Drawing on his own lived experience, Colin now works as a support worker at the homelessness charity The Passage, helping others find a way forward. Once sleeping rough in Glasgow, he stands today on the Westminster Cathedral Piazza offering hope, shaped by the kindness of strangers that changed his life. Fifteen years on, his outreach work is defined by early mornings, difficult conversations, and moments where lives can shift in real time, reminding us how close any of us can be to needing a lifeboat and why he is determined to build them for others.
For more stories about connection, compassion and changing lives, discover how Sola opens doors for young people through belief and representation, or read Kate’s reflections on creating softer, more human places in the city. Discover more experiences with the full Voices from the Piazza collection.
As part of the Engagement and Outreach team at The Passage, the largest street homeless resource centre in London, I’m often asked why I do this work, the early mornings, the late nights, the moments of crisis, the constant fight to build trust with people who have every reason not to trust anyone. And the honest answer is that my own journey started in a very different place.
I was street homeless in Glasgow when I was young. I had my own battles with substance use, and there were days when I genuinely thought my life was already over. What got me out wasn’t anything miraculous, it was the kindness of strangers, people who didn’t have to stop, but did. People who saw me as someone who still had a future. A lot of luck helped too. That experience never leaves you. Even now, twenty years and three hundred miles later, the thought of homelessness can still whisper in your ear. You know exactly how fast life can unravel.
Maybe that’s why I’ve spent fifteen years doing outreach. It’s a hard job, people are angry, frightened, lost, and you’re the person standing in front of them. But there’s a saying I carry with me: a smooth sea never made a skilled sailor. And the streets teach you a lot, mostly that people can spot nonsense from a hundred yards. So you have to be honest. You have to be vulnerable. You meet people where they are, even when that place is painful. Because love, compassion, community, even if we don’t talk about them explicitly in this job, they’re as vital as housing and benefits.
That’s what brings me to the Westminster Cathedral Piazza. Some people see a public space. I see the threshold where people at their lowest point take their first step toward something better. And that’s where I met Matt.
It was early morning, still dark outside, with the city only just starting to come to life. Matt was bedding down outside the Cathedral. From the moment we started talking, I recognised a familiar kind of exhaustion, the kind that comes from surviving, not living. He told us he’d been attacked in the place he’d been staying. He wasn’t from Westminster, but he’d come to the Piazza because he needed somewhere visible, somewhere that felt less threatening. He didn’t want to disappear.
We invited him to the resource centre, and he came that same day. He talked openly about his homelessness, his mental health struggles, and his addiction. I could see he’d been fighting on his own for too long. We supported him to make a homelessness application in the borough where he had a connection. They accepted the application, but he wasn’t in priority need, so he had no choice but to return to the streets. The Piazza again became the place he tried to survive each night.
As the days went on, the strain showed, and we talked to him about the Passage House Assessment Centre – a place where he could have a room of his own, food, shower, and a chance for permanent housing. Matt, hesitantly, agreed.
Passage House accepted him the same day and booked him in for the next morning. When I told him, something shifted. Relief, maybe. Or hope, that rare, fragile thing you can almost see forming in someone’s eyes when they realise their story isn’t over.
We handed him over to Passage House with requests for mental-health support and substance-use help, and he settled in quickly. Before he left, he told me something I’ll never forget:
“I’d been praying for this. The Passage is the light I needed.”
For Matt, the Piazza was both the worst moment and the turning point. And for me, that’s the heart of this job. We meet people at their most vulnerable, but it’s also where transformation begins.
People sometimes laugh when I say to clients, “I hope I never see you again.” But I mean it. I hope they go on with their lives, remember a kind stranger, and pay it forward, the same way someone once did for me.
I suppose that’s why I work so hard. If I ever need the lifeboat again, I want to know I helped build it well. And every time someone like Matt takes that first step off the street, it reminds me that none of us are as far from hope as we think.