Ahead of Friday’s Goodison Sleepout, evertonfc.com invited former Everton and England defender Kenny Sansom to the Club’s five-bedroom house for people at risk of homelessness.

Sansom honestly addressed the issue of his ongoing battle with alcoholism and gambling and how his twin demons led to one of this country’s finest footballers sleeping ‘in parks… on benches… on the streets’.

Sign up for the Goodison Sleepout here.

Support Everton’s Home Is Where The Heart Is Project by sponsoring Everton Women and this year’s Sleepout participants here.

Kenny Sansom remembers every detail of his fleeting stay at Everton.

The seven appearances and the one goal – against Tottenham Hotspur, which makes him smile – and how Howard Kendall’s pressing need for a quick fix at left-back led to the Everton manager punching Sansom’s number into his phone.

Sansom recalls the bars, too. Those wretched bars and pubs and clubs he couldn’t resist. Truth be told, didn’t try to resist.

Sansom had retired when the drinking, accompanied by its equally ruinous gambling crutch, hooked its claws into him.

When exactly, he doesn’t know.

“It soon got hold of me,” is all Sansom can say about the timing of his descent into addiction following the end of a football career which spanned 18 years.

Sansom acquired the nickname Mr Chablis during eight-and-a-half years at Arsenal. Gone was the old Kenny White Shorts tag, a tribute to his talent for whipping the ball from the toes of opposing wingers without going to ground.

By the time he was writing about his increasingly self-destructive behaviour in his autobiography in 2007, Sansom’s newest moniker – which he embraced – felt very uncomfortable.

Six years later, Sansom told a national newspaper he was living homeless. “That's because I've got no money, I'm a drunk, I'm feeling not very well and I'm a gambler. I've been living on the street. It's not good living on the bench,” he said.

In 2015 Sansom’s plight was front page news. He was pictured in a park, passed out next to a quarter-full bottle of wine. Sansom had nothing and he had nowhere to go.

He is not well today. Nine times Sansom’s checked into rehabilitation centres – not always under his own steam – and nine times he’s emerged, often prematurely, still plagued by his demons.

He has a roof over his head, though. A one-bedroom flat in the south west.

Sansom is visited by episodes of clarity when talk turns to football and a career which finished in 1994 after 86 appearances for England.

“I should have done 100,” he says. “But alcohol ruined everything.”

His mind similarly clears when homelessness is the topic at hand.

Sansom is visiting the five-bedroom property close to Goodison Park bought by Everton in the Community (EitC) to house young people at risk of homelessness.

The purchase was funded by the charity’s Home Is Where The Heart Is campaign, launched in 2016 and whose banner event is the annual Goodison Sleepout.

A number of Everton Women Players and manager Willie Kirk will join more than 100 supporters for this year’s edition on Friday.

Sansom’s eyes widen as he enters the property. He sits down to a mug of tea with four sugars.

“A homeless cup of tea”, he jokes, recalling the brief warmth and comfort provided by a sweet, hot drink when he lived without shelter.

“I have slept on the streets,” starts Sansom.

“I slept on a bench and some people poured water over me.

“I don’t know how much… but it was horrible. Degrading.

“I have slept behind bushes. Everywhere.

“To have a roof over your head is so important.

“I have one at the moment.

“I know how these people [living in Everton’s house] feel.

“It is not only having a roof over your head.

“It is having someone to talk to, to say hello and please and thank you.”

Sansom is talking to former Everton striker Michael Branch.

Branch has been candid in the past about his wish to employ the experience of making his own “very big mistake” – he served half of a seven-year prison sentence after pleading guilty in November 2012 to two charges of supplying class-A and class-B drugs – as a vehicle to help others.

He is handsomely fulfilling that promise in a full-time post with EitC.

His current remit takes him away from a previous role at Everton’s house for the homeless.

Branch maintains close relationships with the four residents, nonetheless, and visits at least once a week. When we arrive, we find him in the kitchen, stooped over a counter making cups of tea and coffee for a flurry of visitors. Patiently filling mugs before loading the kettle and starting the process over again.

An important point, here, it is not right to refer to this building simply as a house.

This is a home. That much is obvious the moment your foot strikes the carpet of a snug hallway on stepping through the front door.

Every resident has access to one-to-one support within Everton in the Community

“Existing residents have been here around six months and grown so much” says Branch.

“They have us [EitC staff] and they have help.

“They have people to believe in them.

“Some could not hold a conversation with you when they came, they hardly said a word for two weeks.”

He laughs. “And now we cannot shut them up.

“It is a little family. If you come round in the evening, at least three of the four will be sat together, watching television and laughing and joking.”

The young adults living at Everton’s home are provided with more than accommodation.

This is an initiative designed to shape people’s lives. They have access to health and wellbeing support and assistance with education, employment and training.

