This week Nottingham city council’s poster campaign on homeless begging – suggesting that money to beggars funds booze, drugs, and fraud – was banned by the Advertising Standards Authority for being discriminatory. The ruling is good news, but the fact that these posters existed at all is indicative of the way in which it has become increasingly acceptable to berate the less well-off. From TV shows like Benefits Street showcasing Britain’s poor as if they were a circus act to the use by politicians of language like “shirkers and strivers”, such prejudice is increasing.

I learned at 16, and homeless while still at school, that in order to keep the good opinion of others I needed to show just the right amount of piety so they wouldn’t accuse me of pissing their money down the drain – while not appearing as though I’d got above my station.

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“Poppy lives off Parkway and eats Pret every day. She’s posher than most of us!” a friend exclaimed at the school gates one day, after I’d been moved to a hostel in a nice area where we could pick up leftovers from Pret a Manger before they were thrown away at the end of the day. The message was clear: I was supposed to be poor, wasn’t I? So why couldn’t I just look like it?

In a system that regularly brands you as undeserving, a liar or a fraud, wearing your poverty correctly becomes ever more important. When I first presented as homeless, there was ample evidence that I was telling the truth. I had been on the child protection register pretty much since I was born, and had a family history of homelessness. Despite this I was turned away by my London council for not “looking homeless enough”.

What if I had been among the 74% of people turned away from a service because my needs level was too high?

Hours later I slept on the floor of the homeless person’s unit in my school’s borough, to prove that I was, indeed, homeless enough. In the morning I churned out my story to another official, sitting in a row of strangers discussing similarly gory details of their lives with officials. Our privacy was protected only by thin glass partitions, with thicker partitions protecting the officials in case we attacked them.

Perhaps having to back up what you say sounds like standard interview fare. But there is a difference between providing evidence and disproving someone’s prejudice. These conversations felt more like fights, in which every statement you make is followed by “and did you record that at the time?”.

My experience of being turned away, despite being eligible for support, feeling distrusted and being denied privacy, has been shown to be a common one among homeless people seeking support. In places like London where there are huge budget pressures and a lack of available housing, the experience moves from being common to being the norm.

Those are difficult conditions when you are trying to give evidence of messy family problems. What if your parents are abusing you but they deny it and, being a child, you’ve never pressed charges? What if the council contacts them and they provide a doting account of how they love you and just want to see you home again? Luckily for me I was well placed to argue my case: I was eloquent, had professionals around me to provide support, and I met the requirements for the council’s priority list. Still the process took three months.

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That makes me sorry for those who weren’t as lucky as me. What if I had had an underlying mental health issue that made it harder for me to explain myself? Like the 80% of people in the Homeless Link study who reported a mental health issue, or the 45% who had been diagnosed with one? What if I was one of the 74% of people in that same study who were turned away from a service because my needs level was too high for them to manage?

Perhaps hard-pressed officials adopt these tactics when interacting with homeless people to manage the soul-sapping juggling of scarce resources? The sad reality is it means that many eligible people will be turned away for not knowing the rules of the game. I am grateful that I passed the tests, but I am not happy. I am no more deserving of my fortune than I was of my disadvantage: the same is true for the rest of Britain’s homeless.