This project by Callum Cuddeford, Facundo Arrizabalaga, Adrian Zorzut, Jake Holden, Harrison Galliven and Adam Toms has been shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Reporting Homelessness. The project uses images and videos to bring to life the real stories of people experiencing homelessness. Here we share Ground Zero by Jake Holden. 

While the latest CHAIN figures, which are a one-night snapshot, put London’s rough sleeping population at over 4,000, Trust for London data shows there were nearly 12,000 people seen sleeping rough in the capital in 2023. Three times as many as there were in 2010 when the Conservatives came to power. Since the Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan was elected in 2016, this number has increased by 50 per cent. Each side blames the other, but there’s no dispute the figure is rising.

Sheltering in some of London’s wealthiest high streets and under our busiest roads, MyLondon went looking for these people. Some have fought wars, others fled them. There are drug and alcohol addicts treating their own infections. Here in London, there are domestic violence victims who would rather sleep outside than stay in a hostel because they think it’s too dangerous. And for the refugees who get the right to live here, an eviction and homelessness follows.

These high street camps and shanty towns are just the face of it though. Around London there are hidden homeless: surfing sofas, living in copses, sleeping on public transport, and taking refuge in 24-hour restaurants where they let their phones charge all night long.

We are at crisis levels and Keir Starmer’s government has an opportunity to make the Mayor’s radical ambition - to end rough sleeping in London by 2030 - possible.

In this project we’ve not done anything radical by speaking to people on the street. But we hope by bringing photos and unique voices to as wide an audience as possible, this scandal might be recognised for what it is.

Ground Zero by Jake Holden

In Tottenham Court Road up to 200,000 people pass through the station barriers every single day. On the same road about 50 rough sleepers crowd their tents among the mice and rats every night.

Across five months I have met many of them.

Sarah is a 24-year-old Albanian woman addicted to drinking a paint stripper called GBL. She knows she shouldn’t, but she feels compelled to keep going back to the camp.

She’s wearing a black vest and trousers, her tattooed arms jitter over each other as she shifts her weight from side to side. The noise of traffic fills the evening as she leads us through her life below the giant electric billboard flashing colour on the camp.

“The self-awareness is the most painful part of it. I'm totally aware of how absolutely useless my existence is.”

Head in hands, Sarah tells of running away from her “loving family”, her job, her university degree.

“The year prior to this I spent mostly alone in my room, I was really f*****g lonely”.

While sofa surfing in Paris for two years, she discovered GBL in its techno scene. The drug would go on to kill two of her friends and leave her on the street with a crippling addiction.

"It's like teleportation, one second you're doing something and then you wake up and you've missed, maybe, six hours, maybe one hour.”

Other users don’t miss a thing, “...which is horrible,” Sarah adds, “Because they go crazy with horrible visions. Sometimes they get violent.”

Behind her sit other addicts, some with overwhelming mental health problems.

"A lot of them are just not really there,” Sarah explains. "I've spent weeks trying to have adult conversations and realise only now that I was talking to nothing.”

On cue, a man interrupts with a tumbling conspiracy theory about Taylor Swift’s ‘theft’ of the DNA he invented as a “neuronologist” and a doctor that had been murdered in a “mysterious way.”

On a later visit, another campmate introduced himself to me by taking down his trousers to reveal a stolen sack of potatoes, laughing to his friends. Noticing strangers in the camp he got angry and threatened me with two metal rods from the growing scrap heap outside the tents, scavenged from the streets to be sold. I saw him shouting at pigeons as I retreated.

Despite the strangeness, Sarah says she feels part of a community for the first time.

“And that’s why I think I still haven’t left because I’m scared to be lonely. I’d rather be in bad company than no company.”

Right now, Sarah can’t leave even if she wants to. She was kicked out of the hostel she shared with other addicts and is now trying to get a spot in rehab, but it’s proving difficult.

Sarah sums it up when she speaks about her newborn niece: “Babies are such a pure beautiful thing… But I’m scared to touch him, I feel too dirty.”

