What’s the problem?
Who?
What's the problem?
What do you mean what's the problem? We're recording.
Are you on camera?
Yeah.
So, there must be a problem if you're speaking on camera. You must mean something
You must be worth something
No, I’m good mate. I’m good. I’m good, mate.
You can't be good, man,. What are you saying? What are you saying?
What do you mean 'what are you saying'?
Talk to me, man. What’s your problem?
It’s a documentary.
It's not my problem. I'm talking about a problem …
If you're speaking about it on camera, you can talk to it about me, can't you?
Obviously you want people who know about it so …
Listen, yeah, all right, we’re talking about homelessness and all that shit in Stoke.
We’re talking about social problems.
This winter, homelessness became big news in Stoke-on-Trent.
Jeanette and her husband, Jacko, set up a DIY meal service.
Yep.
Pork dinner or sausage casserole?
I'm going to have to go for a pork dinner, sorry.
Pork dinner?
We actually run by donations from the public, it keeps us ticking over, you know.
We have to put some money in of our own, but we are provided well, pretty well by the public.
We’ve seen a lot more new faces. Robbo, how long have you been coming to us now?
Er, just over a month. It’s getting a hell of a lot worse, the situation in Stoke-on-Trent itself.
Yeah, Von.
See you later.
All right. Goodnight, mate.
As Hanley develops, the police have been stepping up efforts
to move rough sleepers and antisocial behaviour out of the town centre.
We’re not allowed to give sleeping bags out anymore in case people leave them anywhere
Who says that?
The police say that, because it makes us look homeless, even though we are homeless.
So, where are you sleeping tonight man?
In that car there.
All right.
Three weeks we’ve been here.
Stan’s put this on for try and keep a bit more warmth in.
Oooh.
That's the tent.
So you imagine all that on our chests.
Yvonne and Stan are regulars at Jeanette’s meal service.
Like a lot of rough sleepers, their story is complicated.
I was having problems with my ex-partner, Stan had left his wife, we were sofa surfing
because we were sofa surfing they were saying we weren’t priority.
They asked us to move on so obviously we ended up getting a tent.
Do you need your headphones?
Yeah.
Nice coffee, release my chest.
Stan and Yvonne have been offered places at hostels, but they were barred from one place for drug taking.
Another of the shelters don’t let couples stay together
so for now, the prefer to stay together in their tent, but life on the street has taken its toll on their relationship.
The bloke was talking to me, I'm sorry.
Oh, forget it.
When I have a fag, right, I flip it.
I was talking, you said its rude not …
I don't care, you flip it then. You flip it
You've got a 50 gram pouch of baccy in your bag.
No, having a fag is completely different to having a baccy.
You have to roll it when you've got fingers, fingers, my fingers are like this
I'll get you a cigarette in a minute.
I'll get it myself.
First time I saw her I fell in love with her, I was married but I fell in love, I found my soul mate.
He said his other half.
Yeah, my other half.
And, obviously argue all the time and frustration and angry.
Like many others we’ve met on the streets, Stan and Yvonne use the synthetic drug Black Mamba.
All it is, is like
Oh, hold on a minute.
Tobacco.
You can't see nothing in it.
But what, so you just put Mamba in there?
Just a little sprinkle, yes.
Just puts him on the stable and
warms him up.
Before he uses whatever I mix in the grinder, we always put another layer of baccy first
and then sprinkle that on the top.
so it's not overpowering.
Well, we do smoke it though, don't we, just to get us by.
Because we’re on the streets.
Tracey has been in and out of housing since she was 14 and is also a longtime mamba user.
You just feel worthless, don’t you?
It’s embarrassing, isn’t it. It’s horrible.
All the time.
Mamba's like, its the new Spice, isn't it, what's come into the area, Mamba is.
Everybody's hooked on it in Hanley at the moment.
Just deadens all your feelings, stops all your feelings altogether.
