Thousands of children forced to grow up in shipping containers

[stumbledin]

More than 210,000 children are estimated to be homeless across England, with thousands growing up in shipping containers, office blocks and B&Bs, often miles away from their schools, research shows.

Politicians and campaigners have accused ministers of a “catastrophic failure” to address the housing crisis after a study by the children’s commissioner found the true number of children living without a permanent home was considerably higher than government estimates.

Ms Longfield said: “Something has gone very wrong with our housing system when children are growing up in B&Bs, shipping containers and old office blocks.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/child-homeless-shipping-containers-office-blocks-housing-a9071726.html

What an indictment of the UK that in 21st century children are being put through this. And presumably this means that many single women have found themselves with no other option than to accept this is the only option they have.

www.aylesburytenantsfirst.org.uk/

A shipping container is better than a b&b where all the single people get dumped.

And they do have the choice to go private, with deposits paid for.

Justme it's really not that simple. You have to find a landlord who would take a council deposit scheme and housing benefit. You also need to find a substantial sum of money to cover housing shortfall, because HB doesn't pay the whole amount of rent for private lets. And then you'll spend the rest of your time in that house mindful of the fact that you could end up back in exactly the same place, because private landlords can decide to sell up at any point and only give 6 weeks notice.

Forcing poor people into private lets so the council can wash their hands of them really isn't the answer.

It's not just single people who get dumped in B&Bs Justme1234567. I had 2 children under 5, and they stuck us in a B&B Tunbridge Wells. It was horrific.

@stumbledin. Excellent post

:o

Have you ever tried to find a landlord who will accept a council deposit scheme?

To be fair, I can understand the reticence - if the tenant doesn't stand to lose the deposit themselves, what incentive do they have to keep the house nice? And councils apparently tend to be harder to screw payments out of than simply keeping the deposit a tenant has already paid and many times written off.

Justme1234567

And they do have the choice to go private, with deposits paid for

Some people don't have a choice to private, even with deposit help. Private rents are often extortionate and people on low income often have to have a guarantor or they fail reference checks etc.

Not to mention landlords are often greedy shysters that do no repairs but charge maximum rent and then force you out if you complain..

as awful as it sounds though, all those single homeless men i see day in day out many ex force im. sure would love a shipping container tbh, need to start getting a some of the homeless off the street.

I think all those going on about personal responsibility simply have a complete disconnect of opinion to those of us going on about governmental responsibility.

IMO while yes, there is some level of personal responsibility involved in not ending up homeless, governments and councils are far better placed to ensure that resources are in place both to enable people to help themselves, and also to protect those in vulnerable situations, so that the number of people ending up homeless is minimised as far as possible. That's absolutely their responsibility. It is not down to the individual to triumph over impossible odds. The responsibility of a government towards their citizens is to create the best situation possible in terms of basic needs being met, enabling those citizens to be healthy, happy and productive. Unfortunately some people seem to see this differently and I can't understand why.

To me this whole question is like this - if I can use metaphor for a moment.

Imagine that "the homelessness problem" is a messy bedroom that a child has been asked to clean repeatedly. Every time they "clean" it, they simply shove everything under the bed. It looks clean, so the parent gets off their back and they move on.

After a while the child asks for a mid-sleeper bed and later, a high sleeper bed, so that they can fit more of their stuff underneath it.

Saying "But container homes can be really nice" is like saying "But high sleepers are great" - sure they are/can be! But that isn't really the point, is it? If your child is asking for a high sleeper bed so that they can stash more of their mess underneath it, that's not a good reason and you'd probably expect them to properly clean up their mess rather than keep hiding it away. And be rather narked at them for not dealing with it properly in the first place.

In the report I saw, one woman said it was worse than when they were in Calais. I'm assuming that meant they had been migrants in Calais waiting for passage to the UK.
I wonder what she was expecting when she got here - what are the people migrating here lead to believe the housing situation is? And if it is worse than Calais - how do the French manage to provide better temp accommodation?
I imagine it is very depressing living in such an environment long term.

That shipping container is fine - better then the accommodation I was housed in when I was a student in London. Ealing is an incredibly expensive part of the country. Yes we’d all like everyone to have a nice house and garden, but the reality is there isn’t the space or money to afford that.

People mentioning Singapore here and homelessness. Housing is so expensive and property is even in more short supply. Normal residents (so not expats) regularly live in tiny flats with extended families.

