Gary Horton never thought his life would be this way (Picture: Leeds Live/MEN MEDIA)
A man has shared the grim reality of homelessness in Britain today — being urinated on by cruel students who cackled as they called him a ‘tramp’.
Gary Horton, 41, says his mental health has cratered after three years living on the streets of Leeds has seen him ‘spat on, kicked and punched’ by passersby.
Students mocked and urinated on him as he was fast asleep on a car park stairwell, leaving him ‘more upset than angry’.
He says: ‘I’ve been attacked. I’ve been urinated on while I’ve been asleep, spat on and kicked.
‘A student urinated on me, there were about two or three of them. They were just laughing and calling me a tramp. I got out of my sleeping bag and chased them. I was more upset than angry.’
Horton has long struggled with feeling ’embarrassed and ashamed’ of what he’s going through and never thought he’d be homeless.
Some people have punched and even spat on him (Picture: Leeds Live/MEN MEDIA)
Horton used to live in Cookridge, a suburb in northwest Leeds, working as a builder.
Now he begs in what he describes as the ‘bottom end’ of the city centre and sleeps in the stairwells of car parks as they are ‘quiet and warm’.
‘Well, not warm but warmer,’ Horton says.
He adds: ‘People don’t treat me very well. I’ve been spat on, kicked, punched. It hurts my feelings. People should take a step back and think, it could be you, it could be anybody.
‘It can happen to anyone, I never thought it would happen to me.
‘I feel embarrassed, I’m sat on the floor asking for change. My family are embarrassed and ashamed.
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‘I have thought of going back to them but I’m embarrassed and ashamed of myself.’
There is no one path to homelessness. And the ways people are homeless can vary, making it difficult to grasp the true scale of homelessness in the UK.
Around 227,000 people were experiencing homelessness – such as sleeping on the streets or in vans and sheds – across Britain in 2021, Crisis has found.
According to the government, there were 2,440 ‘rough sleepers’, those forced to sleep in the streets, on a single night in autumn 2021.
Around two-thirds of people sleeping rough in England were UK nationals between 2017 and 2020, the Office for National Statistics says.
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‘I’ve been spat on, kicked, punched. It hurts my feelings.’
