To think you shouldn't be homeless if you have a job.

[coolncalm]

Well actually no one should be homeless but i watched a programme last night and people were sleeping on the streets in London and didn't have a roof over their heads. Isnt it a sorry state of affairs when you go out to work but you can't earn enough for a single room never mind a flat.

Zero hour contracts are always made out to be evil but they can suit employers and employees very well. Students, second earners, retired people wanting to do the odd few hours etc.

London is and always has been expensive. Nobody is forced to live there. Most people have to live in an area they can afford, it's only the rich and those on benefits that can live in expensive areas.

Yes London is expensive and noones forced to live there.....but it will crumble without cleaners, shop assistants, care assistants, binmen, road sweepers etc and these people need to live somewhere. It's fine saying ''they can live somewhere else'' but would you travel from Luton to Westminster to work as a kitchen porter?

i saw the same documentry, i dont know why anyone would take a minimum wage job and live in London, we have minimum wage jobs allover the country and £100/£120 would rent you an entire house in my town

@BoxsetsAndPopcorn I started working just before ZHC were brought in.

Employers got flexibility by offering students and the like 4-8 hours a week, then regularly asking you if they wanted more hours on top. Warehouses and other places would make it clear that the work was temporary and they probably only needed you for X days.

ZHC as they are being used are an abuse of workers. It is like going back to the Victorian era were people line up to get work for the day. In the recent past those who knew they needed more hours to live on simply avoided jobs were the stated hours were too low. With ZHC it is impossible to do that as you don't know the minimum number of hours you will get.

25+ years ago it was possible to find places to rent in expensive areas of London at reasonable prices, now people on NMW and ZHC can't even afford to rent further out in London as London rent prices have increased 22% in 6 years.

I am on a good wage yet can only afford a tiny box flat in Zone 3.
Most of my colleagues don't live in London, but work there. Either they live just outside, or frigging miles away. Someone I currently work with lives in Hastings. I plan to move out for a little garden to sit out in. Cannot afford it in the area I'm in now.
For those working minimum wage jobs or on similar incomes it's horrendous. Not enough social housing. Flats are being built by the 1000 but most is for private rent or sale, which is too expensive. We need chefs, cleaners, nurses, office admin, street sweepers, labourers, and all these people, but we cannot offer them reduced cost or subsidised housing.
Meanwhile, in Knightsbridge and Chelsea, many houses lie empty as investors from the Far East, Russia and tax havens like the Cayman Islands let houses rot but increase in value.
If Sadiq Khan had any bollocks he'd take on the developers and investors and stop this nonsense. But I doubt he has. (My opinion of our Mayor is he's a snowflake but that's just me)

I do so love the attitude,
"London's expensive, of you can't afford it, move"

Morons that spout that bollocks forget that London, like every other town and city, needs people to do the lower paid jobs.
Streets need cleaning, offices need cleaning, Starbucks needs baristas etc. Without the people doing these jobs, a city wouldn't function.

Even if you just rent a room a lot of them want one months rent as deposit plus a months rent. Which is around £800 minimum and expensive.

boxsets but even people on benefits are struggling keep their homes. The cap on housing benefit means they'll be unable to meet the shortfall.

It's about £2200 to get a flat in London.

So start smaller with a room? You can get a room, admittedly not necessarily in the nicest area but as a start for as little as £100-120/week.

@Ariela
I asked the guys I worked with that. Why they didn't house-share? They both worked long hours (8-10 hour shifts) 6 days a week. They were on minimum age. The older one had been for numerous interviews (existing housemates interview you at the convenience) but he wasn't the ideal flatmate as he wouldn't fit in with the social culture of the house of 20/30 somethings. He was worn out from travelling around London after work and on his day off to get somewhere. Living in a hostel with no facilities for washing clothes also meant the launderette on his day off.
The younger one was aiming for that, but was trying to save the £1200 needed to get a room in a shared house. He was almost there.
They stay in London because it's a place with lots of work and temp agencies. I guess it's the place they have friends too. Moving is easier 3-4 hours from what you've always known with just £200 in your pocket must be scary.
As someone from a big, loving family, with lots of friends, I too find it hard to believe that some people are so alone. With zero support network. But some people are.

You don’t just need rent and a deposit. You need references too. Not great if you’ve been evicted. Moving further out of London is a lovely idea, except a train from zone 5 will cost you hundreds each month rather than a £1.50 bus if you live (or sleep rough) closer to central. Why don’t they just leave London? Well how much does it cost to get to Grimsby or whatever for an interview. Or several interviews, house viewings, visiting schools and nurseries? A moving van for a min wage worker, to the other side of the country? Probably would cost more than their new rent.

Zero hour contracts don’t mean you can choose to do zero hours when it suits you. It means you are at your employers mercy, you could do 50 hours one week and none for the rest of the month. Don’t show up, because you’re a “student” with lectures, or “retired” with a medical appointment, well, tough shit, you’re fired.

