If you live in a big city, chances are you’re used to the sight of homeless people. In fact, your first instinct is probably to walk past them while ignoring them, because you assume that they are intoxicated or that they did something bad to deserve their current situation. But everyone deserves compassion, regardless of their situation in life, and homeless people need it most of all. Like the couple in the story you’re about to read, treating a homeless person like an equal can lead you to find out that they’re just like you, and trying their best to get by.
This was the case for Charlotte Ellis and her boyfriend Taylor Waldon, a couple from London. The story begins during a night out, when they realized that the train station was closed and they had missed their last train. They would have to wait hours until the morning train arrived, stranded in the middle of the cold with nothing but the booze in their bodies to keep them warm.
While shivering on the sidewalk, a voice behind them called out saying: “You can borrow my coat and duvet if you want? It’s a long wait and it’s freezing tonight.” Charlotte noticed that it was a homeless man, and that he was offering his own coat so that the couple could stay warm. She was moved by the gesture, and she chatted with the man, named Joey, until the early hours of the morning when her train arrived.
Charlotte decided that she couldn’t leave him behind. She refused to leave until Joey agreed to come home with her and Taylor for a “night kip, a shower, a shave and a good old meal.” They talked some more and exchanged life stories, becoming “the best of friends” in an instant. Charlotte says that she can’t explain how or why it happened, just that it was “meant to be.”
Charlotte said that her friends and family were apprehensive at first, but that they later welcomed him into the group. Her friends took Joey out for dinner, to the hairdresser, they gave him clothes and a mobile phone and played computer games with him. After less than a week of being accepted into a group of friends and family, Joey was out on his own two feet and on the road to independence.
He soon started going to job interviews, and found a job. His newly-found friends are helping him navigate the process of getting all of his documents sorted including his birth certificate and passport.
Charlotte wanted to share her story for a reason. She believed that the thing Joey needed the most was the time and friendship of a fellow human. “Just because someone is homeless, it doesn’t make them any less of a person than me or you,” she said in an interview with The Mirror, “Not all homeless people should be instantly tarnished as bad people. They are just like me and you.”
