"Moments of joy...that's what keeps us going"

What city centre street worker Nick Harrold has learned in 20 years of helping rough sleepers

Take a good, careful look at this photograph. Please. What kind of story does it suggest to you?  One of “lifestyle choice” or one of distress and isolation? How do you think this story might end?

Can you contemplate spending months sleeping there? Days, an hour even? The picture was taken by Nick Harrold, who works with Edinburgh’s homeless, and in particular its rough sleepers. He shares the picture not to intrude but to enlighten. He sees this pretty much every day.

“Sadly we don’t really come across ‘nice’ stories. Often there is no happy ending. That is why every time we do get a success it stays with us. In our work we encounter a lot of distress and misery, so when we find moments of joy we want to go on and replicate that feeling. That’s what keeps us going.”

Nick Harrold has worked with the homeless on Edinburgh’s streets for around two decades. He sees things most of us don’t – even as we walk past. People. Human beings who, sadly, all too often simply disappear in the blurred peripheral vision of busy lives.

In his seminal novel “Invisible Man,” which explores the issue of social marginalisation, US author Ralph Ellison penned the opening line: “I am an invisible man…” and then continued “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” While that 1950s book was from the perspective of race, it could equally apply to the homeless.

Nick sighs as he ponders this: “I think it is true, that a lot of people who are on the streets – especially rough sleepers – have encountered this. They become so ignored, they kind of almost disappear and that is something that would really damage anyone’s self-esteem.”

The numbers of people sleeping rough in the city centre is beginning to creep back up, even although precise data is notoriously difficult to pin down. A resolution to the issue of rough sleeping appears as hard to find as the Holy Grail – and yet we do know we can do it.

The numbers fell, to almost zero, during the Covid pandemic when resources were being increased to cut any and all sources of potential infection and spread of the virus. Since those emergency measures ended, the numbers have steadily increased again, and latest estimates are that on any given night around 35-45 people are sleeping rough in the heart of Scotland’s Capital.