“They’re not ‘The Other”

Rewriting the Story of St Andrews’ Beggars

Off Market Street sits a man in his 60s with a grey beard, a winter puffer, and boots he says have left his toes numb. He has a pot with a few coins that passersby have tossed in, a handwritten sign detailing his time in “Her Majesty’s troops,” and two teddies that have brought him “luck and good people.”

His name is Crawford. He lives in temporary accommodation through Fife Council, and he is — in his own words — a ‘beggar.’ But there’s more to his story. “This is not me,” he said. “I’m not this person that’s sitting here.” 

Do we stereotype the beggars we pass on our way to class? What does poverty look like in an exorbitantly wealthy town like St Andrews? To find out, I interviewed Crawford and spoke with two local food banks and a housing charity.

Crawford grew up in St Andrews. His family owned a hotel in town, and his father was a local councillor. “That’s my parents. They were good people, and sadly, they’d be very disappointed to see me where I am in my life right now.” 

He spent a few years in the army then moved abroad to sell clubs: the Canary Islands, then Spain, Thailand, and Bali. “I had a good job at one time, had a good brain at one time,” he said.

When COVID-19 hit, Crawford “lost everything” — he avoided specifics. As he’s grown older, he’s developed short-term memory loss, which has made it hard to get a job. When we talked he couldn’t remember how long ago the pandemic was. He moved back to St Andrews to live with his brother, who arranged a job for him at his company. This fell through, though, as shortly after arriving, his brother was sent to jail. Right now, Crawford is waiting to hear from the Army to see if he’ll receive veteran’s aid. His current form of income is the Jobseeker’s Allowance, but he is hoping to switch to a Personal Independence Payment.

Few of Crawford’s friends and family know he is in temporary accommodation. He has a daughter in her twenties who lives abroad, but she thinks Crawford is living with his brother.

“She knows nothing about daddy — she still calls me daddy — she knows nothing about daddy, and she never will,” Crawford said. He hasn’t been in touch with his daughter for a while. “I’m going to go and phone her, maybe today because I’ve got the money. I might just put a pound or two toward a phone box and phone her. I think she needs to speak to her daddy and know where he is so she can relax.”

While I was talking to Crawford, a woman dropped a few pounds in his bucket. He called out, “Thank you so much ma’am; stay warm; have a good night.” Then, he turned to me.“I like to think I’ve still got my manners… Sometimes people are rude to me, but I close my ears to them.” With this money, Crawford pays for his shopping, electricity, heating, and payphones — he doesn’t have a smartphone.

During our interview, a man stopped on the pavement to take a photo of Crawford —  without asking permission. People like that leave Crawford with a bad taste in his mouth, he told me. 

Meeting Crawford left me wondering how society sees people experiencing homelessness. Are there groups fighting to change this? To find out, I spoke with Brian Smith, Chief Executive of Transform Community Development, a local housing support group that gives out food deliveries and discounted furniture to people in need. 

When someone is experiencing homelessness, this is often symptomatic of other issues, Smith told me: like gender-based violence, mental health struggles, or substance abuse. People misunderstand that — Smith criticised local press coverage “calling people ‘junkies,’ talking about ‘the other.’ They’re not the other [...] I know there are some people who would just like to drive them into the [River] Eden or the North Sea or whatever, but they’re part of our community.”

Scotland is one of the few countries in the world that classifies housing as a human right. Anyone at risk of losing their house can seek support from their local Housing Office, who will then refer them to organisations like Storehouse, a St Andrews food bank, or Starter Packs, a Dundee and Angus charity that gives free household goods to people who need them.

Starter Packs administrator Fiona Fox told me about one man her charity had helped. “This is a guy who’s lost everything,” Fox said. “He lost his family through addiction, his job, all the rest of it.” Whenever she’d see him, he looked “worse for wear.” But, after a couple of years helping him out, Fox remembered seeing him come into Starter Packs looking noticeably healthier and wanting to make his own donation. “That was an ‘oh my goodness’ moment,” Fox said. “The support he’d gotten in the beginning had come back full circle.”

She also spoke about a couple who were living out of their car. Once, the couple had had everything — “and when I say everything, they were at the top of their game. They were doing really well with their work, and financially they had holidays, cars, everything you could imagine people would wish for.” But one bad financial choice took everything from them. 

Well-off people “can’t imagine what it’s like to have to worry about where the next meal is coming from,” Fox told me. “They can’t imagine that because they’re not in that situation… It’s just about being considerate and not judging.”

Hannah Cheek, who works for Dundee and Angus Food Bank, agreed with Fox. 

“If you’ve not got savings [...] it doesn’t take much before you suddenly realise, ‘Oh wait, I actually can’t afford to put food on the table this month.’”

Back among Crawford and his teddies, I asked what he saw for his future. “With hopefully the help of the right people, I will go up again,” he told me. “I shall rise; I shall be somebody again. I will not be doing what I’m doing currently.”

To help fight the housing crisis, students can join St Candrews, a society which collects for food banks.

Illustration by Lucy Maitland-Lewis