes their position more dangerous.
The word “homeless” is often used more broadly to describe people who have inadequate housing. Shacks in informal settlements, warehouses or basements not meant for living in, and structures made from poor-quality building materials that provide little protection from the heat and the cold. By contrast, an adequate shelter provides sufficient privacy, space, safety and security, light, heat, water and toilets. An adequate shelter is affordable, near jobs, clinics, schools and government services.
The South African government has built millions of new houses since 1994. However, there is a backlog of more than two million houses in South Africa, and many still sleep on pavements, in parks, or under bridges. But sleeping rough in the open or on public land is very hard.
Street-sleepers are fined and harassed by authorities for contravening city by-laws that forbid sleeping overnight in a park, or sorting and storing waste materials under a bridge.
Some rough-sleepers are attacked by criminals, and they face health problems caused by exposure to the weather and poor hygiene.
In spite of this, people build relationships and networks that enable them to stay in a place with relative safety. Street-sleepers find ways to access the things that they would normally have in an adequate home – lighting from the street, a socket to recharge a phone, clean water to drink or to wash with, a public toilet, Wi-Fi and technology, or a place to store their things. They build their lives and hope that their circumstances will change. We need to deepen our understanding of how homeless people create and build lives for themselves.
This story appears in Vaya: Untold Stories of Johannesburg – The people and stories that inspired the award-winning film. R300, Bookstorm. Available in all good bookshops and online as an ebook.