Another camp regular is former prisoner Mario Walachowski, 39. He came from Poland in 2020 but was locked up in 2023 for drunkenly punching a police officer after being arrested for shoplifting. Mario says he did it because he was struggling with fears his seriously ill young daughter would die.

“She’s never going to walk, she’s never going to talk, she’s not going to eat by herself or be by herself. She’s four years old.”

His ex-wife had called to say they should sign papers to cut off her treatment, but he refused, he says. “Basically she was going to die. So, yeah, I was f*****g furious.”

Mario was stabbed for the first time when he was sent to Wormwood Scrubs prison for eight months after the incident. Why was he attacked?

“Because it’s prison. You get fights, you get riots and everything. You’ve got paedophiles, drug dealers, everyone mixed. You never know what will happen.”

In spite of that, Mario says immigration detention centres, where he spent two months, are even worse.

“You got guys in there who don’t care because they’re going to be deported so they have nothing to lose. They can stab you, they can kill you.”

His second stabbing was on the street following his release in April. “It’s a daily basis when you’re homeless. After 10pm, if you don’t know proper guys you can get stabbed, robbed, beaten, everything.”

Like many others on the street, Mario is an alcoholic. “Anyone living on the street, trust me they’ve tried everything just to forget life or the moment. I’ve tried crack and stuff like that. It’s indescribable. I wouldn’t do it again. But alcohol and drugs are the same thing. It’s addiction.”

Now he’s moved camps and shares with a friend down the road because his tent was ruined after months of use. He’s trying to secure his passport so he can claim benefits and complete a construction course to find work as a builder.

Next to Sarah and Mario’s camp sits the American International Church, which runs a soup kitchen feeding 200 people a day.

Reverend Jennifer Mills-Knutsen observes the camp has a particular reputation for “hate speech, harassment on the street and brandishing weapons”. This has led to efforts from the church to distinguish between rough sleeping and anti-social behaviour. Nearby food stall owner ‘Thai Jack’ agrees, complaining he’s forced to cook just metres from where homeless people urinate.

Jennifer, Jack and other stakeholders have contacted Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who’s also MP for the area. Their aim is not just to turf the rough sleepers out, despite the “untenable situation”, but to find them “stability and long-term support”.

Although this encampment has a poor reputation, a tidier, more orderly camp forms each night on the pavement opposite. The owners of Heals high-end furniture shop allow sleepers to shelter under their awnings provided they clear out during business hours and keep it clean. Ex-soldier Gareth Jones, 63, lives there.

Claiming to be a veteran of the Falklands, the first Gulf War, and Bosnia in the 1980s and 1990s, Gareth tells of his best friend being blown up by a roadside bomb.

The former soldier has a diagnosis of terminal lung cancer with no support and a world of chaos around him. “I’ve seen people getting pissed on. I’ve seen people getting spat on. I’ve seen people getting set on fire.”

After serving his country then working in civilian jobs, three years ago Gareth moved from Wales to London and ended up on the street.

“Homelessness can happen to anyone at any time. You can work in an office, you can have a nice home, a wife, kids, a mortgage. But all of a sudden you lose your job; you can’t pay your mortgage; your wife disappears because you can’t pay the bills. You’re on your own. What do you do? All these so-called friends, where are they?”

The government has washed its hands of him as an ex-soldier, he says, affording him no help.

“I got nothing, I didn’t get any bereavement counselling. Nothing. It’s disgusting the way they treat us ex-vets.”

Despite the undignified conditions, Gareth fights for his self-respect.“I’ve never begged in my life. I’ve got to go to all the handouts. I go to Camden Town soup kitchen. It’s demoralising. It’s embarrassing. But you do it because it’s called survival.”

On the night of November 17, the camp where I met Sarah and Mario burned to the ground. I’ve spoken to Mario since, but I am yet to hear from Sarah. London Fire Brigade confirmed there were no injuries.

Rough sleeper Gary Birdsall, 51, was camped nearby when it happened. "I was asleep, and I heard the fire engines and screaming. A cleaner was there at 6 o'clock this morning who said there were a lot of nasty needles on site.”

As charred debris covered the ground where people had once slept, only two tents were left standing.

* Some names have been changed

‍This article was first published on MyLondon.