About homeless people?

[Catabogus]

Am I being unreasonable (or more likely, dim) not to understand why there are now so many more homeless people on the streets than there were 10 years ago?

I’m partly talking about London - I have started going semi-regularly in the early morning for work, and I am shocked to see very how many people there are now obviously sleeping on the streets. It’s far, far more than 10 years ago.

But I’m also talking about the much smaller city where I live. There are now people almost ‘camping’ in doorways: they’ve set up sleeping bags and boxes and cardboard and are obviously there night after night, in the cold and rain.

There have always been one or two well-known “tramps” in my city, and one younger man who was suspected of actually having a nice home to go to at night despite making money from begging in the day, but these are now young and old, men and women, far more than I’ve ever seen before, and they are clearly living year round, day and night, in all weathers, on the streets.

AIBU to be shocked? Are we going backwards as a society? Is it the benefits system that is failing and causing this? Or other things I’m missing? I feel really depressed about it.

Moonbeams of course this is a political thread. It's not even that dressed up. What I'm unsure about is whether MN will move it to politics or not if we ask?

MN is going to be inundated with political staffers pretending they're ordinary posters until the GE. But short of moving all the threads into the politics section and introducing a rule that you need to have been a member for x period of time before posting, I don't know how they can be avoided.

I do think it's interesting that everyone's talking about Twitter and Facebook's different approaches to political advertising but no-one is talking about the duplicity/morality/immorality of paid staffers working across social media to push a certain political agenda or propaganda with no type of regulatory oversight at all.

Statistics on homelessness in the UK
Some of these are estimates but are collected from all the England local authorities so the best info available .This only includes rough sleeping not the 'invisible homeless' who are sofa surfing etc

An overall rise of 165% between 2010 and 2018
Table 1: Rough sleeping
England total
2010 1,768
2011 2,181
2012 2,309
2013 2,414
2014 2,744
2015 3,569
2016 4,134
2017 4,751
2018 4,677

Top ten local authorities with the highest number of people sleeping rough England, autumn 2018- Rate per 10,000 households
Westminster 306
Camden 141
Manchester 123
Birmingham 91
Bristol 82
Newham 79
Enfield 78
Hillingdon 70
City of London 67
Brighton & Hove 64

Details here: assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/781567/Rough_Sleeping_Statistics_2018_release.pdf

I think this is a political thread dressed up

Not sure what you mean! Of course it’s political. Unless you think individuals are uniquely responsible?

I absolutely think that policy mistakes are being made/ have been made and that’s how we have ended up here. I am interested in trying to identify which policies in particular.

It seems to be a complicated mix of direct homelessness services being cut; cuts to other indirectly related services eg mental health, benefits/social welfare; local government funding; housing policy changes. I’m not sure which has had the biggest impact.

I do also think there seems to be a real lack of political will to do something about it.

Having said that it shouldn’t be up to individual charities, I’d be in favour of a Mumsnet campaign. Eg on getting young women off the streets.

I live in a semi rural place at the very edge of London commuting distance (bigger than a village, smaller than a town) which is ten miles from the nearest proper town. I had never see homelessness here and never expected to.
But for the past 6-12 months there have been two men sleeping rough here. One outside the supermarket, and one outside the takeway (both of which have a bit of shelter under roof canopies).

It's horrifying.

I think it is a complex collection of issues. Lack of social housing is a problem in places where private rents are unaffordable.

Grossly inefficient benefit claim processing - this is not a new problem. Even 15 years ago judges in one London County Court refused to grant possession orders to one council when the primary reason their tenants weren’t paying their rent was because the council was taking 6+ months to process HB claims. It can still take that long now and a private landlord will be able to evict under s8 for non payment of rent. Additionally, it puts private landlords off tenants on HB.

Mental health and addiction services have been cut.

Inadequate assistance for people leaving the armed forces, sometimes with MH problems such as PTSD.

It’s not simply the fault of one political party.

Top ten local authorities with the highest number of people sleeping rough England, autumn 2018-Rate per 10,000 households
Westminster 306
Camden 141

So what is the solution to this problem?

^"About 50% of the rough sleepers in Camden are non-UK nationals, many of whom do not have recourse to public funds."

Sorry cut and paste fail. The last numbers I posted (by region) are total numbers of rough sleepers in Autum 2018, not per 10,000 households

I volunteer with the homeless. Living costs. Drugs. Alcohol.

Most of all. Mental health. 99.9% of the people I work with. Stems from low self esteem which sky rockets to full blown mental health. With that comes drinking or drugs. Relationship melt down......lose their jobs. Lose their youse

We don’t have enough mental health services to nip this in the bud. We work with some very high esteemed psychiatrist and there just isn’t enough resources

People are shouting from the rooftops that they want to die and are being told they need to wait 4 months to see someone.......

Kids are needing more intervention. And there is no one answering them.....

It’s a very sad state of affairs. I work with people very entrenched in addictions and most of them grew up in care with no one to love them. No one to teach them how to be an adult even. They can’t food shop. They can’t budget. They lead such sad sad lives. Yet all we do is band aid them up and send them back out and inevitably they come back

We just don’t have enough and it breaks my heart daily.....

Universal credit paying benefit to recepients instead of landlords.

Benefits sanctions.

Fit to work and other benefits interviews

Assured short hold benefits reforms.

