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Original poster

How easy is it to tend up homeless?

89 replies

sundestroyer · 20/07/2020 12:01

I have a friend who has lived in the US and UK. He says America has a better social support network than the UK. I'm not sure about that

The only homeless person I know is a guy in my 20s who I went to school with. He was an autistic lad who got kicked out at 19 and afaik, is still in one of the homeless shelters.

But I've heard that most people are a two or three paychecks away from homelessness.

OP posts:
Facefullofcake · 20/07/2020 15:34

I ended up on friend's sofas for nine months after being illegally evicted. I mainly stayed at my friend's small 1 bed flat, where her boyfriend lived too.
I tried to stay with other friends when I could to give them a break, but had really unsafe experiences (violence, threats of sexual assault, being around people off their heads on various substances).

I had absolutely no family (no contact after abuse), very few friends (I was so lucky the ones I had took me in). I was on disability benefits and it took me that long being 'hidden homeless' to find a landlord who would take tenants on benefits.

I ended up moving in to a slum landlord bedsit, with a faked gas safety certificate, and it took me a few years to get out.

HooNoes · 20/07/2020 15:36

Just read the amount of threads on here from mothers who want to kick their (usually) sons out, because of behaviour or whatever. Who do you think is going to take them on, when not even their own mother will have them?

MrsTerryPratchett · 20/07/2020 15:37

Housing work for 30 years here.

In this life you need social capital or financial capital. Friends and family, or money essentially.

If you have neither, it's very easy to become homeless. If you have one or the other, you're generally good. If you have both, you are almost entirely safe. People leaving care, people with brain injuries or disabilities, people with MH issues, tend to have less of both or tend to have to use that capital more quickly.

HooNoes · 20/07/2020 15:39

Facefullofcake You were so lucky to have such good friends. As I've said, not everyone would be willing. You were also on benefits at least.
Immigrants can find things harder.
I come from a relatively well-off family - but with my family in mainly another country and my brother being in Canada, there was fuck all they could do either.

HooNoes · 20/07/2020 15:43

When my brother and sister found me, they knew from my cousin, which park we generally stayed in. They got off at 7 sisters and had to walk the few miles to Pymmes Park (Edmonton). They found me sitting on a park bench, reading a library book (I still had my library card thing on my keyring). My brother says it was both the happiest and saddest day of his life when they found me. They came on a whim without me knowing, my brother was in Europe for a conference and my sister joined him from Dublin. They paid for both me and ex to fly back (ex still had his passport) - exes family were less than fucking useless.

jb7445 · 20/07/2020 15:43

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HooNoes · 20/07/2020 15:48

If anyone knows Pymmes Park, apparently there had been rapes there a few years prior - the Parks Police used to try to warn us that it was dangerous sleeping there at night, but as I had ex with me, I felt safe enough. I was offered £5 for a blowjob once there from some cunt. While my ex was begging on the main street. I had another elderly man offer me a place to stay until he heard that I had a boyfriend - that offer was rescinded fairly lively!

Facefullofcake · 20/07/2020 15:48

@HooNoes - yep, absolutely - things could have been a hell of a lot worse. I will never stop being grateful to them for the support I got - they absolutely didn't have to take me in.
There but for the grace etc..

HooNoes · 20/07/2020 15:50

jb7445 when we got back to Ireland, we used to sleep in the hostels occasionally and one night a girl in the bed next to me tried to steal the runners off my feet!!!!! It was safer sleeping on the streets.

HooNoes · 20/07/2020 15:53

Facefullofcake - it was that act of kindness which saved you. God only knows what would have happened otherwise.

I find the complacency of some posters both belittling and arrogant. There but for the Grace of God go I...

Try moving countries and see how well you get on. Unless you're extremely privileged of course. Things can go wrong on the throw of a die.

Summerunlover · 20/07/2020 15:55

I was made homeless after my marriage broke down- lost my job and husband in the same week. It was miserable that was 13 years ago and I am thankfully living in a secure home. I lived in a nice area with a good job, your life can change so quickly it can happen to anyone.

HooNoes · 20/07/2020 16:00

I remember begging outside Lidl once and this HORRIBLE security guard coming down to lecture me that I should go to the job centre and get a job - as I said to him - who is going to employ me when I haven't washed in 2 months. Some people just are cruel.

HooNoes · 20/07/2020 16:03

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HooNoes · 20/07/2020 16:05

Things that might not cross your mind btw are toilets!! I have to say McDonalds were great at not passing heed on you when you were using their facilities and buying nothing.
Tescos and Lidl both had us move on.

