​TFN speak to Glasgow's rough sleepers and discovers many have no hope of ever leaving their lives on the streets

"Useless advice is plentiful when you’re on the streets,” says Shaun Conroy. “And everyone has an opinion about what I should be doing, much of it revolving round employment. The rest just throw pelters at me for smoking, outraged someone living rough can afford a fag. So now I smoke out of sight for fear folk will hold it against me.”

Smoking remains 37 year-old Shaun’s only luxury. He lives on £60 worth of benefits a week and whatever else he can gain through begging. His pitch is Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street on weekdays but “skippers” (sleeps rough) and begs elsewhere at weekends for fear of the city’s drink-addled revellers.

Although constantly offered space in the city’s overnight homeless hostels, they’re not an option for Shaun (pictured below) due to running feuds with other rough sleepers, some of whom have threatened his life. “At pedestrian level, folk think I’m on the streets through choice. Believe me: I hate this life. I hate the cold, having no shelter, getting my possessions nicked, justifying my existence to strangers and getting spat on. Why would I want that life – why would anyone? But it’s where I’m at; I can’t get out of it. I live with it the only way I know how: by taking each day at a time. I don’t think about the future. Ever.”

This is reality of life on the streets for Glasgow’s rough sleepers. Support charities say that at any one time there can be up to 26 men and women sleeping rough in the city though there are over 2,000 registered. It is a life of constant fear, violence and theft spent in the shadow of the real prospect of death from hypothermia, especially during extreme cold snaps which Glasgow has been experiencing of late. According to the Vagrancy Act of 1824, sleeping on the streets is illegal if you have access to shelter but don’t go. Thankfully, the police don’t arrest rough sleepers and are generally sympathetic to them.

For Shaun, life wasn’t always like this. He remembers a time when life wasn’t about public contempt and the constant cold. Just three years ago he lived with his partner and her two children in a decent house in a pristine estate in Kilmarnock. It was very much the sought-after “average lifestyle” which by being unremarkable, offered a comfort and safety Shaun felt blessed to have. He used to do pretty well by any standard, running his own decorating firm and employing his partner as bookkeeper. It afforded him independence, allowed him a “couple of holidays a year” and meant the kids wanted for nothing.

But Shaun had been struggling to contain his alcoholism since his mid-20s and when it eventually cost him his business - and consequently his livelihood - it led to a downward spiral which eventually ended in him splitting with his partner and a life on the streets.

“Folk don’t realise how easy it is, to lose everything” he tells me. “I can’t say what came first, whether I was depressed and that led to my alcoholism or the other way around. It’s all a blur. One day I was happy and content; next I was begging for food. It just happened. It’s the only way I can explain it.”

Despite support from the Salvation Army, Shaun fears he’ll die an alcoholic and can’t conceive of a time when he’ll have a home or a job again. “Life here on the streets is all I have,” he says. “I don’t know how to give up drinking; it seems impossible to me. I tell myself I like it, that it’s my only friend. But my social worker keeps saying friends don’t treat you like this.”

Attitudes towards rough sleepers and those who are forced to beg aren’t getting better on Glasgow’s streets. Contrary to popular opinion, it’s not an easy option. Many roofless will only beg during daylight hours, never at night, and many wouldn’t consider begging because of the very prominent threat of violence.

“You can live with the comments but not the physical abuse,” says Shaun. “I’ve had petrol thrown at me by kids who tried to set me on fire. They accused me of being a gypsy. I’ve actually got a lot of gypsy friends; I never understood why that was a problem for them.

“That’s why I think drinking will kill me – something like that will happened again but I’ll be too drunk to respond. If it’s going to happen then it will.”

That said there are times when Shaun says he is glad to be alive, like the time last year when a 10 year-old girl called Gracie donated all her pocket money to him. “Children are honest and innocent,” he says. “They’ll speak to me like they’re adults. They ask why I’m on the streets and an honest question deserves an honest answer.”

As we chat over a coffee, Clare, another rough sleeper, joins us. She trembles almost uncontrollably and asks for a cigarette. She’s laughs when I ask if she’s okay. “Does this look okay?” she says with her palms outwards. “I’m good if you can give me a hit. Or a few quid.”

Shaun tells me Clare has two children she’s not allowed to see and a “massive” tranquilliser addiction. “Use to be H – heroin – but she gave it up for Temz (Temazepam),” he says. She spends nights in the alleyways near Glasgow’s Drury Lane and a stone’s throw away from the famous Horseshoe Bar. She was attacked badly one evening last year by another rough sleeper which left her hospitalised for weeks. “We all thought she died, says Shaun. “She was off the scene and when that happens you usually never see folk again. I expected to find her in the Clyde Then she turned up looking like she’d been through hell. I didn’t recognise her. She’s still not recovered. She probably never will.”

Around 80% of rough sleepers are men. The reason so few women seem to rough sleep is that they hide away in order to stay safe, with women being particularly vulnerable on the street. They’re on the streets - you just don’t see them.

“Women get preyed on,” says Clare. “You have to be street wise. There’s lots of danger. They think because you’re on the streets you’re desperate. I don’t ever take any offers from anyone unless I know and trust them.”

Last March, ­homeless man Matthew Bloomer was discovered dead in freezing conditions, outside the store TJ Hughes on Argyle, prompting calls for more to be done to stop further fatalities.

After his death, a group of housing and anti-poverty organisations, including Shelter Scotland, wrote an open letter to communities’ secretary Angela Constance urging the Scottish Government to take action.

The letter stated: “Without decisive action, we are endangering the lives of a growing number of people forced to sleep rough on the streets of our towns and cities, and condemning many more individuals and families to a life in limbo by forcing them to stay for increasing lengths of time in so-called temporary accommodation.”

Jason Pennington, a former rough sleeper, knew Matthew. He said the 28 year-old struggled with alcohol addiction and mental health issues, which led to him spending long periods sleeping rough on the streets.

But according to Jason, Matthew’s situation could not have been avoided no matter who intervened.

“There’s a load of do gooders who come visit you when you sleep rough. But if they can’t fix mental illness or cure alcoholism then they are wasting their time. Many don’t want shelter; many don’t want help. They want left alone. I felt it was a bit naïve of charities to be shouting out about how Matt’s death could have been prevented. It couldn’t. He had all the help available.”

Jason is one of the few success stories. Still young, he was sleeping on the streets on and off and eventually got help from the Simon Community and others. He now lives in rented accommodation and has embarked on a modern apprenticeship.

“It’s easy to see how folk get addicted and become trapped on the streets,” says Jason. “Being on the streets feels like you’ve hit the gutter. You feel like you’re worth nothing to anyone. It’s shameful, embarrassing, and pathetic. You feel dirty and hopeless. So developing an addiction – if you don’t already have one – seems logical. It numbs the pain, the reality of your situation.”

It’s a problem that will never go away according to street pastor Glynn Williams. Over the years he’s seen hundreds come and go on the city’s streets but reckons as long as there are rich and poor, the streets will remain a refuge for the dispossessed.

“If you can find a solution to poverty then maybe we’ll see rough sleeping eradicated,” he says. “But how likely is that? We have to understand rough sleeping is here to stay. Sometimes it’s temporary often it’s longer. But if we want to help we need to be there to give support and, most importantly, tackle the root causes which lead people into this desperate life.”