Reverse those and you'd see an instant improvement. Then Improve Addiction and mental health support

In my local park there is a small amount of rough sleepers who have set up a small 'tent village' around 6 or 7 tents. I was walking my dog and baby when I saw them...all English and this is in a London Borough. I saw one guy emerge from a tent and was putting some rubbish in the bins. I asked him if he was ok and if he needed anything. He said he was okay and that they were a group of rough sleepers who had decided to go live in the park as it was too dangerous in the town centre as people were urinating on them and one of the female homesless was nearly raped! This is 2019! I am ashamed that people are living like this in this day in age....

Homelessness is rife among veterans, as are mental health problems. So, we’ve achieved nothing since 1918 - fight for your country and we’ll sling you out on the streets. It’s unforgivable and I hope people do remember it when they vote.

inews.co.uk/news/uk/armed-forces-veterans-homeless-crime-prison-mental-health-254034

Local councils have been allowed to add their own conditions instead of being obliged to house everyone. I forgot which act it was, the Local Housing Act or something.

So it means if you have ever had rent arrears, you can be refused also if you don’t have any local family. It has excluded so many people from being offered even temporary accommodation.

My mum was over 50 and street homeless for months. There were no shelters in our town and the council wouldn’t offer her temporary accommodation because of previous arrears

Ahhh yes, forgot to add, she got rent arrears as she has a brain injury. Universal credit stopped paying direct to landlord and sanctioned her constantly until she was evicted

@Sharpandsineyteeth That's horrific, your poor mum. What sort of Government in 2019, allows their citizens to end up in that situation? Yet sadly this shower will probably win the election and this problem will get worse and worse.

Welcome to Tory Britain

In the U.S. the Democrat cities are a mess. Lot's of homeless & shit, rats, used needles everywhere.

Universal credit paying benefit to recipients instead of landlords.
Benefits sanctions. Fit to work and other benefits interviews

"About 50% of the rough sleepers in Camden are non-UK nationals, many of whom do not have recourse to public funds."

These poor people haven't had their benefits cut - they were not entitled to benefits in the first place! The Labour Party activists on here are ignoring half of the problem;

^"It comes as the latest data revealed that there are “very high levels of new people coming to the streets of Westminster from around the world, "A street count in July found 389 people on the street–with just 123 who said they were from the UK and Ireland.This means there are “significant challenges” and limited help on offer for people who are not entitled to welfare support."

How is Labour going to help non-UK homeless people?

OpheIiaBaIIs
That photo is from Chicago.

I worked for a regional homeless charity for just over a year until recently and I'd say first and foremostly that homelessness can happen to anyone, at any time - the stories I heard were varied. However, addiction plays a huge part in many aspects - leading to loss of employment/income, breakdown of family relationships and homelessness soon follows.

Austerity, as championed by our incumbent govt. is a huge driver - we had service users who were employed, full time, but couldn't afford to rent anywhere to live and manage household running costs on their salaries (one guy lived in his car for six months whilst working full time as a groundsman at a posh golf and country club)! High rents, coupled with, as others have said, landlords being unwilling to rent to tenants on low incomes, those with poor credit history or unreliable contracts/hours all conspire to make homelessness almost inevitable for a lot of the people living on the edge of poverty.

I heard from many, many service users that they actually preferred rough sleeping in the warmer months to staying in our hostels - mainly because they can be extremely chaotic environments. When you've got a group of people living in close proximity, many of whom are dealing with substance addiction, alcohol dependency and mental health issues, the atmosphere very often turns oppressive and threatening (fights and arguments were commonplace and the staff were forever being threatened and physically harmed).

For a lot of homeless people, a hostel is often the LAST place they want to be. They're rarely happy, upbeat places a lot of the time.

Although I wouldn't want to sleep rough at ANY time, I could easily understand these peoples' attitude to hostel accommodation.

You can thank the Tories.

An estimated 29,000 people are homeless in and around Paris-up to 8,000 are thought to sleep rough on the French capital's streets.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-42831785

That photo is from Chicago.

Oh yes, wheelchair in the snow;

"The photo is from Chicago but it is somewhat symptomatic of the situation in the UK too."

Perhaps you've been living in a news free bubble

The OP came on here to ask a question. It is possible to answer it without being sarky.

There are a few who fake it. There was one in my town. I always thought he was suspect - eventually it turned out that he had a 4 bed house in another town and came to my home town because we were soft touches. Once people realised he was moved on and hasn't been back. It must have taken a decade though.

Then some are part of mafia-type set-ups where they beg in a particular place and then get moved on to let others into their place.

These are the reasons you never give money directly - either buy them a coffee/food or give the money to a homeless charity.

It is completely unacceptable that there are genuine homeless people in a rich country like the UK.

@ginghambox are these? They're from the same thread shared on Twitter.

clavinova I for one am not a ‘Labour Party activist’ (I assume you are suggesting that being one somehow invalidates someone stating a political position about something - I’ve never understood this reasoning - not when Laura k said it and not now).

An estimated 29,000 people are homeless in and around Paris-up to 8,000 are thought to sleep rough on the French capital's streets.

I remember going to Paris probably about 10 years ago and we went out to take some night photos of the buildings. We saw quite a tall shopping centre near there and went up to the top level thinking it would give us a good view of notre dame. The whole top floor if the centre was a homeless camp, scores of tents set up like a little city. We spoke to some of the people there and they said that alot of them were in work just unable to pay rent and bills on what they earn. Alot of them were migrants but alot of French as well.

It was quite a few years before i saw anything similar in London