READING COMPREHENSION

EXERCISE 3

HOMELESS IN LONDON

Choose the sentences (A-I) which best fit the gaps (1-8). There is one more sentence than you need.

HOMELESS IN LONDON

They became engaged on the streets a year ago.

They hold their pockets to stop the change rattling when they walk by us.

You beg enough to buy another drink, buy it, drink it, then beg some more.

D
The streets, despite the risk of physical and sexual attack, were in her eyes a
better option.
E

What makes it even more difficult is that it is hard to live up to basic

expectations such as being clean and tidy.

I reckon the Nineties are going to be ten years of despair.

Now, they are littered with losers: the young, the drunk and the old, but mostly
the young.

There is a small number, but most of us just want to find a place of our own.

Many people say that they ought to find work, but it is a lot more complicated
than that, even if the work were available.

HOMELESS IN LONDON
In the good old optimistic days the streets of London were paved with
gold.____________________1
Scott is just 20. He is unemployed and, homeless, he is lucky enough to live
in a hostel. He says: "A lot of people think that when you are young and
homeless you can always go back home. But this is not the case for a large
number of young people. If they go back, some of them will have to put up
with violence and, in a lot of cases, sexual assault. The position I am in now
is because of family arguments and disagreements. I thought it would be
the best thing for everyone if I left home. Then I found a lot of things out of
my control.
"When I tried to get a job I had no hope whatever, because employers do
not take on people with no fixed address. _________________________2.
Many employers also assume that you are unreliable and lazy.
"The Social Security were no help either. If you haven't got a fixed address,
you don't exist. I went to my local council offices who got me into a bed-andbreakfast place. This was very dirty, People were getting robbed and it was
a very violent place. I felt very unsafe there, so I left and went back on the
streets, sleeping rough.
"The streets turned out to be just as bad. There are pimps and people
looking for rent boys and prostitutes. Once you get involved with pimps it is
very hard to get away. Young people on the streets are also seen as
alcoholics and drug-users or
pushers._________________________________3."
After five years on the London streets, chasing drink and drugs, Paul has
been rehabilitated. Aged 28, he has chronic liver problems. He says: "I'd
drink anything. Surgical spirit, methylated spirits. I'd go anywhere for a
drink. In the end, I wasn't drinking to get drunk. I was drinking myself sober.
I was bring blood up, I had DTs and terrible paranoia, I'd be seeing people
walk through walls, people who weren't there. I talked to nobody for three
months, just sat, day and night, under the Festival Hall.
"A lot don't bother looking for help. They just beg.
__________________________4 And every penny goes on the drink. A lot
of people can't handle living in a building.There's people from all walks of
life on the street. A lot of them are well-educated, just not getting the right

start, can't get a job, lose hope and that's it. I know a professor who used to
sleep rough in London.And the numbers are growing. There are more on
the street than ever before. ____________5 When I think of the future, it
terrifies me."
If you were in London last year, and walked down the Strand, you might
have passed Michelle and James, who used to live, when the shop was
closed, in the doorway of Boots the chemist.Interviewed by a reporter as
they lay buried under blankets and sleeping bags, they were summoning
the energy to get up and beg. Michelle was 17 and James, 18.
__________________________6
The reality of a job and marriage does not exist. James is resigned to life on
the streets. They are the discarded youngsters, sleeping in disposable
boxes. They believe they have about 60 young neighbours in the Strand
doorways alone.
Michelle is the product of local authority care and children's homes. She has
not lived at home since she was a child. Contact with her family is now
almost non-existent and any kind of life with them impossible. James is all
she has. She has not slept in a proper bed for the past two weeks. Before
that, she had a temporary shelter in a hostel. She left to rejoin James on the
street.____________ 7. Hostels are not all nice places and you don't get to
choose who you are sleeping with.
James explains that they beg to live. He says: `At first it was embarrassing.
But now we are used to it. Sometimes you can do quite well. An average
day will bring in 5. We lift things. Yesterday a crowd of us went into a
chemist shop and lifted lots of aftershave and stuff, which we can sell. We
don't see that stealing from big shops is theft. It's survival. I've learnt all the
scams. There are doctors who will prescribe drugs you can sell. You can get
into hostels more than once by giving a false name.'
They see no way out of their situation. They are no longer embarrassed. "It
is the others who are embarrassed - the yuppies, when we beg.
____________________________8"

answers
1G
5F

2E
6A

3H
7D

4C
8B