Homeless problem up the junction

In the early hours of that morning, a co-ordinated headcount by Oxford City Council and Oxford Night Shelter discovered that 16 people were sleeping in the streets. Not much romance there, but things are looking up. In September of last year, a similar exercise in arithmetic revealed that 52 people couldn't find a bed, let alone a ticket for Beethoven. According to city council leader John Tanner, there are those involved in local municipal affairs to whom homelessness, especially among the young, is not a priority. They would, he claims drily, prefer to spend any available monies on the building of fine concert halls.

This is, he adds, one of the "varied reasons" why the proposed Junction project - the £8m centre for homeless young people due to be built in the city centre in St Ebbe's - has encountered opposition and planning difficulties.

St Ebbe's is Cllr Tanner's ward. For once, lack of money is not the root of the problem. The Junction, he believes, would answer the issue of "social exclusion" and "Would help take 16 to 25-year olds off the street and welfare and into training and work. This would help them to become useful citizens later on and not drift into lives of crime or drugs. These are young people who have perhaps quarrelled with their families and been kicked out. The wealthy of Oxford can send their children to Italy or the USA for a year if they fall out - but we can't all afford to do that," he adds.

The Junction is a Government-backed project which has had more teething troubles than an infant with pyorrhoea, despite being the city council's Millennium project baby. Planning rows continue to drag on and now time is running out if the £8m of Government and housing association money is to be retained. About £4m of the sum would be used to build the centre, which would consist of 32 long-term bedsits - a "Foyer" - and a further 18 beds available on a nightly basis as part of the city's Bridge scheme to help the homeless. There would also be provision for a workshop and for interview rooms. The other half of the money would be used to run the scheme for its first five years. Planning for the project has been agreed in outline and rejected in detail. According to Cllr Tanner: "There are people involved who are using planning arguments to defeat the scheme and cause trouble.

"Their objections are not planning considerations but have resulted in the plan being turned down on detailed grounds. We don't have a great deal of time left. Seeda - the South East England Development Agency - want a decision by the end of November, or they may be forced to pull the plug financially. And that would be a tragedy for homeless 16 to 25-year olds and bad for Oxford's name," he says. However, a compromise is to be brokered. "We'll suggest that scheme goes ahead on the same site but that the long foyer of the building should be broken up into parts," Cllr Tanner explains.

"We will offer to redesign the main building." (One of the objections made so far is that plans for the Junction make it look like a "prison" or a "barracks".) "We'll also suggest cutting out the direct access to the Bridge and find an alternative site for it somewhere else in the city centre, while still retaining the close link between the Bridge and the Junction, because Seeda are keen to see a flow between the two. This will go to planning committee in about two weeks time and we want to get an indication from them that this would be acceptable. If they say 'no', then the scheme is dead in the water." One of the ironies of democracy here is that the city council cannot appeal against turning itself down. But as Cllr Tanner says, another strategy to ensure Junction success would be to have one of the 18 project partners put in a parallel planning application and then appeal against its being turned down, when it is hoped that a Government adjudicator would put a stop to the squabbling and say, "Start building". "We hope that it doesn't come to that," says Cllr Tanner. He believes that the Lib Dems and the Greens "Want to cause trouble for the ruling party - that's their job - and so do one or two Labour members. Some residents of the area argue that there are already too many institutions dealing with people in need in the area, but the Junction is more like a student Hall of Residence than a Nightshade and my feeling is that if you live in the city centre, these things go with the territory. Others oppose the scheme because they want to do it down at all costs." Certainly among John Tanner's party, there are voices of dissent - one of which is that of Cllr Bob Hoyle. "I think there are two issues here, " he says. "And my view is that they are separate ones. There's the planning application issue, which is purely about the building and not liking the institutional look of it around a landmark area. Then there is the question of how the project stacks up, in terms of the effect on residents and the interaction between them and the Foyer and Direct Access people."

The Liberal Democrat view, according to David Connett, recognises the dilemma involved. "The Foyer idea is absolutely essential in Oxford and its aims are brilliant," he says. But he also offers the view that perhaps the money could be put to better use by acquiring somewhere like the closed old folks accommodation of Oseney Court for the Junction project, selling the proposed site in St Ebbe's and allocating a sum of about £2m for the Bridge scheme.

Green's leader Mike Woodin sits on the council's planning, strategy and resources committee. The Greens say that they support the aims of the Junction and are very aware of the need for "second stage" accommodation and that they have a "lot of sympathy with local residents". Mick Morley is a local resident. At 72, he still works part-time, driving one of the tour buses that take the tourists of Oxford past places like the Sheldonian Theatre, but seldom near venues such as the Nightshelter or the Salvation Army hostel.

Mick and his wife have lived in their Paradise Square home for almost 14 years. He worked for British Leyland at Cowley for 37 years and has a grown-up daughter. He is not averse to the idea of The Junction, but he would rather that it was somewhere else rather than yards away from his front door. "There are already so many of this type of accommodation. I don't think that there's a need for another," he says. "I agree with the idea - but I don't think blowing £8m on accommodation for 50 people on a piece of land worth at least £3.5m -so I'm told - is a good move. The old people's home that's just been shut down on Botley Road - surely they could convert that? I've no objection to these places, but there are enough drunks in the gutter round here as it is. They are encouraging too much of it in one area. These people are tossed out into the streets at eight in the morning, so we'll have another 50-odd bods 'looking for something'.

"I think that something needs doing about the problem, but I just object to it being done here. Try moving this scheme up to the Banbury Road and it wouldn't have got past the first planning stage." Mick Morley served his country in Palestine as a long-range gunner in the Royal Artillery. His comments are just part of the well-aimed salvoes that make up the ammunition of the Residents of St Ebbe's Society. They have fought plans for the Junction from the start and are unlikely to declare a cease-fire now. But time is running out.

Very few, if any, homeless people choose a kerb for a pillow and the sky for a roof - unless they have nowhere else to go. Few people would deny that the homeless have a right to accommodation - unless that accommodation and others like it are to be built on their doorsteps. Oxford is a city of blatant contrasts. High art and Beethoven at The Sheldonian Theatre, homelessness and beggars around the corner. A place where Fur Elise never meets Buddy Can You Spare a Dime? A place then, that needs a Junction.

Story date: Wednesday 03 November

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.