Liz Everett, London Bureau

I love living in London for the semester. I love living in a big city for the first time in my life, having been born and raised in South Bend. And I love walking across bridges. For those who don’t know, Notre Dame students studying abroad in London stay across the Thames river from Trafalgar Square, where our classroom building resides, in the heart of the city. So I cross one of several bridges several times a day and walk the busy, crowded streets. It’s exciting and new and different. It’s also opened my eyes to the problem of homelessness in a way I’ve never encountered before. And I’m not sure what to do about it.

On a given day, I pass between 5-10 homeless people sitting on the streets, holed up in an underpass, or leaning against the side of a bridge. In the hustle and bustle of rushing to class or carrying home groceries from the store, it is easy to stare straight ahead, to become blind and deaf for a few convenient seconds. Other times, when you make eye contact on a slow meander on a rare sunny day, these people become anything but convenient. Because you realize that they are people, each with his or her own story, with the same eyes that watch you pass by day after day. And all of a sudden your senses refuse to falter for that convenient moment, and begin to work properly.

What is the proper response to this? I cannot help everybody, but that certainly does not excuse me from helping somebody. And yet what are the criteria I use to judge who is worthy of my eighty pence? Why was the old man sitting on Stamford Street any more deserving than the other hundred people I have passed in my few weeks here?

Actual numbers for homelessness are difficult to gauge, because there are many hidden sleepers that are hard to account for. According to the Thames Reach, a London-based charity that works with homeless men and women, an estimated 450 people sleep rough on any one night in London, and 5,678 different people slept rough over a year in London (2011-2012).

There are, of course, others who have noticed this problem and are doing much more about it. The Missionaries of Charity have a house in Southwark, and they go out into the streets 6 days a week, ministering to those in need by giving food, coffee, and blankets. They run a soup kitchen out of their convent on Sundays, and run a hostel for single homeless men aged 30-60 with low support needs, particularly those who have been sleeping rough in the streets.

Renée Roden, a junior theater and theology major studying in London for the semester, recently became involved with the Missionaries of Charity house in London, where she volunteers on Sunday afternoons in the soup kitchen.

“I initially became interested because I will be working with the Missionaries of Charity this summer in Calcutta, and I jumped at the opportunity to work with them here,” Roden said. “But then as I became more aware of the problem of homelessness in London, it became easier to cope with passing people on the street.”

Programs such as the Thames Reach and the Missionaries of Charity are certainly a start, and perhaps the best way to address the widespread issue of homelessness, barring any sort of legislation or social reform. In their own way, each program responds to the homeless men and women they encounter with compassion and love, treating them with dignity. The Thames Reach seeks to support them in a variety of ways, not simply on meeting their immediate physical needs, but help them develop new skills and possibly reconnect with family or friends.

One of my favorite quotes is from author Kate DiCamillo, who links the art of writing and telling stories to the art of paying attention to the people around her, “I cannot control whether or not I am talented,” she writes, “but I can pay attention. I can make an effort to see.” Being in London so far has challenged my efforts to see, especially when it would be so much easier to do otherwise.

Liz Everett is a junior PLS and English major studying in London for the semester. She averages about four cups of tea a day. Contact her at eeveret1@nd.edu.