To wonder why the government thinks it's ok to have so many homeless people

[lavenderhue]

A direct consequence of sanctions, bedroom tax, zero hours contracts and a lack of care and commitment to young people is the cause of the growing number of homeless on the streets. These people are often drug and/or alcohol dependent, which in the long run can be just as costly to treat as opposed to preventing homelessness in the first place.

The latest drug now with homeless people is "spice" which makes people appear zombie like often ending with them falling flat on their face and going into a coma. Ambulances are now coming out on a regular basis for these "spice" victims. We now have town centres across the UK with a rapidly growing number of people who will end up like this.

Is this the kind of Britain the government thinks is acceptable. It's so bloody wrong. What gets me is, the cost of preventing homelessness in the first place is far cheaper than the high cost of healthcare for people who sleep rough. What an uncaring world we are in. Does anyone agree with me.

To be frank I think the Govt just got a VERY loud and clear message that people have finally noticed the sanctions and the cuts.

Will that change anything? Not in the short term but I will be writing to my Tory MP and explaining why he did not get my vote. I can tell him about several cases where people have struggled and been close to ending up on the streets.

I can tell him that the local council are DREADING Universal Credit which will make virtually everyone including Carers worse off.

People will have to pay their rent from it. As the local council know and have said "if it's a choice between paying the rent or feeding their children then the children are rightly going to come first"

I strongly believe the punitive nature of the Govt towards vulnerable people is what's cost them their majority. Society has noticed and when all us is said and done we generally all care about the greater good.
I hope they have heard.

It doesn't start at homelessness though.
We need to look at why people are ending up there and using preventative strategies.
IMO it starts at education.
Too many people come out of school disengaged with the system, believing they are worthless.
SN often goes unacknowledged and unsupported which also leads to disengaged young people unless parents have the knowledge and money to fight the system. Who become disengaged adults with no real place in society, unless they do something heroic and everyone falls over themselves to see them as people.
The whole bloody system is geared up against those who need a bit of cushioning to see they reach their potential.
It's no surprise at all that there's a problem with spice and homelessness.

Alfie that's an excellent idea about writing to your MP to explain why he didn't get your vote. I might do the same.

Great post Alfie, a lot of people think the homeless issue is something we can just sweep under the carpet, we can't, it's becoming huge. Government polices have caused the massive rise in it, it can be reversed if they want it to. For some reason they seem happy for it to continue. I hope it spectacularly backfires on them.

I'd like to know why we can't afford our nhs and benefits system anymore. Either the deficit will increase massively in order to pay for these things, or thousands of people will have to be homeless etc

According to Oxford University there were 30 000 (???!!!) more deaths than usual in the UK in 2015 and they have put it down to austerity.

What is at the root of this? Why can't we afford to run our country?

Building more houses will not solve the problem - a lot of homeless are unable to live 'normally' like being able to pay bills on time, keeping their property maintained etc.

There will always be some who are drawn to living on the streets.

the real problem is that there is not enough social housing available for those in need. We are in a perfect storm of little or no new social housing being built in the last 30 years and the rise of privately rented accommodation which is often not available to single homeless people ,especially those with drug , MH and or alcohol issues.

In days gone by the less attractive social housing was often used for those with what could be termed anti social baggage, nowadays even less desirable social housing is taken by others who are equally desperate because as the more attractive properties are sold off there is more demand for what is left.. Often too, even less social housing is available where people want to live, ie the bigger cities .

I think one possible start to improvement is changing the tenancy laws so that renters have far longer tenancy rights, but at the same time making landlords have an obligation to keep a property in decent order and charge a fair rent, but to be fair to the landlord making it easier for them to evict non paying tenants. this would mean less "churn" in properties and tenancies which would mean a more settled private rented market. hopefully this would mean less pressure on social housing so that those in greatest need would have a chance of housing. not going to solve all the problems but something has to change.

there will always be a need for social housing , and the stock needs to be increased, clearly local authorities can't do it on their own, but tougher and properly enforced legislation could demand developers are obliged to build social housing as part of their development schemes or risk having a scheme compulsorily purchased if they welch on the deal as so many presently do.

IME the two interlinked strands of homelessness are drugs and mental health issues.

It's rarely the case that an 'ordinary' person slips through the net to the extent that they are in the streets.

DH ran hostels for years. He had the same problem each time:

Who is more important, the homeless drug users who want to take drugs on site, or the homeless none drug users who want to stay in drug free hostels?