So you feel nothing, nothing at all. You don't even feel the cold. You feel nothing, nothing. Nothing at all, duck.
The nothingness is better than having something, if you know what I mean.
Basically, by the age of 14 I was addicted to heroin.
Living on the streets
in and out of housing, then through my kids, being in and out of housing, through having my kids
then as the kids are getting older, back in and out of housing, back on the street, off the street
on the streets, off the streets, in, out of life. It's just no living.
It's dead, gone.
It's the only thing what I could stop, stop, stop myself from hurting.
Ta, bab.
Horrible.
After a series of complaints from local residents and business owners, the council brought in
a new public space protection order for the centre of Hanley.
The police are coming down for move everybody on because they don’t want no Mamba heads
or dust heads in the town, so they come around in the riot van to move everybody on and push everybody away.
They must have having a shakeup this morning.
It’s all day, just move on, move on, move on, it doesn’t stop, its just all day you’re being moved like that.
They don’t want it in the town, where people are coming shopping and everything. They try and get it out the town.
It just won’t happen, Hanley’s been known for drugs for a long time. Won’t happen, duck.
Buried in the consultation, is a proposal
to fine people up to £1,000 for erecting tents in the centre.
The local newspaper, The Sentinel, goes big on the fine. The story goes national
and the council have a PR nightmare on their hands.
Before long, people will be getting fined a £1,000 for being in a tent. Where did that come from?
It was from the council.
They couldn’t do it, they can’t.
But they were.
But they can't.
Come on then, speed it up.
Back at Jeanette’s meal service, rumours are flying about the new crackdown.
If we get caught with a tent inside a tent inside a sleeping bag in Hanley,
we get a £1,000 fine. It might as well be a million pound
because it’s irrelevant, we can’t pay it. So you might as well just put me in jail straight away.
No, we do it. We were told by the police last year not to give tents out
but they know where the tents are coming from, because they’ve seen us actually giving the tents out.
So they know it’s us. So you know, probably expect a knock on the door, you know, to say don’t do it again
but we will cross that road when we get to it.
Oh, that's nice.
Jeanette is not the only person who’s angry
a huge public response led to the council apologising and dropping the fines proposal.
They made it clear it was only ever a consultation aimed at tackling what is a complex problem.
You’re not helping them by, you know what I mean, taking away their sleeping bag and telling them to fuck off
because they’re just going to fuck off round the corner. If you fuck them off out of Hanley
they’re going to fuck up in Sneyd Green.
You fuck them out of there, they’re gonna go up Cobridge, you know what I mean.
Let’s say this did get the frigging city of culture and what not
I don’t really see how it’s going to affect the people that, you know what I mean,
are struggling, kind of like a divide. That’s what it feels like, there’s a big divide.
The weather is getting colder and a community policeman turns up
and tries to persuade Stan and Yvonne to spend a night in one of Stoke-on-Trent’s shelters.
I just want to make sure that you’re all right, and I don't end up with somebody freezing to death.
Hanley is the face of the new, ambitious forward-looking Stoke-on-Trent.
This was a misstep in the council’s attempts to bring investment and rebranding to the centre.
You know the boards here look full of nice photographs.
There you go.
There's a picture of a guy.
Thousands of photos were submitted by the public to make a mosaic of a single face.
Can you see yourself on there?
Nope.
I think it’s just people what’s put photographs in, isn’t it?
What happened to your Ken and Anna case where you were living before?
Stan and Yvonne tell their friend why they got kicked out of the last hostel.
As petty as it is, lad, you broke their rules.
So we can't complain, can we?
You now, fucking there's always two sides to a story, that's what you've got to understand.
Joseph was also homeless when he was younger and was chosen as a symbol of hope.
Stan and Yvonne are waiting for housing from the council and, for now, are still in their tent.
It could be minus two again, how the ground is getting solid again.
It’s not good, is it?
No, it's not.