What’s going on with St Peter’s Square?
‘I don’t know what the solution is. But it’s not doing that, is it?’
Dear readers — the clocks go back this weekend, which means marginally longer days, but we will still be imagining you reading these morning newsletters by candlelight. If you happen to be taking the tram into the city on your morning commute, odds are you’re getting off at St Peter’s Square, the subject of today’s main feature by Jack. Six months after a homeless encampment was cleared from beneath the porticoes on the square, they remain fenced up, with a new encampment outside. It begs the question of what the council was looking to achieve, and also brings the city’s homelessness problems back to the fore.
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By Jack Dulhanty
Mohamed wakes up just after nine and puts on a shoe. He wipes the sleep from his eyes and takes a deep breath — long exhale — then puts on the other shoe and his jacket before packing his bag. He gets out the door and sets off walking across St Peter’s Square. The trams are screeching and people are eyeing him as he walks. He pats his pockets like anyone else would after leaving home, then goes back and reopens his tent. He takes something else out and throws it in the bag. He’s going for breakfast.
Mohamed has been living in a tent on St Peter’s Square for the last three weeks. In that time, the number of tents lining the square has surged — there were around 20 yesterday morning. The last time there was that many was in April, when a pro-Palestine protest developed into a sleep-in protest and then metamorphosed into a homeless encampment.
Back then, the tents were under the square’s porticoes, a well-loved, Insta-friendly feature of the space and also a controversial one when it comes to sheltering the homeless. In March, footage of a GMP officer dragging a man in a sleeping bag from beneath the porticoes and proceeding to step on his stomach went viral and caused widespread consternation. Crisis, the homeless charity, described it as “appalling and degrading”.
It meant tensions around the city’s homeless population were high by the time the camp, which was also framed as a kind of protest, was established (“we’re showing people the homeless crisis,” Emma Mohareb, its main organiser, told me at the time.) Activists came to support the camp’s community when council officers were trying to help them get housing, often filming and reporting back on social media.
After a few weeks, the council offered 51 people living in the camp temporary accommodation. But it also fenced off the porticoes afterwards, first covering them in tarpaulin, then in hoardings advertising the co-working space behind them. Six months later and the porticoes are still inaccessible, but if that was meant to stop the tents, it hasn’t worked.
Not long after Mohamed sets off for breakfast — at the Mustard Tree, a charity in Ancoats that hosts breakfasts for refugees and the homeless — a passerby named John, formerly a councillor at Sefton Council, passes the tents and tells me, “I know there is a home for every single one of them if they want it. But they choose not to take the accommodation that is offered.” He goes on to add: “Quite frankly, they’re spurning the society that is trying to help them.”
He says he’s speaking from experience in helping homeless people get off the streets. When I mention that often homeless people are put in areas they don’t feel safe in, he says: “There might be some unsafe areas, but working people have to live in those areas, people on benefits have to live in those areas. I live in an unsafe area.”
Pearl, a twenty-something on her way to work, sees it differently. While John believes the homeless on the square are breaking the law and should be cleared, she says: “I’m glad they don’t seem to get moved on. It seems pretty safe and, I think, quite lit up at night.” Angela, who I see taking pictures of the tents, says: “My thought as I was walking down here was: ‘Andy Burnham said he was going to get everybody off the streets. And now it seems worse.’” Indeed, numbers of rough sleepers recorded in Greater Manchester last year were 149, up from 102 the previous year.
A source at the city council tells me there has indeed been a rise in the number of people coming to the city and setting up tents. “A lot are under the perception they’re going to get a council house if they come to Manchester, which they aren’t,” they say. When speaking to Mohamed, he tells me he came to Manchester from Birmingham, and now, “I want to live here, in Manchester. I want a home.”
The closure of the porticoes has raised questions around how, in the midst of a housing crisis, Manchester’s homeless population can best be supported — while also keeping public spaces safe and accessible to everyone at a time when those spaces have been continually restricted.
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