Aberdeen medical student sleeping rough for a MONTH this Christmas and New Year to raise £25,000 for Crisis
James Beavis, aged 26, has been spat on, abused and ignored, but is facing the bitter cold to raise as much cash as he can for the homeless
AN ABERDEEN medical student is spending his Christmas break on the freezing cold streets of London to raise £25,000 for the homeless charity Crisis.
James Beavis, aged 26, is taking on the challenge of a lifetime to raise awareness of homelessness, and raise cash to help get people of the streets.
From December 9 to January 9, James will camp out wherever he can find a dry spot, and beg for money for food.
He has no contact with family or friends - sending his Dad just one text every day to let him know he's still alive and safe.
With nothing but a backpack of clothes and a sleeping bag, James has been uploading videos of his time on the streets for the past three weeks, often curling up under scaffolding and cardboard to get a few hours of kip.
"I don't want to die," he told The Sun after sleeping rough for 12 nights. "But people do die of hypothermia out here in the cold."
At the time of writing he had smashed his target and raised £31,700 (including gift aid) for Crisis - a charity which works to end homelessness and provide people with the help they need to get their lives back on track.
"I didn't think this would be so hard," he admitted, even though he has previously done a similar sleep-out for a week.
"But it’s dangerous. People do get killed. In the last months there’s been two headlines about homeless people being set on fire."
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James spends his days in Oxford Street and Regent Street begging, and sleeps for just a couple of hours a night down a side road to keep out of harm's way.
Most of his time has been spent trying to earn money so he can buy food and sit inside McDonalds or Starbucks to keep warm, but he only gets around £2.50 an hour begging for cash.
And he has faced abuse on the streets too - from people knocking over his things to being spat at by a group of thugs.
"It was 3 guys walking past, mid twenties. They looked at me as they came by, I sort of smiled, and the guy nearest just spat at me, carried on walking through," he recalled.
"The worst thing was usually I would say something, I would challenge him.
"But people on the streets are so used to being oppressed. You don’t think to fight back. People go through it every single day."
James, who has worked as a manager in Crisis homeless shelters for the past eight years over Christmas, says the hardest part isn't the cold, the lack of food, or having to beg for money, but the absence of sympathy from ordinary people.
"You can say hello without giving," he said. "That’s fine, it’s not a bad thing. I don’t give away all of my money to charity.
"But why wouldn’t you acknowledge a person?"
He said that on his travels he has met many people from all walks of life, who have had to turn to the streets.
"Homelessness can affect anybody - there are people who are ex-doctors, ex-laywers," he said.
"And people who have come abroad from places like Syria - they are so scared.
"But whatever they were going from must have been so much worse."
On Christmas Day James took a walk on his own, tried to find somewhere open to warm up, and spent the rest of the day begging.
"And then, to be honest, I don’t know," he said, speaking last month about his plans. "I'm going to find somewhere to have lunch with my teddy bear..."
"I won't be able to do my sleeping bag up then either - there'll be too many drunk people around.
"They’re loud, shouting, fighting, pulling stuff off walls. And on New Year's Eve too - it's a genuinely risky and scary time."
But there have been moments of light in the dark. The medical student told The Sun of how he stepped in to help a woman who had collapsed in Regent's Street.
"I was suddenly a 'homeless guy' checking respiratory rates, checking vitals, putting her in the recovery position," he said.
featuring a scribble on his hand of the number of days left to go.
And outside Parliament he witnessed a man shove £20 in his daughter's hand to give to him.
"He said ‘no, I want you to have it’," James said.
"So many people pull their children away from me, this man put her towards me. I was in tears."
Theresa May announced last month £20 million for projects to tackle rough sleeping in the capital, but Labour argues that it's not new money.
James says it's not enough either and that the Government is relying too heavily on charities to do their work for them.
Labour has promised to end rough sleeping if elected into Government, and wants to build 4,000 extra homes for people who are homeless.
John Healey MP, Labour's Shadow Housing Minister, told The Sun that Government policies were feeding the crisis.
"Hats off to James for sleeping rough for a month to raise funds to help Crisis, he said. "Homeless is not inevitable in a country as decent and well off as ours - and the biggest tragedy is that we known what works because we've done it before.
"You cant help the homeless until you build the homes... The hard truth for the Prime Minister is that six years of Tory housing failure has caused this homelessness crisis, in which rough sleeping has doubled since 2010 after falling to a record low under Labour,” he said.
James is and spread some cheer for those with nowhere to go home to this Christmas period.
The average homeless man dies at just 47, and for a homeless woman, it's around 43.
"Just £22.32 can get someone in a shelter for Christmas day and night," he said.
"You can make someone’s Christmas, and not only that but get someone into the long term support structures to help."