Wolverhampton may not stand out as a city whose streets are paved with gold, yet a beggar made as much as £500 a day there — and he wasn’t even homeless, a Labour councillor has claimed.
Steve Evans, cabinet member for the city environment, said that people asking for money in Wolverhampton were often not homeless and were simply looking for money to buy alcohol. Some were “professional beggars”, he added.
Mr Evans said there was a man who council colleagues knew to be registered on the electoral roll at “quite a reasonable property” and who had made between £300 and £500 in a day by begging.
“He might travel between different cities and towns as well and he was making a tidy sum, much more than you and I. It is shame that where people have a genuine need of help you have a few individuals who are taking advantage of people’s generosity.
“Some of them need help, but others just want the money for a drink. Begging still exists and I don’t think anyone appreciates coming into the city centre and doing shopping and being approached by someone asking for money. You know it is someone that by and large is not homeless, but is trying to get some money to have an alcoholic drink and I believe we have got some professional beggars.”
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Mr Evans said that he wanted to work with the statutory agencies to enforce anti-begging measures locally but proof that a person was begging was required before any action could be taken. “We would be looking to take them to court and get some kind of exclusion order on the city centre.”
Paul Bird, 29, who has been begging for six months, said: “I don’t reckon everyone who begs sleeps rough around here. I had a bad accident after my mum died and ended up disabled on the street, so it would wind me up if someone’s pretending to be homeless.”
Others on the city’s streets said that they were worried that Mr Evans’s comments would dissuade people from giving them money.
One 28-year-old, who did want to be named, said: “Some of us are genuinely homeless and in need of cash, not for alcohol, but to put a roof over our heads for the night and to eat. It is a shame a select few can give us all a bad name. Some of them are just con men. They are professionals who take advantage of people’s generosity when we are the ones in desperate need of real help. They are here most days too, so they must be raking it in.”
Simon Van Der Hoek, 48, who has been living on the streets for three years, said that the sort of pretence Mr Evans alleged was “not right”. He said: “The only reason I ask for money is so I can eat, not for any other reason at all. I don’t ask for any more than I need.”