Thousands of children forced to grow up in shipping containers

We worked so hard to get housing regs and rent laws to stop this sort of thing.

Was in a city at w/e with loads of well built, large, good quality, old fashioned corporation houses. Probably sold off now.

These containers and the grenfell flats are a death trap.

It's plain evil.

Is sickening and greedy. The whole.country is fucked. Damned government couldn't give a shit and yet people won't vote.for.labout because Corbyn has a beard.. cunts.

£270 a week to live in a fucking cramped sweat box and risk heat stroke.

£270 to live in a hot box that Steve McQueen should be in chucking his baseball up the fucking walls.

£270 a week rent for a fucking shipping container???????!!!!!!!!!!!!! [shock[

@woman19 its disgusting. If they were housing animals or transporting animals in those temps there would be a huge outcry.

@Carpetburns those shipping containers are like saunas in the summertime.

Heat in the metal containers is a major issue, says Christine. When the temperature hit 34C a few weeks ago, she says they could hardly breathe in the upper floor apartment. She ended up sleeping with her son outside on the walkway

These places don't seem to be abiding with any building regs. Like Grenfell and the flats opposite Grenfell in which a fire on 12th floor happened today. No sprinklers or alarms in the flats whic had the fire today.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7387233/Fire-breaks-balcony-flat-block-opposite-Grenfell-Tower.html

www.theguardian.com/society/2019/aug/23/they-just-dump-you-here-the-homeless-families-living-in-shipping-containers

The poor; usually young women with kids are being deliberately put in very dangerous buildings.

Yy MonkeyToes pensioners cant be expected to move to a bedsit

Or a one bedroom place on the fourth floor.

Some of the housing lost/demolished by regeneration was originally built for the elderly.

Cressingham Gardens in Lambeth was completed in 1978.

306 homes were built including smaller units for elderly and disabled people and couples as well as family homes.

Seeing the pictures of what the containers are like is shocking, how can that be considered acceptable?

Finland was mentioned earlier - I'm in Finland and I've been a homeless single mum escaping an abusive ex and I didn't get put in a shipping container or a B&B, first place I went to was a nice flat with it's own sauna (admittedly very small town so not the same as it would be in a city) then I moved and was offered a council flat that was decent even if the neighbours weren't (and when I complained I was moved to a house).

Here they have the housing first initiative for homeless people, it has really helped reduced the homelessness problem (there are still homeless people, some by choice, others not, but it's much less than it was)

Goosefoot

I'll tell you the biggest issue.. it's not empty properties.. it's not landlords.. it's not.councils..

It's society.

I'm this country too.many people look down on the poor. They don't look at their excess and wish to share it, they demonise the poor and want to punish them.
Look at the benefits system. It's not designed to help, it's designed to punish.
It's all designed to instill fear into claimants..
Look at the media.. it's not there to show a sympathetic view of reality, it's there to look down on the poor and make people believe that benefit claimants have big TVs and smoke and just pump out babies.
Look at the housing market. Landlords now have homes with mortgages on Buy to let, they set rent at high as they can and get housing benefit / tax money to pay for it.. basically doing nothing but collecting tax money in one hand, Passing it to the bank with the other.. yet they get a house at the end of it for nothing.

I could go on.

But you head to any thread here that mentions benefits, social housing etc. You'll see the attitudes on show.. they should be ashamed of themselves, but society is geared up to agree with them.

"Unemployed are jobless scum that workers have to pay a fortune for.."
(Which is bullshit as Unemployment is one of the lower welfare bills...pensions and in work welfare is far higher...)

Ah, I see. Yes, I ca see that could be frustrating all round, it would be ideal to have people move out of properties that were now too big for them. But you need some place for them to go, preferably in the same area!

I can't help thinking empty apartments owned by people who don't live in the country are a bigger issue.

The immigrant village made of shipping containers on Years and Years seemed shocking. This is actually happening.

Goosefoot

i mostly see posts blaming it on pensioners not moving

How is that logic supposed to work?

It is logical to a point.
There's only so many properties.
If a family with 2 parents and 3 kids move into a 4 bed house, kids grow up and move, parents stay there then the next family with 3 kids can't move into it.

The logic fails tho because of the lack of 1 bedroom properties for the parents to downsize too.

My mum and step dad live in a 3 bed, they'd happily downsize but the council they're with offer them bedsits.. not.many 70+ year olds want to live in a bedsit and leave the home they've had for 20+ years.

