The "Beggars of St. Mungo's." By Uncle Monty.

The "Beggars of St. Mungo's."

By Uncle Monty

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St. Mungo’s at Covent Garden’s Endell Street
is set to reopen for the homeless after a major

£3.2 million refurbishment of the men’s hostel,
which was plagued with community opposition
due to drug addicts and beggars that they say
have been harboured there in the past.

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Some irate community residents still publicly

claim the so-called “Beggars of St. Mungo’s”
make a 100 quid in no time. While some of the

homeless themselves have bitterly complained

that to spend over £3 million on redoing the hostel

could have been spent better in permanently re-housing
them elsewhere in the open community rather than in an
institutionalized shelter for such buggers and beggars.
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For over 25 years, St. Mungo’s – under the patronage

of The Church of England – has been at Covent Garden.
Its location has been a mecca for those seeking shelter
and help from their problems of homelessness and
social rejection in Central London. Many have been

helped and have gone on to do better and bigger

things, but there is always going to be those who

bring infamy on a good thing.
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Crack and heroin are madness and “trying to rehabil-

itate 17 year old homeless kids in the middle of London

is madness,” too, says Jo Weir, chairperson, Covent

Garden Community Association (CGCA). Then the

word “madness” is used yet again by the St. Mungo’s

resident Edwin Hilliard, 48, who says: “It’s madness

to say homeless people should not be in central

London.” Next steps in Richard Burdett, editor of
the homeless magazine The Pavement. He’s quoted
elsewhere as saying: “We can’t get ourselves into a
situation where we segregate the homeless into
ghettoes.” Well, well, just look a nearby Parker
House on Parker Street and if that is not a

homeless ghetto already and segregated from

the non-homeless, then I don’t know what is. The
homeless are by nature ghettoised by the system

and treated collectively in any kind of hostel no

matter if its called St. Mungo’s or Parker House or

something else and no matter whatever its good

aims and intentions are publicly stated to be.
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When I last stood outside of St. Mungo’s some

three years ago or more, I was too apprehensive

to go inside after I’d encountered a volley of

obscenities and urination as I stood there with

some of the troubled hostel residents, who directed

their anger at the passing public although not di-

rectly at me. I was there to enquire about staying

at St. Mungo’s myself as then an unhoused

homeless man.
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To be frank, I fled from there and have never
set eyes on the place again. Hopefully, the new
changes are now substantially better than the

past. But the £3.2 cosmetics of the building are

only skin deep. Like all cosmetic treatment
it is liable to easily fade in short order if the

treatment isn’t carefully updated regularly
to keep the cosmetic glow. The homeless
resident must feel they have a stake in the
ongoing success of St. Mungo’s at Endell

Street. That’s if it is to withstand the bick-

ering and complaints of Covent Garden
homesteaders and the local businesses

and the professionally-working people

of the area.
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I’ve yet to hear of any homeless hostel any-

where that engenders for the homeless a stake
in the place itself and to help it to grow for the
future homeless that will come after them.

Without a community stake, the homeless stay

homeless much longer than they should.

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And next time I’m down on Endell Street,

I’ll look to see if The “Beggars of St. Mungo’s”
have now re-appeared and are counting
their phantom “hundred quids” yet again …
+Monk Justin of Connecticut, 2oo8.