And they do have the choice to go private, with deposits paid for.

No that isn't always an option. A family member and her son were made 'homeless' a couple of years ago when her landlord decided to sell the privately rented property she had lived in for the previous five years. She was an excellent tenant (the house sold within days because it was so will looked after) and she had never missed a rent payment. At the time she was a full time uni student and also had a part time job. She had modest savings so could have paid a deposit plus a few months rent in advance and had people willing to act as guarantors if needed. Despite all of that none of the letting agents she approached (more than a dozen) would consider renting to her because the ratio of her income to the expected rent was not high enough.

So as a last resort she approached the local authority and was given the advice that they would not help if she moved out within the 28 day notice period. She needed to stay put until the landlord issued an eviction notice and then they would provide her with temporary accommodation (B&B) which would be somewhere within a 30 mile radius.

Nobody would choose to take that official route into homeless unless that had no other option. Who would want to have a court judgement issued against them and live in a house waiting to be evicted? Or have employment and a childs schooling disrupted by being placed in a B and B miles away?

She was lucky in a way and had family and friends willing to help so after selling almost all her and her sons possessions she sofa surfed for 18 months and became one of the unofficial homeless people mentioned in the article.

It's a happy ending for her. After completing uni, securing well paid employment and saving more money she now has a mortgage on a real home for herself and her son but for someone without a family willing and able to help out as hers did it would have been a very different outcome.

Imagine blaming poor people for being poor! Well, we can make all the right choices but they are extremely unlikely to get us out of poverty. If you are rich, however, your money insulates you from the consequences of your bad decisions which, because money opens all doors, can be far worse than anything we could possibly get wrong. And the women who have to live in these containers may have made all the right choices: moved area for a better job, escaped from an abusive partner and so on. But they still get sneered at. I am sick of it. We need to do far better than this.

Good post Stumble

There are various issues that have led to the current situation.

Population in 1960 was 52million in 2015 it was over 65million. (Comparisons to Finland IMO are a bit bizarre as the population is around 5million).

So we have 13 million more people to house, including more elderly.

Social housing was sold of and not replaced.
Second home 'trend'.
Empty investments.
Break down in families - no this does not mean im saying women should stay with bad men - women and children needing family homes and single men needing a home - so more housing stock required. In some cases one man will have multiple single mums with his children.

Councils need to be given the power to compulsory purchase empty investment properties.
Something needs to be done about empty weekend homes, either compulsory purchase or a special super high council tax.

We need to be open to new ideas in terms of housing - containers are a viable solution. However there needs to be regulation.

You can't over insulate a property. Insulation keeps the cold out in winter and heat out in summer. If there is a heat wave and windows and doors are open the heat will come in, however it will still be cooler than a poorly insulated property.

The problem seems to me to be one of geography. There are far more people trying to live in London than the available housing stock and spare building land can actually accommodate.
The result is predictable - lengthy waiting lists, temporary hostels and shipping containers. You cannot make London bigger and you cannot keep absorbing an endless stream of extra people, whether migrants or locals.
As I asked upthread - where do you expect London council housing departments to get the extra housing stock or land from?
They don’t have the budget to compulsorily purchase empty houses or office blocks at current London market prices.
The only sensible answer is to redistribute population more evenly around the country. There is plenty of much more affordable accommodation in the regions, particularly the north. There should be far more incentives for companies to move north, the government could move all the major civil service departments out of London, they could fund infrastructure improvements for the regions, and they could house all refugee migrants outside the capital. If London’s population actually started to fall, there would be an easing of the pressure on housing immediately.
The alternative is to keep cramming ever more people in, with higher population density, higher pollution and traffic problems, smaller and smaller subdivided flats, and a worsening quality of life.
I worked in an outer London borough housing department 40 years ago, before going to study medicine, and the housing waiting list, even then, ran into thousands. We had an obligation, under the GLC, to help house overspill homeless people from the inner London boroughs too, and we struggled to meet it, even though we were buying private houses and turning them into council ones- the polar opposite of “ right to buy”!
The situation now is orders of magnitude worse. I am not unsympathetic to the tenants of the shipping containers (as PPs have claimed), but I must point out there is no magic fix that the London councils are wilfully refusing to use.