Pensioners are not subject to the bedroom tax so there is no financial penalty for them if they carry on living in their 3 bed council house when their family have flown the nest.

i mostly see posts blaming it on pensioners not moving

How is that logic supposed to work?

George Clarke pointed this out about the council house scandal and pointed out that in Redbridge, Greater London that they had these shipping containers (they are in fact in a lot of other places). Was very envious of the housing estate in Austria, where there was no social stigma and the place was lovely.

YY Pencils Years ago they rubbished the Aylesbury saying it was full of drugs and crime . The residents however did not recognize the estate they lived on that was being rubbished in the press. That was the start.

An estate local to me ....the Hatfield in Witham had very similar written about it in our local press recently The fb comments underneath from residents were interesting. They did not recognize what was being said about the estate at all .

I bet i can guess whats coming next.

Helena, now they've let the Aylesbury estate turn into a derelict shit hole, guess what? They're using some of it as temporary accommodation while it awaits demolition.

www.southwarknews.co.uk/news/exclusive-newborn-had-to-be-taken-home-to-aylesbury-flat-with-neither-heating-nor-hot-water/

Also over half of homeless families are in employment so those who think the solution is just to ship them all out of the capital need to come up with plans for who's going to sweep the streets, serve the fries and wipe the arses in London once anyone with a shitjob can no longer afford to live there.

There is also the fact that the council accomodation that was demolished during "regeneration" was not replaced with social housing. Or replaced with a lot less social housing.

Some of the demolished homes were structurally sound. Builders and developers are looking to make as much profit as they can.

But no matter how many links i post to show how much social housing has been lost in this way (and there are many in this thread) i mostly see posts blaming it on pensioners not moving (not on this thread YET) but on many other threads on social housing on this site. People have bought into the residulisation hook line and sinker.

Some of the problems highlighted in the report:

• lack of investment in new homes
• LHA has been frozen since 2016 while private rents have continued to rise sharply
• 5 week wait when claiming UC
• new rules allowing councils to offer a private tenancy instead of social housing: currently they can do this if they can find a tenancy of at least 12 months but this just delays the problem for a year
• current rules allow councils to turn office blocks into temp accommodation without planning permission
• the 'space standard' of statutory overcrowding does not apply to temp accommodation
• councils are not required to inspect the quality of temp accommodation before placing families there
• families are being moved a long way from their schools, jobs and support networks. Currently only those with children coming up to exams are given priority to stay locally
• children are being housed in accommodation with shared facilities (kitchens and bathrooms) alongside vulnerable adults (mental health problems, drug and alcohol problems etc.)
• the rules limiting the time families can be placed in B&B to 6 weeks only applies to private B&Bs. Families can be housed in council run B&Bs without a time limit. Even where the time limit applies, it is being illegally breached in 1/3 of cases.
• there is no data on the number of homeless families housed by children's services
• the rules in the homelessness legislation on 'suitable' accommodation do not apply to those housed by children's services.

The shipping containers have caught the headlines and it's true, unless properly converted they are just shit metal boxes and are also poorly placed and too small for the number of people being housed in them, however the report goes much wider than shipping containers.

So a bit OT maybe but related to this question of moving jobs out of London:

London seems like one of the worst cities for this but there are similar issues with very large cities elsewhere as well. As if they are too large to really function, but somehow it still seems like businesses keep wanting to locate there. Government functions are a little different of course but I often find myself wondering about the businesses.

Most don't actually need to be co-located with every other business or sector. And a business in London must have higher costs for salaries so people can live. Wouldn't it be better for many businesses to locate in smaller centres where housing for their employees is cheaper? Where do these businesses find the lower paid employees that work as security guards and cleaners and such?

It seems like there is something gone a little wrong with the natural ecosystems of cities.

I also wonder if it could help to give tax breaks to business outside cities like London, or increase taxes for the ones that are there. I guess people would feel like that would suppress business but it really isn't good for any country or region when all the employment is sucked into one black hole. The wealth doesn't distribute the way they seem to ghope.

A basic studio like this from £13k with double glazing, insulation, bathroom is a lot better than a lot of the alternatives.

We do need to move things away from london so people follow.

Properly converted shipping containers are the modern equivelent of the prefabs of the 60s. Outside of london thousands could be put up with shops, schools playgrounds... new communities built. Well made and maintained there is no reason they cant last years.

Inside cities they can be prefabricated and stacked so land requirement is minimal.

They are modular so it is easy to have homes for single people - stacked studio apartments. Joined to make homes for small or large families.

The main issue will be jobs - government needs to lead the way with moving jobs out.