Homelessness in the idyllic and scenic rural town of Campeltown of Argyll in Scotland is not always apparent. When some homeless outsiders arrive in the town they are often sent by the police on a bus to Glasgow as they feel that city can better cope with such problems.
In some towns the homeless are not conspicuous! Their presence is not visible on a street level. Or it seems people don't see the homeless as they imagine: sleeping on the streets in cardboard boxes or on park benches and in tents on sidewalks. But in a charming tranquil and quaint town like Campeltown on the west coast of Scotland which has 6000 inhabitants their presence does in fact exist. You can be forgiven for asking the questions "Are the homeless hiding from us?" or rather "Are we hiding from the homeless?" Perhaps a bizarre game of hide and seek is being played out where the homeless feel threatened by some people and vice versa. After all, some locals are scared of the homeless because they perceive them as a threat.
I have sometimes met some Russians who tell me that they are very afraid of the homeless in Moscow, and I heard of a Russian in America who had also expressed a fear of the homeless. In this respect it is important to acknowledge that there can be a huge discrepancy between how we imagine the homeless and their actual appearance and activities. For instance, not all of them are unkempt, untidy or dirty or unemployed. These are all conditions—temporary or longer-term even. They could be an academic at a university, a student, a discharged soldier or a refugee.
{Note: In the late 1990's when I was a volunteer with a group to aid the homeless we knew that there existed thousands of homeless orphans who had descended on Moscow. But at first we couldn't always find them. They had fled from orphanages. We later discovered they were hiding in all kinds of places such as train carriages to avoid being detained by the police and sent back to the orphanages. When they did surface it often was to buy some ice-cream which they could not resist.}
Mary Hamilton, a 48-year-old woman from Campeltown has met many people who are either currently homeless or have been homeless in the past. Mary tells me that 'In Campeltown we have no visible sleeping rough or begging in the streets.” She also warns that the police would soon send you packing in the next bus to Glasgow if you were to arrive in that town looking for accommodation.
For example, a few years ago the council and the police asked me to translate for a stranger and said he was Russian and looking for accommodation. It turned out he was Bulgarian and the police escorted him to the bus for Glasgow.
Then again a few years ago a group of Romanian gypsies arrived in town and began begging and being aggressive towards locals in the streets. They were sent away back to Glasgow also. Apparently, groups of organised beggars had been targeting rural areas.
We have a housing office {local authority housing}, a homeless shelter, and various bed-and-breakfasts in Campeltown which are used as temporary accommodation. The Salvation Army also provides meals and we have had a local food bank. Some of the churches can help provide basic household items and help too.
Campeltown is the cheapest place in Scotland to buy a property, but we have a shortage of private property, private lets (places for renting) and Social housing. The council can't afford to build more Social housing.
Mary Hamilton thinks that the shortage of accessible private rented accommodation is compounded by the increasing trend of private landlords to turn their homes into holiday lets and a similar trend of outsiders purchasing new homes only to rent them out at high prices. She states, "People buy second homes in this area sometimes turn them into 'airBNB's and holiday lets which becomes a problem for locals seeking accommodation and incoming workers. This is no ideal place for the poor and the homeless as there is no work, poor investment, and a bad infrastructure--and the state of the A 83 road doesn't help!"
Some local people are anxious about what they see as the high rate of alcohol and drug addiction in the town. A community psychiatric nurse states, 'Drugs are rife here and so is drug addiction. Drugs are contributing to the rise in drug-induced mental illness and crime.' There is even a famous song with the words 'Campeltown Loch is full of whiskey.' A local Church of Scotland minister also worries about the high incidence of alcohol and claims, "Alcohol is rooted deep in the culture here and there is a lot of peer pressure.'
Mary Hamilton asks some heavy drinkers "Why do you drink so much?" Most of them answer that there is nothing else to do and they feel bored. The reasons for alcoholism can be complex and some suggest the reasons lie in a difficult childhood, an inherited predisposition via genes, a shared culture of drinking, and an underlying trauma where the person can't face or find treatment for painful experiences in the past. Alcohol and drug addiction are not called the 'despair diseases' for nothing.
A Russian expert who treats people who suffer from addiction stated that a recovery program is a long complex process. He states that patients must first take alternative medication, then go into a detoxification unit and finally undergo therapy to identify what are the unacknowledged underlying reason for trauma. He found that earlier traumatic experiences were often the causes such as a young person having problems with peers at school or a terrible conflict with their parents. Many people tend to block out very painful experiences by drinking or taking drugs.
One controversial question is: Do the drug and the alcohol cause mental illness and homelessness or vice versa? You often find the causes are confounded.
For instance, one person Mary befriended told him how he suffers from Bipolar Disorder. He was homeless for five years because of drug abuse which led to the breakdown of his marriage. He spent time on the streets, plus time living in hostels, supported living places and in a trailer park. His dad was a traveler and an alcoholic. But the central question is: 'Why did he begin drinking?' The banal answers that some people suggest such as 'He or she likes drinking' or maybe has a weak will to resist the temptations of drinking are not wholly convincing. What is sad is that many alcoholics keep their problem secret because they are ashamed of the stigma and danger of losing their job or being abandoned by family and friends.
Mary's friend John MacDonald who is 64, has experienced living rough in a rural area. He has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and was in the army. He had an abusive childhood and eventually ran away from home and then became homeless as an adult due to his alcoholism. But in this case the trauma is undoubtedly an underlying cause in taking alcohol. John MacDonald lived in the woods around Campeltown and on the beach for a long time hunting, foraging for food and stealing to survive. The good news is that he overcame this addiction and has become a wonderful local artist who paints battleships and all kinds of seascapes.
Another friend of Mary Hamilton, called David, also experienced homelessness on two occasions but also managed to quit drinking alcohol. He has been off alcohol for three years. However, he claims that drinking was actually one way of coping with the pain of mental illness and not getting treatment.
Unfortunately, the belief that the main reason for homelessness lies in addiction is very widespread among people. A lot of research suggests that much of this addiction is the consequence of being on the streets rather than the cause. Being homeless is a highly stressful experience and taking alcohol has a very seductive appeal. It seems the easiest way to cope with stress. The appeal is also all the more alluring when everyone else is doing it and it seems the natural and normal thing to do. Some people even think you are abnormal if you don't drink!
And in Russia in some comedy films the host gets angry when a guest refuses to drink with him. He views the refusal as an insult. So a person can have a complex because he drinks and a complex for not drinking at all. In this case there is a lot to be said for being non-judgmental. Our main aim is to understand and not judge.
In regard to the scale of chemical addiction being a cause of homelessness in Russia, the charity group Nochlezhka in a 2020 survey found that only 9.56% of homelessness was caused or linked to addiction. They state, 'More often than not, addictions are not the cause of homelessness, but are developed by people after a long time on the street, out of hopelessness. These cases are rare, but it does happen that alcohol or drugs are the primary reasons for homelessness, if the person is not aware of the problem and does nothing to resolve it.'
What is important is that Mary Hamilton's friends who have been homeless managed to get off the streets and won their battles against addictions. This could not be achieved without all kinds of supportive services and people willing to assist them as well as the enormous efforts of the individuals themselves who suffered. The local history of Campeltown proves that homelessness as well as addiction can be defeated. Despair and disenchantment should not have the last words.