30 • The Sunday Times Magazine
windows to get car keys or wallets as I was
small.” As his legs were so short, he was also
the one who would get caught if the police
came, while the others ran off with the loot.
Eventually Titch ended up in prison,
where he spent seven or eight years for
burglary and car theft. Once he got out he
wound up on the streets again. “I’ve been
an addict — I smoke weed and mamba,” he
said. “Every day I say I want to give it up
because it’s going to kill me, but on the
streets you’re walking around and someone
offers you drugs, so it’s hard to say no.
It kills the time when you have nothing
good to think about.” Mike was horrified
by Titch’s story. How could someone just
drop out of the system like that?
Over time their guests settled in and
grew comfortable with the team — so much
so that they started to complain about the
food. One guest moaned about the gravy.
“An armed robber complaining the gravy is
too thin!” Mike laughed.
To look after them, he, Charlie and Jacki
had left their own families and moved into
the hotel. As time passed the atmosphere
grew more relaxed, sometimes boisterous.
To Charlie it felt almost like a carnival,
at least until the fights broke out. Without
discussing it, they developed a routine — a
triple act, in which Charlie loved everyone,
Jacki didn’t trust anyone and Mike was the
voice of reason, saying, “Hold on a minute,
let’s think about this over coffee.”
By the end of March 2020 the hotel had
33 residents, mostly male. Naively Mike
thought their stay could be a chance to save
them from their addictions and the cycle of
life on the streets. He had been waiting for
some service to come in to help and provide
counselling for mental health and
addiction, or at least give the guests a basic
health check, but he soon realised that
wasn’t going to happen.
Two security guards had appeared at the
front door, however, sent by the council, and
the hotel logbook — which once had been
filled with taxi bookings and reminders to
deliver prosecco to VIP guests — was being
used to note down disturbances. “John
Patrick came in shouting and swearing,” it
read one day. “Asked to calm down and leave
the premises.” Another read: “04.20 We call
paramedics for Mark C. He was not very
well. Spent night outside drinking.
Returned this morning very drunk.”
“8.15am. Police arrived to check if
everything in order.” “Andy and Julie had
argument. Andy walked out.”
Factions were emerging among the
guests. The alcoholics and the drug addicts,
particularly those who were injecting, did
not get on. Some of those who had said they
were clean or “just did mamba” were
shooting up in their rooms.
Mike and Charlie discussed whether they
should have rules, but decided the hotel
would have none apart from “no smoking
inside”, which the guests kept ignoring, and
not being allowed out after midnight. The
main focus, after all, had to be on keeping
the residents safe from the virus. They took
the view that what happened in the hotel
stayed in the hotel, unless it was really
dangerous to others.
No one had given the hoteliers any
instructions, so they were just winging it.
It was only afterwards they found out that
other hotels had been very strict with their
homeless guests and if they didn’t obey
rules they’d simply shut the door on them.O
n April 12, 2020,
Easter Sunday,
the whoop of
excitement could be
heard from
downstairs. It was
Titch. “I’ve never
had a chocolate egg
before!” he told Charlie, clutching a big,
boxed foil-covered egg. “That’s so tragic,”
she said to Jacki. “Imagine never getting an
Easter egg as a child.” She had been thrilled
when, a few days earlier, two big deliveries of
Easter eggs had arrived at the hotel from the
local branches of Marks & Spencer and
Holland & Barrett, who had heard about
their guests. She and Jacki had piled thegot a hotel full of shoplifters — why don’t
you just give us the list every day and we’ll
organise it for you?” Mike tried to shush
him, worried someone would hear.
May slipped into June and by now they
had all become “like a family”, even if a
rather dysfunctional one. If someone didn’t
turn up for tea, others would notice;
whereas on the street they could just
disappear. “I love them,” said Charlie.
Jacki rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to say
it ... ” she said, laughing.
By June it looked as if the end might be in
sight. Coronavirus infections, hospital
admissions and deaths were falling. Inside
the Prince Rupert the guests were worried.
They all watched the news and began to ask
Mike if they would be thrown out. Mike
asked the council what would happen to the
homeless if he reopened and was told they
would have to disperse them. He was
horrified and made the decision to continue
as a hotel for the homeless, whether or not
the council paid. “Yay!” Charlie whooped
when he told her. Jacki simply smiled. In the
end the council agreed to carry on funding
homeless guests at the Prince Rupert and
sent them a bunch of new arrivals.
Yet for Mike that summer suddenly felt
like an exodus. The council had opened a
new facility near the station called Number
70, with ten rooms, and some of the guests,
including Bennett and Stokesy, decided to
move there. A former night shelter, it was
far from the luxury of the Prince Rupert but
the residents could cook for themselves in
the kitchen and it had a keypad to enter so
no one else could get in.
Soon the Prince Rupert was left with only
ten guests and Mike began to wonder again
about reopening. The chancellor, Rishi
Sunak, was urging people to go back to
cafés, pubs and restaurants with his Eat Out
to Help Out scheme, offering customers a
50 per cent discount. Now the government
was encouraging people to return to offices.
So, on September 4, the hotel reopened
with the homeless people still in situ —
some of the women dressing up and
holding court at the bar, even dispensing
tourist advice to hotel guests. During the
first month only one guest complained,
saying he had booked via Booking.com and
was not paying to stay in a hotel with the
homeless. “They’re not homeless,” Charlie
replied. “They all have an address and that
address is here.” Most of the guests were
very understanding — they were just
delighted to get away for a break after so
many months stuck at home.
In the end it was the homeless who
complained the most. They didn’t like
having to wait for their dinner until the
paying guests had been served, or changing
their own beds. “We’re being pushed to
one side,” they would complain to Charlie.
“They’d come to expect silver service,” she
said. “Actually we are paying guests,” one
pointed out, “it’s just the council is payingtable in the Darwin Suite high with eggs and
made a sign telling everyone to take one.
One sunny day in May, Mike had an idea.
“Let’s take Titch with us shopping,” he said.
Every morning Mike, Charlie and Jacki
headed up to the big Marks & Spencer to
collect expiring sandwiches, salads and fruit
packs that they would put out as snacks.
They would also buy whatever Charlie, who
had taken on the role of chef, needed to
cook dinner. Today Mike grabbed a trolley,
Jacki pulled out the list and they started
scouring the shelves. “Tinned tomatoes,
salmon fillets ...” “Wotcha doing?” Titch
demanded. “Shopping,” Mike laughed.
“F***ing hell!” Titch exclaimed. “You’ve