THOMAS ERNSTING/BILDERBERG-NETWORK DOWN AND OUT: Around 10% of Europe’s homeless are rough sleepers, like these men in Frankfurt

Down And Out In Europe
	The number of homeless in Western Europe is at its highest level in 50 years — and rising. What should be done? | By APARISIM GHOSH

Big Sid tells lies. During the course of a single three-hour conversation on a London street corner, he relates his life story four times, each version more fantastical than the last. In one, he swims to the middle of the Thames in midwinter to rescue a drowning dog. In another, he vanquishes a phalanx of machete-wielding skinheads with his bare hands. Sid is a black man who says his parents came to Britain from the Caribbean, but the specific biographical details he serves up vary so dramatically he might easily be talking about three or four completely different people; the narrative inconsistencies mount as he works his way through a two-liter bottle of hard cider. By the halfway point, he's contradicting himself almost every other sentence, and lapsing into incoherent repetitions of his two favorite phrases: "short-term" and "long-term."

Depending on which version of the saga you believe, Big Sid was born in South London, or in Yorkshire; he's a high school dropout, or played football at university; he was married (and divorced) twice, or never. He may be 35, or 40. He claims to be utterly alone in the world, an orphan with no relatives at all, but asked if he will allow himself to be photographed for this article, he balks. "I have family, man," he says, his high voice abruptly dropping to an embarrassed whisper. "I don't want them to pick up your magazine and see me in this condition."

His condition is the one certain, cruel, truth about Big Sid: he is homeless. On this bitterly cold winter night, he will make a bed of flattened cardboard boxes in the recessed doorway of a music store, squeeze into a fluorescent green sleeping bag that's too small for his angular 2-m frame, and rest his bald head on an old postman's sack that contains his every possession. He's been a rough sleeper for much of his adult life, wandering from city to city in a near-constant alcoholic haze. Once or twice a year, he will go to a shelter for homeless people, to get out of inclement weather or to have a doctor look at the sores on his feet. But these interludes rarely last more than a few days: Sid finds sustained human company stressful, and is deeply suspicious of anything that smacks of officialdom. "The shelters are okay for short-term, for a bath and medical treatment," he says, "but they aren't for long-term, man, not for me."

	"That Europe's homelessness problem is roughly the same as America's is a shock. After all, Europe sees itself as more socially responsible than the U.S. "

Finding long-term solutions for people like Big Sid is an enormous — and growing — challenge for Western Europe, where homelessness has quietly been climbing to levels not seen since the end of World War II. Hard numbers are scarce, but according to the European Federation of National Organizations Working with the Homeless (FEANTSA), a Brussels-based umbrella body of homeless organizations, at least 3 million Western Europeans are homeless this winter — and between one-fifth and one-third of them are members of homeless families. Only a small proportion, less than 10%, sleep rough like Big Sid; most huddle into shelters or temporary housing, live in shanties, or bed down in the houses of friends and family. Think homelessness is an American problem? Think again. As a percentage of population, it's as bad in Europe as it is in the U. S., where there are an estimated 2 million homeless, according to Dennis Culhane, a social-policy expert at the University of Pennsylvania, who extrapolates his figure from attendance at homeless facilities in nine U.S. jurisdictions.

That Europe's homelessness problem is roughly the same as America's — and that one of the fastest-growing segments of Europe's homeless population is families — is a shock. After all, Europe sees itself as kinder, gentler and more socially responsible than the U.S., with an extensive, expensive social safety net that's designed to nurture and protect the most vulnerable sections of the populace — the kind of people who are thrown to the wolves in winner-take-all America. But that might just be the point: it's easier to be homeless in Europe, where even the down-and-out get social-welfare checks.

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