The policy where he worked was no drugs, so even though he'd often have capacity they would be surrounded by homeless people who couldn't stay.

He now works with a big homelessness charity. They are encouraging the councils they work with to give these people accommodation on the understanding that the charity will literally teach these people to live in the accommodation they are given. They hope to cut the rates of homelessness but also cut the rates of damage done to the available housing stock. It is taking a charity to get everyone else to join the dots.

It's ridiculous that people have to prove that they can be trusted to live in social housing - how do you actually go about doing that? Having said that, the councils have a responsibility to keep these buildings (that belong to all of us) in a fit state.

Support your local homelessness charities, they do wonderful things! (Rant over!)

"These people are often drug or alcohol dependent"

Not the homeless people ive seen around here. There was a homeless couple sleeping in a nook near our local Sainsburys. Another homeless bloke is someone i went to school with.

A third is a NRP as mentioned upthread.

There seems to be an assumption that someone would be evicted on say............the 12 June and then suddenly become an alcoholic or drug addict after midnight OR THOUGHT OF THAT WAY the minute they get evicted.

Yes some do have those problems but many dont and the ones ive spoken too are bloody sick of the stereotyping.

i suppose you can't lump all the homeless together. There are probably 3 or more subtypes of homelessness that each require their own approach.
Some antisocial types would not be suitable for apartment living. And supervised residential units like long term care facilities can be viewed as taking away their rights.
With a loss of overall jobs and more people requiring more services it's hard to maintain benefits.
There was a point in time when people with challenges could still find work but those jobs are no longer there or are filled with skilled people who are unable to find suitable work themselves.

What is your solution OP?

It is sometimes the HAs who cause the problems not the tenants.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2901354-Housing-associations-Are-you-having-problems

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/2941906-The-horror-of-Universal-Credit

"It's ridiculous that people have to prove that they can be trusted to live in social housing - how do you actually go about doing that"

Trouble is this involves tarring everyone with the same brush.

Why do peoples memories stop before 2010?

There have always been homeless people from when I was child. Ive never not seen them.

Labour had 13 years to address the problem.

and they tried to, however a 54% increase is really rather significant and very much down to Tory policies. Bedroom tax, unwarranted sanctions etc.

Helena That is shocking, and the awful thing is, it must be the tip of the iceberg. To treat a dying man so callously is unforgivable, and common sense and compassion has all but gone. Horrible but so so sad.

Freeniki yes there always has been homeless people but nothing like on the scale we have now. 54% increase since 2010 is a massive increase. We aren't talking about before 2010 because it wasn't the huge problem it is now. Many of the people who are homeless now is the fault if the government, years ago probably not.

You make it sound like homelessness is something one side is quite fond of, and only the amazing observational powers of the other side have noticed it's not nice.

The reality is that pretty much everyone thinks homelessness is a bad thing, and our society leans very heavily on public servants and charities (of various persuasions) to deal with the difficult and complex family, MH, substance abuse etc problems that people face in conjunction with homelessness.

Really the problem is massive and complex and only really ever partially addressed due to the fact we do not have infinite time, person hours and money. If you have a better way of dealing with the issue, well every one of us can contact our MP and ask them to propose the magic solution we have thought of as soon as they can in parliament or in private.

If you are just going to pretend that the problem exists because insert scapegoat here is really just peachy keen on homelessness, well that can fuck off.

stress that can fo as in the very idea, not YOU, op, I am conscious that could have sounded much ruder than I meant it to, sorry

metspengler Why am i making it sound like one side is quite fond of it, all i've been saying is the government have to take a lot of the blame. Nothing at all complicated, massive or complex as to how it happens. People get sanctioned, lose their housing benefit, lose their home. That's just one scenario. Easy to see how it happens. The government may "not like it" but they create it.

That's ok met, realised you didn't mean me.

interesting book about supported housing during the Blair years.

Why is the government to blame? What about family?
Family structures and dynamics have also changed.

Well I disagree but anyway, it is definitely very much undesirable to pretty much everyone that people are homeless in our country, and it is definitely a very hard problem to solve, especially now.

People get sanctioned, lose their housing benefit, lose their home. That's just one scenario. Easy to see how it happens. The government may "not like it" but they create it.

Is the answer to this never to cut benefits for people who don't seek work, do you think? Or something else?