Now is the time for solutions…
Over sixty attendees joined a host of speakers in discussing solutions to homelessness and its related issues.
Homeless World Cup is embedded in Edinburgh. From Mel Young’s golden handprints in the stone outside the City Chambers to memories of the 2005 tournament held in the capital, as the organisation’s co-Founder recalls:
“Twenty years ago, we’d planned to have the tournament in New York and for various reasons we then couldn’t. City of Edinburgh Council then came along and enabled us to put it on in Princes Street Gardens. So we’ve a lot to be grateful to the Council for because it then became a springboard to tournaments we’ve held all over the world.”
Last month a special Cities Ending Homelessness Forum saw Edinburgh again at the forefront of the discussion - and it’s a discussion that continues to pain Mel.
“In spite of all the good work that’s going on, the problem is persisting and getting worse,” he says. “Although we’ll continue with football tournaments and have more countries involved, we want to make an even greater impact so decided we needed to have a discussion where we’re bringing together all the players from the charities, the NGO sector who are doing good work, academics, policy makers and researchers.
“We’re fed up talking about what the problems are - we want to have the solutions and see how we can scale them to, for example, a city like Edinburgh.”
Images and Words: Isobel Irvine
So, Cities Ending Homelessness came to life. The Forum was launched in Sacramento in July 2023, continued last September in Seoul and will have its next incarnation in Oslo later this month.
“What we’ve done in Edinburgh is a tributary towards the third Forum in Oslo,” he continues.
“What we need to do is bring ‘not the usual’ suspects round the table - all sorts of people from other sectors who can come up with all sorts of innovation and tech solutions to issues in the world and say, ‘Can you apply that to the issue of homelessness?’
“I think what was really interesting today was that lots of people came out, got involved in the discussion, were listening hard and contributing. Our message around all this is ‘try to be constructive’ - that isn’t always easy when you’re in a situation which is, frankly, diabolical.”
Though Mel was delighted with the discussions and relationships built on at the event, he’s first to admit things weren’t always that way, particularly at the time of his initial involvement with the Big Issue in Edinburgh in the early 1990s.
“We were angry people,” he admits. “The institutions were getting blamed by the charities for everything and we could have had a better dialogue.”
When the Scottish Parliament was established in 1999, one of the first things it did was announce a Homeless Taskforce. Mel was asked to join it but, “I thought it was a joke - we wanted action, not to get into this talking shop stuff,” he recalls.
“Then the Minister phoned me up and said, ‘You can either take it as a request or an instruction.’ So, we joined and other charities joined but there were a lot of fractious relationships, even between charities.
“Over time, however, those differences have been put aside and we’re seeing the emergence of a genuine collaboration - here’s the problem in this city, so how are we going to work together to find those solutions.