York's streets at 5am: meeting the city's rough sleepers

In the lee of a food distribution warehouse near the city centre, five people are sleeping rough, their sleeping bags drawn across their faces.

“Morning!” says Charlie Malarkey, leaning in to check on each of them.

There’s a muffled response. One person sits up blearily.

“All right?” Charlie asks.

The response is a grunt. But satisfied they’re OK, for now at least, Charlie moves on.

Welcome to the Salvation Army’s daily early-morning check on the city’s rough sleepers.

Five days a week, Charlie or a member of his team are out in all weather, doing the rounds of rough sleepers to make sure they’re OK - and to offer them the chance of a hot snack or invite them for a chat to the Salvation Army’s drop-in centre.

The Salvation Army's Charlie Malarkey checks on a rough sleeper in York city centre (Image: Stephen Lewis)

To join Charlie on his rounds is to understand how complex the problem of rough sleeping is, and what a range of factors – drink, substance abuse, relationship breakdown, mental ill-health – contribute to people being on the streets.

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Charlie knows where to go – and he’s trusted by those he checks on.

In the well of a block of flats, ‘Adam’ has made himself a bed in a sheltered corner.

He stirs when Charlie checks on him, then sits up to talk.

He’s been on the streets for 16 months. “I had a flat for 18 years, I had a job,” he said.

But he stopped working when his mum died - and gradually the cost of living and the complexity of modern life got on top of him.

“’They’ just kept asking for more,” he said. “More tax, more rent, more gas, more electric. Just asking for more, more.”

Unable to cope, he ended up on the street.

Now, the 40-year-old says, there are no pressures on him. He spends his days doing ‘absolutely nothing’.

He occasionally gets picked on by youths. “But I’ve got nothing to worry about. I don’t have to do anything for anybody.”

Charlie Malarkey at a popular site with rough sleepers near York city centre (Image: Stephen Lewis)

Charlie checks on more rough sleepers in the city centre; a woman curled up with her dog in the well of a shop; a couple - both addicts - sharing blankets near a public building.

One man has bedded down on some steps leading up to a restaurant – he spoke to the managers, he says, who let him sleep here.

He’s been on the street for six months. He used to work nights, and his partner worked days. They drifted apart because they never saw each-other – and here he is.

He’s always worked, he says – but finding work when you don’t have a home address isn’t easy.

He hasn’t experienced a winter on the streets yet. “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.” Then, with optimism: “Hopefully in three months I won’t be in this situation.”

Another man, sleeping in the porch of a well-known public building, admits he ‘hates being inside’: it makes him feel trapped.

He once ran a café in Hull: but one day he just walked out of his flat.

When he’s indoors he starts seeing and hearing things. “I would hear people breaking in, coming through the window - though there was nobody there.”

Charlie Malarkey checks on a rough sleeper who lives in a tent just outside York city centre (Image: Stephen Lewis)

On a patch of scrubland just outside the city centre, a man has set up home in a tent. He’s OK today. But in a public park in the centre of York, Charlie comes across another man who's insensible with drink.

He’s lying sprawled on his sleeping bag, and barely responds when Charlie checks on him.

If he was covered in vomit, Charlie would call an ambulance.

As it is, he thinks he’s OK. But the future doesn’t look good.

“He’s drinking a lot,” Charlie said. “If he carries on like this, there’s not going to be a happy ending for him.”