WOMEN and HOMELESSNESS on Woman's Hour now!

[YesTonightJosephine]

I am in tears listening to this ...

No words!

[ I was not too sure where to post this ... ]

BBC Radio 4 - Woman's Hour, Co-parenting, Homelessness and women, Dr Jessica Taylor

@dottiedodah OMG! And yet another appalling story about being made homeless ...

In Finland I think there was a programme where all the people who were homeless were given a flat ...

This is disingenuous and you know it

Regularly when people post on here about the conflict in Gaza and how awful it is for Jewish people, comments mention how it’s also bad for those in Palestine.

mumsnet isn’t a forum for women either, it just so happens many women are on here, it’s not the same as a Christian forum or a forum for deaf people.

And even if it was, if someone posted on a Christian forum how awful anti religious rhetoric was for Christian’s I’d expect a few people to say anti religious rhetoric was awful for all religions. And to remind them that most of the hate incidents recorded around religion are against Muslim and Jewish people

People should always be willing to check their privilege

That isn't what they said. They said she does not meet the criteria for homelessness because she does not have any vulnerability that meets the criteria for which a homelessness duty is owed. It's all there in the Housing Act.

Either way, yes, it's diabolical, that's what you get with a Conservative right wing government. Vote them out. Though God knows how long it will take to fix the mess we're in. Years and years.

You might think that but it’s not. The type of crime they might be victims of is different but proportionally they will not suffer as many acts of violence compared to homeless males.

Especially as most women don’t stay homeless for very long, they are also more likely to be ‘homeless’ as in couch surf not genuinely be on the streets.

Yes, if a woman and a man were forced to live on the streets for a year, the woman would probably be more at risk, but in reality a woman wouldn’t be on the streets at all, and if she was she wouldn’t be there for a year. These are basic facts

Yes but we've given 800,000 social housing units away in the right to buy. Another shit Tory policy.

Here is the article re homelessness in Finland :

'It’s a miracle': Helsinki's radical solution to homelessness | Cities | The Guardian

I really don't know where you are getting this stuff, but there are a lot of street homeless women here (sth east), with a significant number for quite some time. Women being street homeless is very real.

You mentioned sofa surfing. A significant number of women will pick up men just so they have somewhere to sleep for a few days in return for sex. That puts them even more at risk than being on the street.

It's such a straw man argument when people say but...but in Scandinavian/ Nordic countries...

Different countries, different cultures, different populations, different demographics, different societies , different taxes, different, different, different, different.

It's just daft to say "but in Finland they just gave all the homeless people flats so why don't we?" 🙄

Another risk I’m noticing is Air BnB. I’ve seen very cheap rooms being offered in people’s houses; often the host name will be female but the photo is of a man.

I hate to think of vulnerable women forced to take rooms in strangers’ homes …

This is the context of the letter from Thurrock Council :

'she should be able to function reasonably well if she ends up on the streets and even if being homeless led her to having to sleep rough occasionally, or in the longer term she should not be more vulnerable than any other ordinary person in the same situation.'

And apologies Thurrock is Essex not Kent!

Women being told we need to 'check our privilege' seems to be a theme on AIBU lately.

And no, it doesn't 'just so happen' that there are lots of women on MN. MN is the only big mainstream online space dominated by female posters, that didn't happen by accident. It's not an exclusively women's space but it is female dominated.

Women on a female dominated forum are allowed to centre women in their discussions, if they want to

the Inevitable "what about da menz" didn't take long.

And we know. But this is a conversation about a particular radio programme on a particular topic.

I am getting ‘this stuff’ from the widely available stats on adult homelessness in the UK.

Women are unlikely to be on the streets, the vast majority of ‘homeless’ adult women will not be sleeping in a bus shelter at night. Those that are, aren’t there for very long compared to their male counterparts.

I have worked with DENS in my county for over 12 years, the longest a male using our services has been rough sleeping is 22 years, the longest we ever saw a woman rough sleeping was 11 consecutive months. She was homeless for 3 years total, but had accommodation short term for periods in that time.

It’s a numbers game, a woman is more at risk when on the streets, but less likely to be in the risky situation for as long as a male in the same situation (for a myriad of reasons)

Yes, that is the correct homelessness test that has been applied, as I said it's a letter explaining why she doesn't meet the criteria for being owed the Homelessness duty as in the Housing Act.

You are getting at the wrong people. It isn't the council that are at fault, they just apply the law as passed by Parliament. It's the Government that needs to change the legal criteria. The fact is we have a MAJOR housing crisis on our hands and this government has totally failed in it's entirety to do anything at all, except make it worse.

There are no houses available in swathes of the country. Private landlords have bailed making an already dire situation worse.

I disagree it does impact woman more,they are at far greater risk of being exploited,evidence suggests that being a homeless female is far likely to have more of a negative impact on women than it does men.

This.

Of course they are

Other women on a female dominated forum are also able to tell others to check their privilege and to not be so ridiculous to think that just because we all have vaginas we have to blindly support others with vaginas.

most of the world is male dominated, but I’d hazard a guess you’d not like it if a woman in a boardroom was told that when trying to comment.

Nobody (not even menz!) should be getting letters with that text in a western democracy in the 21st century.

From reading the article i am going to guess this woman and her son aren't the sharpest tools in the box (sorry, patronising) and probably need more than the usual amount of help.

There will be an election this year. Vote wisely.

Would you agree with funding for mental health services being allocated 80% to treating men?

Because evidence shows that the impact is far greater at a societal level when men struggle with their MH compared to women

Adult Women, and men are expected to house themselves unless there are other factors at play, those factors are usually what go in women’s favour in the sense that women are more likely to be made homeless with children, or fleeing DV. But if there is no ‘reason’ for her not to find work and sort her own accommodation out, kindly it doesn’t really matter.

Actions have consequences; if those consequences are worse for women then surely the women who l, through their own choices end up in that situation are maybe a bit silly.

I am aware that Russian prisons are worse than British ones, so if I commit a crime in Russia I can’t really complain about the living conditions as I knew the risks.

More about this on the BBC :

Woman facing eviction told she would cope living on the streets - BBC News

...

If she knew she and her also not working adult son were being evicted why didn't one of them or both of them get a job? Do they just assume someone will bail them out? Everyone else has to work to keep a roof over their heads. I'm afraid I have very little sympathy for people who don't work and expect the state to provide for them. There are plenty of people in need who do the best they can, those I have sympathy for.

Is this just a bad example of women being made homeless or was that the best they could find?

Even on mental health your wrong women are 3 x more likely to have a mental health condition than men.more women self harm,more women have anxiety and depression than men and more have ptsd and other complex mental health issues.

Also.its just as difficult for women and men to acsess mental health services.

You say actions of consequences but some situations are out of the control of women and men.

Can I check (lol), what is the privilege that posters on this thread need to check?

I've no idea if the woman on the programme was foolish in how she dealt with her situation, or whether she is a typical example of a homeless woman or an outlier. I don't think we should all 'blindly support others with vaginas', but I think we should be able to have a conversation specifically about homelessness as it affects women, without first caveating that it's very terrible that men are affected by homelessness too.

I'm not following the point about the boardroom.

What decisions relating to homelessness are out of our control?

Specifically this woman, who chose to leave her job 4 years ago and refuses to work ever since

You really need me to answer that question you can't think of one reason where it could be out of someone's control are you actually being serious?