Former rough sleeper’s documentary on the betrayal of the homeless

Film-maker Lorna Tucker writes about her new film on why the present model to end homelessness is not working

Government funding to help rough sleepers is “nowhere near enough” to make up for rising living costs and soaring rents, homeless charities have said (Alamy/PA)

For a long time I used to mumble. I couldn’t look people in the eye. I felt I had so much to give in life – in the stories I wanted to tell – to talk about the ripeness of life, and how I could spill out the guts of the human condition.

Most importantly I wanted to show people it’s OK to be whatever they are, and to never stop trying. I wanted to tell people to never stop putting one foot in front of another, even when it feels as if you’re going nowhere. Film for me is where I found how to express myself.

Unlearned - indeed unschooled after 14 - but with one hundred lives lived, I am now 42 and as a cat I would be living my ninth lives right now. That obsession with exploring life through ‘other’ by writing the characters I do in my scripts helps me process my own thoughts and feelings, and in doing do so exorcise things along the way. Putting my heart on my sleeve and sharing with the viewer my soul, but them never knowing.

Explore through others, I said. Protect yourself. And then Lockdown happened, and the veil became finer, sheer almost. But why? Because I saw what was happening around me. I was inspired by the human spirit, but scared about the way homeless were being treated.

They got everyone off the streets, they said. But I know getting people off the streets won’t lead to lasting change. And without wraparound support, can even be more dangerous. I have been asked so much in the past to take on a documentary about homelessness.

I always refused. It’s too close to home. I was not only street homeless as a teenager, and a heroin addict, but then in my late teens was homeless again, living in hostels as a single mum. I don’t know maths, or know much about anything. But I know human behaviour. I’ve met some of the kindest souls in the darkest of places, and seen the darkest of souls in the most beautiful of places.

But no. I told myself I won’t go there. Until lockdown, that is. Will you speak to [Big Issue founder] Lord John Bird, asked my dearest friend Sam Roddick, herself one of the most influential and supportive people in my life. Suddenly, with one call, I was making the film that I had always said I never would. What happened next was a whirlwind year of making a very personal Lockdown project.

Not making another film about homelessness, or portraits of homeless people. There is enough out there of that. And I praise and solute those films and film makers. This was to be a film about solutions. Made by people with lived experience, looking at how the different experiences that we have in life can lead to different problems. It is about how homelessness happens, and how that experience is so different for every individual. But also it is about those that survive it and go on to have lives, those ones that were so badly written off.

People like me. I have died twice. I jumped off Waterloo Bridge because I thought there was no life for me. I could never get clean. I could never erase the ghosts of my past. But the other side would never take me. And for that now I am grateful. Now I choose to live. I have a family. I have a home. I have a career. I feel at times like a 14-year-old, too excited to sit still. At other times I cry, for all the people left behind; for all the injustice in the world; for all the refugees fleeing horror only to arrive in this country I call home, to receive hate. I

cry because I feel so deeply. I am glad I survived. I’m glad to be here. I am grateful to be able now, after 19 years of clawing my way up and fighting, to make a living through my art. While making my homelessness film, I was commissioned by Netflix and Sky to make Call Me Kate – a project focusing on Katherine Hepburn that came out earlier this year. It began shooting while I was also juggling the edit of that Lockdown project. It proved to be the tonic to the hardest edit of my life; one involving molding, and wrestling my own trauma with my past being relived in every sentence I was cutting. I was held and loved by the whole creative team that came together to make that film.

Without them I could never have been able to put my heart on my sleeve for the whole world to see. And now my homelessness documentary is ready to come out. I called it Someone’s Daughter, Someone’s Son because that is what I want people to remember when they pass by someone in pain. I want to reframe how we see homeless people. I want to normalise the human experience, and also know that we as society can rise up and make change happen. It has happened since we created fire.

So many times in history people felt too overwhelmed to fight back. But when they did, change happened and history was written. We of the human spirit have won wars, overturned dictatorships, have removed corrupt kingdoms… and life moves on.

The power we have guides me and inspires me. It is time to wake up. In the film each of the people we meet are connected to me, to my life, to my story. All the charities and organisation you meet have come together to take on this war. And I know, if society backs it, we can topple this crumbling system. And we know how to do it. That is what this film is about. We have just launched a kickstarter campaign to raise money to distribute it, to not just get it into cinemas, but to put on community screenings hopefully in ever community in the UK. I want to open up empathy, and understanding, and to start a revolution. I hope we can meet our target. I believe we can.

Lorna Tucker is a filmmaker whose work includes Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist and Thursdays. Support her kickstarter campaign here.