It’s disgusting and there’s not one person to blame. The government for freezing benefits. Councils for selling land to luxury delevopers. Developers for deliberately skirting around their social and affordable homes targets under the guise of unprofitability. Banks for selling mortgages which don’t allow renting to benefits claimants. Employers for insisting their right to profit comes above their workers right to a home and a decent standard of living. Landlords for using properties as a business rather than a service, squeezing extra rent out of tenants and neglecting the cheapest properties. For choosing rich tenants over good hardworking tenants. The public attitude that people always have options - that they’ve brought this on themselves by living where the jobs are.

The real scandal are low wages & no social housing.

why is it perfectly acceptable for a business to make large profits eg Tesco, pay good dividend's & have super high director pay, yet pay staff minimum wage/ZHC and then these employees have to go to the state for in-work benefits funded by relatively poor tax payers?

I doubt the Mayor of London has the clout to change the tax laws to stop land/house banking.

I watched this last night. Totally shocking, although I agree no one should be homeless. That security guard from the Prada shop just loooked so exhausted with life. We’re a fucked up broken society that’s for sure, and the homelessness minister couldn’t even be arsed to interview. I also snorted when the lady from shelter cited ‘growing rents and cuts in housing benefits’ as the cause. How about decent living wages and rents that aren’t pure extortion in the 1st place? Why do the government continue to pour money into the pockets of landlords? Is this really cheaper than building and providing more social housing? All they’re concerned about is propping up a crooked housing market with these stupid help to buy schemes.

I volunteer in a winter night shelter in zone 2 and approximately 1/3 of our guests are in work.

Even for a room in a shared property, you require a month rent up front, a month rent as deposit and possibly admin fees and references checks. That's around 1000 for a cheap shared room.

The zero hours contracts are an even bigger problem because earnings are unreliable and many landlords are nervous about renting to people on them unless they have a guarantor.

In a booming city, you can easily find other tenants so why rent to these riskier people?

They are single adults so low priority for social/council housing.

I know someone who worked in the daytime 6-2 cleaning a health club, then went straight to a warehouse and worked 3-11pm, 6 days a week, to afford to feed and house his family. I don’t know how he managed to do that long term. It’s a scandal that anyone is in this position in one of the world’s richest countries.

We have this problem here in Dublin too. I know a family who have to move out of their rented house because it's being sold and they can't find anywhere to move too that they can afford even though both parents work. They may end up in temporary accommodation, i.e. a hotel or hostel with their kids. And they're not the only ones.

We do have minimum wage jobs in the rest of the country too, London isnt the only place that has jobs,i realise thats lots of global companies are central to London, but the people featured in this programme were minimum wage workers and wouldnt need to travel to London for work.

I think that the real scandal is the government forcing councils to sell off the council houses through Right to Buy.

Right to buy decreases housing stock which cost X as many of these properties end up under private landlord control. As the numbers of people needing to rent hasn't increased, but properties costing X has. This means more desperate people have to pay X + whatever the landlord can get away with which hikes up the prices.

Our charity will often provide the deposit to help people move on to rooms in a shared flat and a package of stuff (bedsheets, duvet, pillows) to get them set up .

The requirements for getting housing benefit/local housing credit have also been made tighter which doesn't help. Contrary to what UKIP might tell you, it's got particularly hard for EU migrants. All of our EU guests are working but struggling to find somewhere to live.

One of the routes we use is to connect people to jobs with accommodation (ie hotels in the countryside) but this is only a route for those without other commitments like family in London. But quite a few do end up leaving London

What if you were born in London, grew up there and all of your friends and family lived there? Perhaps you rely on them for childcare and much needed emotional support?

Even if you did then decide to up sticks and move up north, as a PP pointed out, how are you going to go about doing that with no upfront cash for
Travel to view houses
Travel for interviews
Moving costs
Deposit, admin fees, rent and bills for new place (which even though cheaper would still not be “cheap”)?

IF you manage to sort all that, you’d then find yourself miles away from anyone you know, lonely as well as skint.

This is a scandal but will anything be done about it? Not a chance. This current government doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but themselves. Just look at how so many of the arch brexiteers are moving funds to Ireland/Malta/taking French residency. The so called austerity budgets we have been forced to live with are hurting the poorest and most vulnerable in society and as for schools, well I have no words.

The sooner we have an electorate who have a more educated view of politics and are able to think critically about rhetoric and spin, the better. I’m not holding my breath though.

Where is this mythical £100pw room in London? If it even exists, it’s probably unsafe and miles from anywhere.

And for the poster saying they could rent a whole house for that in their town, thanks for that super tip. It will be a massive help to all the workers who HAVE to be in or around London for whatever reasons. I think you’ve just found the housing equivalent of “just hire a hall and do all the wedding catering yourself”.

@x2boys I understand what you’re saying but I actually think you’d struggle in most major cities (certainly in the south) to rent a room on min wage now, when you factor in the fact you need deposits and rent up front. And presumably the chance of getting work is greater in a large city. You can see why people would be reluctant to move to a new area with possibly less jobs available when they will most likely still be homeless.

Mojo can you provide a link to your charity? This could be a fantastic opportunity to drum up support for a worthy cause.

Though we’d all understand if it was too outing for you.

Thes people were homeless and sleeping rough or in night shelters [if they were lucky] though Magpie so their friend and families were not offering them anything in the way of support ?

55% of homeless people are in employment.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-44904638

This is the end result of the council housing sell off. Council homes provided social stability, among other benefits.