Banker Bonus Lawyer Who Can’t Cook Helps Homeless at Christmas.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-23/banker-bonus-lawyer-who-can-t-cook-helps-homeless-at-christmas.html

Victor Echodu was once a pilot, flying cargo planes to Africa and Asia. At the age of 62, he’s spending this Christmas in a North London homeless shelter.

Echodu gets a battered pilot’s ID out of his wallet with a picture showing a younger man in uniform: white shirt and epaulettes.

The Ugandan needs to have his immigration status confirmed before he can move into a new home which, he explains, is hard because he’s lost his passport.

Shelter From The Storm, where Echodu is staying, is one of the few places where the homeless can get legal advice as well as food and a bed. Lawyers from elite London law firms volunteer at free clinics twice a month on problems from child custody and divorce, to housing and getting access to benefits.

The initiative is run by Andrew Hochhauser, a trial lawyer who’s best known for helping 104 Dresdner Kleinwort bankers win about 50 million euros ($61 million) from Commerzbank AG (CBK) in the U.K.’s biggest bonus lawsuit.

“It’s about as far away from a banker’s bonus as you can imagine,” he says. The shelter is probably the first in the U.K. to offer on-site legal services, according to Hochhauser. Normally people have to find their way to local community law centers.

“What we did was something very new,” said the 59-year-old Hochhauser, who also serves as a deputy judge in the London High Court.

The clinic has been operating since February and Hochhauser is talking to Linklaters LLP, one of the world’s biggest law firms, about getting their help.

Detective Work

“It’s not immigration law,” Gentili tells him. “It’s a bit of detective work.”

Echodu said after the meeting that his life changed a decade ago when he lost his pilot’s license because of illness.

“It’s the best job in the world,” he said proudly. “It was hard for me to adjust.”

He was evicted from his home a year ago when the local authority questioned his immigration status and stopped his welfare.

The number of people living on the street in England is rising. About 2,400 people were homeless, or sleeping rough as it’s called in the U.K., in the autumn of 2013, according to government statistics. That figure was up 5 percent from the previous year, and an increase of 37 percent from 2010 when the first count took place. A quarter of the country’s homeless are in London.

Zero Hours

Thousands more meet the official definition of homelessness, and may be staying with friends or family. Scott said that about a third of Shelter’s residents have jobs, many in low-paid positions with so-called zero-hours contracts, where an employer chooses how much an employee works.

“Modestly working people: trying to find them somewhere to live,” Scott said, shaking her head. The shelter takes referrals from all over London, including prisons and sex-crime units. Guests stay for no more than 28 days.

Hochhauser, who represented brokerage BGC Partners Inc. (BGCP) in a 2011 dispute with Tullett Prebon Plc over the poaching of traders, says he heard about the shelter about a year later when food critic A.A. Gill wrote about it in the Sunday Times.

Hochhauser contacted Scott and offered to help, admitting that he can’t cook. Scott replied he could contribute outside the kitchen.

Insurance Cover

It wasn’t easy to arrange. Lawyers need insurance and volunteers aren’t covered by their firms. Hochhauser eventually agreed to a partnership with the Islington Law Centre, which is funded by the local council, for insurance.

The benefits were immediate. Scott had found it difficult to get homeless people to where free legal help was provided.

Shelter From The Storm is based in Islington, one of the most unequal neighborhoods in a city where extremes of wealth and poverty are often found on the same street.