“They can’t sit around all day doing nothing,” smiles Branch.

“It is lovely to see how they’ve grown and they are coming to the stage where a couple might move on soon, they are doing that well.”

Sansom expected to encounter a house where residents worked for their keep.

“Cleaning floors, washing up, cooking the dinner,” he says.

The wider sense of purpose surprises and evidently pleases him.

Above all, he recognises the value of a stable environment, of company and of conversation.

“I live in Exeter, in a one-bed flat,” he says.

“Having a home is so important. But you need people.

“I am on my own. I am not happy.

“My phone does not ring.

“People need people.

“You need to talk.

“But if no one is there, who do you talk to?”

Sansom relates how he walks the streets of his adopted home city and “sees so many people bedding down on walls and benches”.

“We need these kinds of facilities all over the country,” he says.

The vision and perseverance of Sue Gregory, EitC’s Director of Youth Engagement, Employability and Sports, was essential in establishing Everton’s first permanent accommodation for homeless people.

Everton Under-23 manager David Unsworth drove the Goodison Sleepout initiative and this year will be the first occasion on which his squad cannot stay overnight in the Club’s stadium because they play on Sunday. Kirk and his squad rushed to step in.

Unsworth won the FA Cup with Everton and played for England. But he insisted the day Everton opened their home – after £14,000 more than an initial target of £230,000 was raised – rivalled any of his footballing highs.

“It is going to make such a difference… for dozens and dozens of young adults who are in desperate need of our help,” said Unsworth.

Gregory wants to replicate this project across the city, a desire mirroring Sansom’s assertion over the need for more beds, more care.

It isn’t only those sleeping outside, the ones Sansom sees in Exeter, who count as homeless. The extent of the problem is buried out of sight.

“There are people sleeping on sofas at their nan’s but it’s a packed house and unsustainable, young people living with mum or dad who have mental health problems and their home could be gone in no time,” says Branch.

“Homelessness comes in so many different forms.

“This house is not the final thing.

“We have more referrals but not the space, so we are looking to fundraise for another house.

“Sue has an idea to have one of these houses in every area of Liverpool.

“This is not the end. There will be more.”

Sansom is walking, talking proof of the imperative of looking after people.

The 61-year-old fell desperately ill in 2016 when his repeated attempts to rub away scabs on the sole of his left foot resulted in a bone infection.

He was perilously close to losing his formerly most valuable commodity.

A classy full-back, football came easy to Sansom. “I just enjoyed it,” he says, an explanation for his sporting achievements which would make sense only to those born with a gift for the game.

He represented England in four major tournaments, was an FA Youth Cup winner with Crystal Palace, where he twice won promotion before joining Arsenal, and later had time with Newcastle United, QPR, Coventry City, Everton, Brentford and Watford.

Asked if he was reduced by alcohol when he came to Goodison in February 1993, Sansom’s reply is short.

“Yes,” he begins. “And I am sorry to say that.”

Sansom started six times for the Club and came off the bench once. He won three and lost three of his Everton games and scored that goal at Goodison against old north London foes Tottenham.

He recalls Kendall getting in touch to enquire if Sansom – who had performed well for Coventry against Everton earlier in the campaign – would fill the void vacated by an injured Andy Hinchcliffe.

“The chance to play for Everton Football Club? It was massive for me,” says Sansom.

“We had a good team, some really good players and I settled in the dressing room as soon as I got there.

“Being at a football club like Everton was pretty special for me. I loved it.

“The people were so nice and friendly, I was given a fabulous reception and there was a fantastic atmosphere around the city.”

Then the confession.

“But I remember going to all the pubs, from bar to bar. I was doing that a lot more in the later years [of his career].”

Sansom is brutally honest about his own shortcomings. He does not hide from the depth of his addictions, nor does he present a misleading façade.

He does, though, have a habit of dressing up a serious point as a joke.

Explaining his candour thus, “I’m divorced, so I don’t have to lie anymore”, is one such example.

Sansom is being straight down the line, then, when he declares: “What Everton are doing with this home is great.

“It is absolutely fantastic. They should be congratulated.

“It has blown me away what the Club does for its people.

“I watch a lot of television and see people talking about doing things. But it is all talk. Nothing is getting done.

“Everton are helping people, making a difference, They are doing things.”

As we are leaving, one of the young adults living in the house comes to the door of the room where we have been talking.

They are peeking to see if the path to the kitchen is clear.

But soon conversation diverts to the piano they are learning to play, a smile breaking out as they disclose the tunes they want to master.

Content and comfortable and confident and imagining a bright future.

At home.

 
Sign up for the Goodison Sleepout here.

Support Everton’s Home Is Where The Heart Is Project by sponsoring Everton Women and this year’s Sleepout participants here.