BatleyTownswomensGuild · 20/07/2020 16:07

I think it's very hard to end up street sleeping homeless in the UK, to the point that I would say that it's almost a 'choice'

And the prize for the dumbest thing I've read on the Internet today goes to....

I used to staff an emergency night shelter for homeless men years ago. For people who have no financial or social safety net, it is alarmingly easy to end up homeless. Large numbers of our service users had been in care as kids, had come out of the military and had PTSD, had serious long-term mental health conditions, had grown up in abusive homes, had grown up in abject poverty and been vulnerably housed and living hand-to-mouth most of their lives, had disabilities or learning difficulties etc etc.Anyone who thinks it's 'almost a choice' really needs to step outside their little bubble and see what's really happening to poor, marginalised people in our society....

HooNoes · 20/07/2020 16:09

And the prize for the dumbest thing I've read on the Internet today goes to....

I second the prize-giving!! Grin

Ye, it's a choice.

KateF · 20/07/2020 16:11

Dad's ex-boyfriend came out of prison to find his dad had moved and mum didn't want him in her new life having remarried. He slept in the garden of his dad's old home before I agreed to him moving in with us. He received no support from probation services or help for his mental health and substance abuse issues. He lived with us for a year but his behaviour deteriorated so much that I couldn't keep him here. Having an address helped him get a job and he's now in a shared house. He and DD are no longer together. This lad came out of prison with nothing and no-one wanted to help him. He could easily have become street homeless.

Giggorata · 20/07/2020 16:14

I was homeless when I was young. I sofa surfed a bit, slept on parked up trains, slept on the beach, in a beach hut, public loos, someone's unlocked car, an ice cream kiosk and finally started a squat with some friends.
A combination of relationship breakdown, no recourse to family and the seasonal annual evictions which were a feature of rented accommodation in every seaside town in those days, led to it.
I remember looking into people's lighted windows in envy.

okiedokieme · 20/07/2020 16:17

Homelessness happens generally due to multiple circumstances colliding. It's hard to understand when you have never been in such a situation. Not everyone has family that can pick up the pie for instance

HooNoes · 20/07/2020 16:19

I remember looking into people's lighted windows in envy.

Oh God do I remember that! And just hoping that you could even just sleep in the stairwell. Oh to have a roof over your head.
I'm not in council accommodation and the first thing that gets paid here every month is my rent. Come hell or high water. I've also got some savings and 2 credit cards, so that I hope, should I ever fall on hard times again, I'd have enough to tide me over for a month. I'd like my savings to be £2k, but I'm slowly slowly getting there. If I had had savings, this might not have happened to me.
On the plus side, it makes you grow and learn. It teaches you humility and compassion.. It's a hard lesson and I was lucky to have family willing to spend a few grand to get me out of it, but it's not fucking easy.

HooNoes · 20/07/2020 16:20

Should read I'm NOW in council accommodation.

HooNoes · 20/07/2020 16:23

Giggorata Did you also do the thing of imagining what you would cook if you had a home again? Ours was beef stew.

HooNoes · 20/07/2020 16:25

This thread has made me so grateful for what I have now. It seemed so impossible to even imagine having a flat at the time.

I also got rid of the violent ex Wink

CuriousaboutSamphire · 20/07/2020 16:27

God! Back in the 80s I was always a week away from being homeless. 17 years old; invited to leave the family home 'because'; worked in an office full time and was a pot washer, glass washer, waitress at night, 6 or 7 days a week. I managed to keep the rent paid on my bedsit by living off a box lot of cream crackers and one or two pots if jam and/or peanut butter a month. With the odd meal thrown in with the night job.

I walked everywhere; went nowhere, did nothing but work and sleep - which is why I chose bar jobs, at least it was sociable. After 2 years I started again in a town a hundred plus miles away.

In my 20s I lived with now DH, and we rolled from paypacket to paypacket (bar and building site gofer).

It wasn't until we got into our 40s that we had anything like spare cash. Which probably explains our attitude to cash and debt now. We both lived hand to mouth for decades, and it is bloody scary!

I have no reason to think it is any less scary or likely these days.

Facefullofcake · 20/07/2020 16:31

I'm glad that things eventually worked out for you @Hoo

I'm in a HA property these days; my rent balance has been about a month further in advance than it needs to be for a couple of years now and it's staying that way.

I did have some savings until my cat needed dental work earlier this year, and I've not managed to rebuild them yet - I'm determined to try and start saving again this month just because there's always something at the back of my mind that's convinced I'm going to suddenly end up homeless again - it's been over ten years since I was, but the fear never goes away, even though I've a secure tenancy.