There was a design program on TV a couple of years ago that featured a prize winning refurbished container home.
I think they are better than tiny flats or horrible private lets owned by unscrupulous landlords.
BandBs are dreadful. My neighbour ended up in one when she couldn't pay her rent. (Her ex used to roll up in his BMW for access days, but that is another story). Shared bathroom and no food storage or preparation facilities.
I grew up in a "New Town" in the late 60s that was composed entirely of prefabs. Whole estates went up in weeks. Those houses are still occupied today and going strong.
What would help would be gardens, playgrounds, shops, services, a community centre.

a prize winning refurbished container home.

might be a bit of a difference between an award winning and expensively.built container home and a local authority container home...

One will be built as a single persons dream with all their own money and investment..
The other will be cheap patch up of a big problem..

a prize winning refurbished container home.

Here you go... Only a small.difference there...

Yes, I take that point.
All I am saying is that potentially they could be better than the alternatives.
I have experience of the grotty bnbs that councils put people in and IMO they are much, much worse. I lived in a damp, cramped flat that had a 2 bar electric fire as the only heating. No hot water. None of the windows opened.The back door had no lock.
The whole housing situation is dire. I don't think the shipping containers are the worst.

We do need to move things away from london so people follow.

Properly converted shipping containers are the modern equivelent of the prefabs of the 60s. Outside of london thousands could be put up with shops, schools playgrounds... new communities built. Well made and maintained there is no reason they cant last years.

Inside cities they can be prefabricated and stacked so land requirement is minimal.

They are modular so it is easy to have homes for single people - stacked studio apartments. Joined to make homes for small or large families.

The main issue will be jobs - government needs to lead the way with moving jobs out.

A basic studio like this from £13k with double glazing, insulation, bathroom is a lot better than a lot of the alternatives.

So a bit OT maybe but related to this question of moving jobs out of London:

London seems like one of the worst cities for this but there are similar issues with very large cities elsewhere as well. As if they are too large to really function, but somehow it still seems like businesses keep wanting to locate there. Government functions are a little different of course but I often find myself wondering about the businesses.

Most don't actually need to be co-located with every other business or sector. And a business in London must have higher costs for salaries so people can live. Wouldn't it be better for many businesses to locate in smaller centres where housing for their employees is cheaper? Where do these businesses find the lower paid employees that work as security guards and cleaners and such?

It seems like there is something gone a little wrong with the natural ecosystems of cities.

I also wonder if it could help to give tax breaks to business outside cities like London, or increase taxes for the ones that are there. I guess people would feel like that would suppress business but it really isn't good for any country or region when all the employment is sucked into one black hole. The wealth doesn't distribute the way they seem to ghope.

Some of the problems highlighted in the report:

• lack of investment in new homes
• LHA has been frozen since 2016 while private rents have continued to rise sharply
• 5 week wait when claiming UC
• new rules allowing councils to offer a private tenancy instead of social housing: currently they can do this if they can find a tenancy of at least 12 months but this just delays the problem for a year
• current rules allow councils to turn office blocks into temp accommodation without planning permission
• the 'space standard' of statutory overcrowding does not apply to temp accommodation
• councils are not required to inspect the quality of temp accommodation before placing families there
• families are being moved a long way from their schools, jobs and support networks. Currently only those with children coming up to exams are given priority to stay locally
• children are being housed in accommodation with shared facilities (kitchens and bathrooms) alongside vulnerable adults (mental health problems, drug and alcohol problems etc.)
• the rules limiting the time families can be placed in B&B to 6 weeks only applies to private B&Bs. Families can be housed in council run B&Bs without a time limit. Even where the time limit applies, it is being illegally breached in 1/3 of cases.
• there is no data on the number of homeless families housed by children's services
• the rules in the homelessness legislation on 'suitable' accommodation do not apply to those housed by children's services.

The shipping containers have caught the headlines and it's true, unless properly converted they are just shit metal boxes and are also poorly placed and too small for the number of people being housed in them, however the report goes much wider than shipping containers.

There is also the fact that the council accomodation that was demolished during "regeneration" was not replaced with social housing. Or replaced with a lot less social housing.

Some of the demolished homes were structurally sound. Builders and developers are looking to make as much profit as they can.

But no matter how many links i post to show how much social housing has been lost in this way (and there are many in this thread) i mostly see posts blaming it on pensioners not moving (not on this thread YET) but on many other threads on social housing on this site. People have bought into the residulisation hook line and sinker.