This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter.

I still recall the first time I saw someone sleeping rough. It was during a family holiday to London in 1977.

I couldn't understand it. Why would anyone sleep on the street, I asked my mum. I remember feeling that it was the most awful thing I’d ever witnessed. 

How could everyone just walk by and not help - not even look these people in the eye.

It scared me. It wasn’t the homeless people who frightened me, but the thought forming in my mind, as a child, that there was something so cold in our society that it was deadly.

Years later, in my twenties, I worked with homeless people for a few years, and came to understand all the dreadful reasons that can bring another human being to the point where they’ve no place to go but the pavement.

One often repeated story was that of an abusive childhood leading to time in the care system and a failed education. 

From there, it was often a straight line to drugs, crime, and prison. After prison, the descent continued. Death - sometimes suicide, sometimes overdose - was often the endpoint.

Other stories were about mental illness. There are many military veterans on the streets, suffering with PTSD. 

Sometimes divorce or redundancy just knocks someone so badly that they lose their home, start drinking and soon it’s a bed in a shop doorway.

There but for the grace of God, I thought every time I heard these terrible life stories.

The flip-side of all this, of course, is the........

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