“People think that they know what a homeless person looks like.”
Today on Good Morning Britain, as the government announces their £1billion plans to tackle homelessness, I’m A Celebrity… star and Radio 1 presenter Dean McCullough joined hosts Richard Madeley and Kate Garraway live from Salford where he opened up for the first time on TV about his experience of homelessness as a young person. Dean explained how it wasn’t until he was an adult and working with homeless charity ‘Centrepoint’ that he realised that what he had experienced was hidden homelessness.
Dean McCullough:
“People think that they know what a homeless person looks like. They think it’s someone who is on the street with a bottle of liquor in a brown bag asking for money, but from my own personal experience, we were homeless whenever I was younger and my mum was forced out of the home and I went with her.
“We shared a bedroom, we were on the sofa, and at the time I was going to school, I was getting dressed up every day, I was fed well and we were surprisingly quite happy. We made the most of that situation and at the time I wouldn’t have called that homelessness, but later on in life then when I started working with Centrepoint – I’m the young person’s prevention ambassador for the charity – and it wasn’t until I was working with them… They didn’t know about my homeless story, and to be honest with you, I didn’t really understand the experience that I’d had until we started working together.”
Dean also discussed how he had experienced homelessness as a young adult.
“I was living in London between performing contracts and other bits and bobs, I didn’t have a fixed address, and for quite a lot of my time living in London I was moving from house to house and some of those houses that I lived in were quite volatile. Housemates of mine were using drugs and alcohol and I got caught up in that world as well. Sometimes I’d go out on a Thursday and stay out all weekend going from party to party, friend’s house to friend’s house just so that I wouldn’t be living in that volatile environment.
“That kept happening and I didn’t realise, I just thought I was having a good time, I thought I was being a bit wild, a bit free, but actually I didn’t have a fixed address… I didn’t have keys to anywhere – I was just waiting for my housemates to come home and then I would be able to come back home and maybe have something to eat, so I didn’t realise that that was homelessness.”
Opening up about the mental impact homelessness had on him, Dean said, “I felt lost and I felt very lonely but I used drink and drugs, unfortunately, to feel some sort of a connection. At the time I just thought that I was being fun and that’s just what you did when you were in your late teens, early 20s. But actually, what it’s done for me later on in life is that it means my home is really important to me, making a home and also offering up somewhere to stay if friends of mine find themselves in that situation.”
Speaking about tackling hidden homelessness he noted,
“If you don’t have a stable place to live, if you’re not on a tenancy agreement, if you’ve no one looking after you it is hidden homelessness because at any point you could be out in the street. That’s the point that I like to make when I’m chatting to teachers, particularly in schools, where I say that if a young person comes in and they tell you that one night they’re staying with their auntie, another night they’re staying with their granny and grandad and maybe they’re staying with their mum and dad at the weekend, is to check in on that young person and understand why they’re moving around so much because it could be hidden homelessness.”
Finally, sharing how he felt when he bought his first house Dean said, “I was lucky enough to be able to buy a home last year here in Salford and I just never thought that day would come.”
“I went into my flat and I kissed every single piece of wall and every door handle and even when I was paying my mortgage I thought, ‘okay, I’m happy I’m paying this mortgage because I thought at some point somebody was going to kick me out’. But now I’m safe and I’m happy and I’m very, very lucky. I would really love for this to be the story for lots of other young people, that one day they could buy a home and one day they could feel as safe as I do now.”
Good Morning Britain weekdays from 6am on ITV1, ITVX, STV & STV Player
