Former homeless man spends 1000 hours volunteering with charity during the pandemic

“I would rather be helping others. If I had sat at home with Covid going on I would have been drinking,” former homeless Londoner Lee said about clocking up 1,000 hours selflessly volunteering during the pandemic.

“I remember someone saying to me ‘you need to keep busy and get structure into your life, otherwise you’ll go downhill and start drinking again’.”

“Volunteering has helped me keep sober too. I’ve been volunteering for five years and April  marked five years of me being clean from drink and drugs. It’s given me a purpose to get up in the morning and something to focus my mind on.”

He was living on the streets on and off for 26 years and says he now has too much to lose to fall off the wagon.

Lee first slept rough when he was 18 and arrived at Leicester Square after his family said enough was enough when he started experimenting with drink and drugs.

He quickly fell in with a group of older people who would drink with him and send him out begging.

“When I was sleeping at Leicester Square I did not feel safe. I was 18 and I didn’t know anything,” he said.

“You have always got to be on your guard sleeping rough. I was once dragged in my sleeping bag into the road and left there by people who were laughing.”

Over the years he’s stayed with friends and slept around Westminster and the King’s Road in Chelsea and tried to kick his drinking habit.

“I was staying in people’s houses and hostels. I used to go back to Westminster begging to make money, I got hooked on it.”

“I was slowly addicted to being on the streets,” he said.

But life on the streets took its toll.

Lee has never had a job – something he’s keen to change and hopes to go to college to build on his skills.

He hopes to learn more IT skills as well as maths and reading. Next up the 50-year-old plans to join the library.

Eventually he got help after the team at Chelsea Methodist Church contacted the No Second Night Out team and he went to a detox centre in Sussex, before getting help at the Turning Point centre in Tooting.

“Ever since then I’ve stayed sober. It’s five years in April,” he said.

“I took the chance when I had it and I worked for it.

“It’s been brilliant having a home. My neighbours are great and I feel safe. I shut my door and cook my own food. I’ve never done that before.”

With St Mungo’s help he’s now living in a housing association flat in Shepherd’s Bush, west London.

He was already volunteering with the homeless charity after joining their multi-skills course at St Mungo’s Recovery College where he learnt painting and decorating, tiling and plumbing skills when the pandemic struck.

At the hotel, in Waterloo, Lee supported clients with food deliveries, cleaning and moral support. He also helped clients with benefits applications so many of them could move on into other accommodations.

He’d also helped with their outreach team who go out every night to offer rough sleepers support and the first steps off the streets.

So he started helping clients brought in off the street as part of the government’s Everybody In scheme, launched when lockdown started to protect the homeless from the pandemic.

He’s one of 467  St Mungo’s volunteers who helped out during the pandemic and supported nearly 1,500 Londoners to find longer-term homes.

“Obviously I was scared of Covid and wary of it. But I got the jab as a key worker,” he says.

He now helps get breakfast for the 100 guests at a hotel in Waterloo and supports them in their next step to getting a permanent home. When people leave for new accommodation it feels great, he explained.

Lee also backed the opening of London’s first detox  service especially for the homeless which has just opened at St Thomas’s Hospital near Waterloo.

“It will help so many people not to go back on the street and to square one,” he says. They are giving them follow ups to help them stay sober.”

As the economic cost of the pandemic bites it’s feared more people could be left on the streets.

Lee urges people “to show them kindness and understanding.”

“We know there were people sleeping rough during the pandemic. If you just smile and wave your hand you make people feel better. A lot of people buy homeless food. If you see them there for a long time go back and ask if this is where they sleep and make a street referral,” he said.