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preventing homelessness

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May 7, 2016 By Rebecca White

Understanding behaviour

There are times when I’m so exhausted by thinking about what we do that I don’t know what I think any more.  These times are helped by coming across someone else having the same thought and being braver than me, by saying it.  Approbation of our thought process is sometimes needed to move forward and this has happened twice this week in different ways.  My peers at the School for Social Entrepreneurs on Wednesday helped me to see the challenges of scaling up and personnel in a new way.  It had been lurking in my thoughts, but when five people are saying the same thing, it gives your thoughts a new validity and unlocks action.  I also struggle massively with the negative connotations that surround us about people on benefits, low incomes and the material choices people make.  When you’ve been championing a cause for so long and witness so much obstruction, it is natural to question your own belief system and start to wonder if the media, who have a vested interested in getting viewers, are right after all.   Lisa Mckenzie wrote a book about life on the Nottingham estate where she grew up entitled ‘Getting By’.  In it she brings honesty to the Jeremy Kyle conundrum of why when we’re struggling for money we go and buy something we can’t afford.  The first point is that most of us buy things we can’t really afford a lot of the time.  This is not a symptom of one group of people.  Secondly, if life is really, really tough and you’re living day-to-day financially, is it that wrong to buy a pair of nice shoes?  If that’s the first thing that has made you feel good about yourself in months, then isn’t it the purchase of a kind of therapy akin to yoga, a gym membership or a good meal?  Of course we can get into the consequences of not paying the rent or the electricity bill, but who am I to stand in judgement of someone who wants a bit of ‘feel good’ when so little does? I’m off for a run in my expensive running shoes…

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