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stella40 -> Whilst you are fast asleep in your bed... (7/2/2007 5:00:54 AM)
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I do voluntary work with the homeless in London. One of the things I do is to go out onto the streets of London with a CAT team, which looks for homeless people who are sleeping on the streets, assigns them a CAT number which makes them 'officially' homeless, and gives them priority when it comes to receiving housing.
The metropolitan London area is home to just under 14 million people, making it arguably Europe's largest city and it is seen as a world city. Finding somewhere to live, as with finding any sort of space for any reason such as business or for other activities can be difficult, time-consuming, and is usually expensive. In the 1980's Margaret Thatcher's Right To Buy policies for council tenants mean that local authority housing is in very short supply, if at all it is available. Housing in any form is hard to come by, and even bed spaces in hostels and night shelters are also hard to come by. This is why we now have street homeless people.
The popular media are very quick to convince you that street homeless people are undeserving of your taxes. They characterise these people - who are the weakest and most vulnerable members of society - as benefit scrounging junkies, aggressive beggars and alcoholic freeloaders. Hardly anybody today fits this stereotype, but these people - like the large families on benefits who keep having children - are in the minority, and nowadays are becoming very few and far between. The truth is however, if you are homeless and sleeping on the streets and don't have an address for correspondence with a bank account you will not be considered for any benefits.
But being homeless and sleeping on the streets is still not guaranteed to get you a CAT number and to give you priority. Families get priority, which is why you never see a family who is street homeless. The street homeless are therefore invariably single people and couples (which can be parents estranged from their children for some reason). To get priority you have to be vulnerable and different local authorities have different interpretations on what is vulnerable, but all accept that a CAT number makes someone vulnerable.
There are very strict guidelines for issuing CAT numbers. There has to be a significant risk to oneself or to other people to qualify as being vulnerable. CAT numbers are given out between the hours of 1am and 5.30am. The person receiving the CAT number must be seen to be sleeping in an open air place, they MUST also be lying on the ground and also MUST be lying horizontally. There must also be clear evidence that the person has been doing this all night.
One such recipient is Trisha (none of the names used are real) in her early 30's, who is probably bipolar and who is definitely HIV. Trisha has had a couple of hostel places it seems, but was evicted for 'being too difficult'. Trisha spends her time selling her body at petrol stations, often for loose change or even for a handful of cigarettes. In this way she could be having sex with up to five or ten men a day. It isn't clear whether precautions were taken, but in some cases it seems highly unlikely.
Another case is Martin. Martin was a TEFL English teacher in Italy, but was forced to return home when his school went bust and stopped paying him, owing him three months salary. He returned to the streets of London. He was sleeping in an alleyway when he woke up to find a man coming out of a nightclub peeing on him. When he objected this man got together with four of his friends and beat Martin to a pulp. Martin now has severe depression, PTSD and talks with a stammer.
The 'benefit-scrounging', homeless junkies and alcoholics - who the popular media love so much to show living it up on all your hardearned taxes - aren't usually homeless, but the tabloid journalists aren't interested in facts but in a story which sells. The truth is usually completely different.
Quite a few of the homeless are Eastern European migrant workers, quite often from Poland and Lithuania. They came because they were told that they would have 'guaranteed' work in Britain, from their media, from what they heard from other people, even from their local labour exchange. Sometimes these people were beaten up and robbed by other Poles when they arrived in the country, others do not speak English, some arrive with not enough money even to book into a cheap bed and breakfast. They are not entitled to any help for 2 years from their arrival in the UK. One of the things I do is to try and persuade homeless Poles to return home and to refer them for repatriation (a ticket home from a Polish charity) and a place to sleep until they are repatriated.
There are as many reasons now why someone has to sleep on the streets as there are people - divorce, domestic violence, loss of employment, eviction through non-payment of rent, release from prison, eviction from a hostel, mental illness, emotional disturbance, depression, a bank repossessing your home - each and every homeless person sleeping on the streets has their own story to tell. Despite the fact that you need an address to be employed (or to receive benefits) quite a few of the street homeless work. However most don't because they are struggling to deal with some sort of crisis.
There used to be 'soup runs' running throughout Central London in the early hours of the morning, giving these homeless people hot soup, bread and tea and coffee run by charities. However these were stopped due to late night revellers coming and taking the bread and the soup and causing problems. And from what I can see being on the streets of Central London in the early hours of the morning, the majority of people who are abusing alcohol and drugs are the people who have homes and jobs.
There was a time when you could get yourself off the street if you could find a private landlord willing to accept Housing Benefit (which you also had to pay towards). However local authorities quickly realised that homelessness is big business, and so have forced private landlords out of this area of housing through being slow to decide Houisng Benefit claims and the insistance that the landlord meet with a Fair Rent Officer - so that a private landlord would have to wait up to a year before receiving any rent and the Housing Benefit paid would be far less than the rent which the landlord requires.
The truth of the matter is that nobody - save for one or two charities - is interested in helping the homeless unless some sort of profit is guaranteed. What normally happens is that only the more vulnerable homeless sleeping on the streets find places in hostels, which are either run by charities or local authorities. The homeless person is given a room, often at an inflated rent (anything up to £200 a week) which effectively prevents them from being able to find work and places them in a 'benefit trap' (a situation where it would be detrimental to stop benefits) so that Housing Benefit can be paid with money from.... Central Government. In this way not only the former street homeless, but also single mothers, families and asylum seekers are kept in temporary accomodation often for two to three years, but it can be as long as ten or fifteen years, before being moved on to more permanent accomodation.
This explodes the other myth about someone 'being given a flat' which appears also to come from the popular media. Nobody is given a flat there and then, especially a local authority flat, because there are no such flats to give away. This has been the situation since Margaret Thatcher's Right To Buy. There are, of course areas in the United Kingdom which are less popular areas in which to live where one may be given a council flat straight away but usually anyone who is given a flat has had to go through the system I have described above and to wait some years before being offered a flat.
Trisha was evicted from a hostel in the same week as Marjorie, another resident, was given a flat after spending three years in hostel accomodation. Marjorie was almost 50, had served 8 years for a violent assault on a man and had both drug and alcohol issues. Trisha, despite being bipolar and HIV positive has no criminal record and no drug or alcohol issues.
I'm posting this because I read a lot of postings and some are posted from people concerned over the perceived recipients of their hard earned tax money - whether it be people on welfare, single mothers, women requiring abortions etc. Some of us appear to be concerned as to who gets the help and why.
However what I find is not many people are really bothered as to how their hardearned tax money is spent.
Is it perfectly acceptable to leave the majority of street homeless to their own devices and without any sort of help?
Are we happy with a system which is only helping people if some sort of profit is involved or if the return from their help is financially viable? If this system works so well with the homeless and housing, why not adopt such strategies in healthcare?
What is it we find so unacceptable about people without homes and without work who require help from the authorities? Why do we automatically assume that there is something wrong with them? What is so wrong about approaching the authorities for help when help is needed?
Your thoughts and comments please.
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