I will be manning our local night shelter between January and March.
Homelessness is a subject close to my heart. It is a scandal that — in this age and with such levels of spending on social security — people are forced to sleep rough. It is a scandal we should not tolerate.
“MPs urge scrapping of tax on empty property”:
Gordon Brown is coming under pressure from his own backbenchers to scrap a tax on empty property, which is blamed for the demolition of buildings that developers cannot sell.
“Rents hit by surge in supply of homes”:
Residential rents fell for the first time since April 2003 in the three months to October as the supply of properties to let surged, according to the latest survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
The Rics [sic] said that the rising supply reflected the numbers of homeowners unwilling or unable to sell in the current market choosing to become landlords.
“Warning of huge drop in social housing”:
There will be a “catastrophic” collapse in provision of new social housing at a time of record waiting lists without urgent intervention by the government, housing associations have warned.
Britain’s 1,900 social landlords, which own half the UK’s stock of 4m council houses, are urging ministers to change the way they are funded to prevent the supply of new, affordable housing drying up completely.
And I heard tonight how elected councils can lose their planning powers to unelected Regional Development Agencies if they fail to meet centrally-imposed targets, perhaps because they are concerned about adequate infrastructure or sufficient local employment. Something is going quite wrong in housing…
The Shadow Housing Minister, Grant Shapps MP, is on the case, founding the Conservative Homelessness Foundation and leading thinking on the subject. More at conservatives.com and on Grant’s site.
A young homeless woman asked me to buy a Big Issue just outside the conference area and then asked me, “If you get in, what are you going to do about poverty in this county? The Government seems very keen to get in with everyone else, but what are you going to do in this country?”
Happily, I was able to answer, but that’s not the point of the post.
She looked unblinkingly at me and said, “I’m a victim of the State”, before explaining some of her life. Abused by her mother – along with her 15 siblings – she was placed into care, where her ADHT was met with beatings. Made homeless at age 17, she was soon in prison for shoplifting to eat, which she saw as “fair enough” as she was “bang to rights”. She’s less keen on the occasions when she has been convicted, she claims, essentially because she wouldn’t grass someone up.
In prison, she got off drugs – though she still has DVTs from injecting – and started a course in counseling, which she is now 3 units from completing. While inside, she worked for The Samaritans and she would now like to attend college, complete the course and help others. She has qualifications in hairdressing and Indian head massage.
Of course, without a fixed address, she can’t get the job or achieve the stability that would enable her to see this through. She is constantly moved on and harassed by the State, but not helped to settle down and help others.
Now aged 27, this young woman has learned to deal with her mother’s physical abuse in childhood, but the State has just decided to prosecute the woman, so she has been asked to relive every detail in court. Is it any wonder she looks 47?
She told me other anecdotes, with obvious sincerity, but I haven’t the heart to write them down.
So there she is on the street, in the rain trying to round up £17.50 for a hostel room for the night, from people who seem unable to see her, while avoiding the teeming army of people ready to move her on. She is articulate, interested, interesting, willing, able and very nearly qualified to help others out of their mess, but she is stuck in her own. She needs opportunity.
This is a self-proclaimed “victim of the State”. This is Britain in 2008. Someone ask me again why I am going into politics.
There’s a homeless man I see every day, who sleeps in a subway. He’s pleasant and harmless. He used to be a promising chef apparently. People choose to give him money: he never asks. He keeps himself smart and clean, thanks to a nearby centre that opens in the week, during the day. He’s handing out Christmas cards to people who have helped him this year.
He was arrested this week for begging. He spent the night in the cells as bail was not granted. He claimed this was fine by him: a warm dry night with hot food and drink and he didn’t have to walk to court in the morning. The judge fined him £20 but dismissed it in recognition of the night in jail. He was straight back where he started, doing no harm, although now he is a trainee Big Issue seller.
He alleges that the following night, certain uniformed individuals approached him and offered that if he disappeared that night, they wouldn’t bother him for a year. Apparently that night was the night the homeless count was to be taken.
This seems to me quite evil. It’s bad enough that people get trapped on the street, without others fiddling the statistics. What happens when the area’s 500 (say) homeless find their centre is closed because it was funded for 50?
