Something I thought and hoped wouldn’t happen, has happened.
https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2015/jul/16/housing-benefit-under-21s-vital-safety-net-vulnerablehttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/housing-benefit-young-people-18-21-scrapped-universal-credit-exemptions-a7610581.html
The two articles in the press are real cause for concern.
Housing Benefits for 18-21 years olds not in training, education or employment is being abolished. Despite the lobbying and campaigning, it’s going ahead. The powers that be say there will be exemptions to cover those who are vulnerable. So it might protect BYPHS residents but there are no guarantees yet. That isn’t enough though.
It’s my 5th year anniversary today at Bolton Young Persons Housing Scheme, and in that time I have never seen anyone living with us because they had a safe and secure alternative. There are so many reasons the young people come to us and it’s not my place to judge. I see/hear one side. Some young people we accommodate have pushed their parents/carers to the limits with their behaviours such as drug use, offending (stealing from home or assaulting family members is common) or other unacceptable behaviour. I don’t know what I would do in their position. We work with a small cohort of young people who are high risk and not ready to change.
In some of these cases, we see parents trying to support their loved one at arms length, continuing to provide money, food and support, but just not living together.
The majority of young people though are here due to circumstances beyond their control. Family breakdown is the box ticked on most of our referrals but what does that really mean?
• Being asked to leave because parents didn’t like their boyfriend/girlfriends or mates
• Being asked to leave because parents weren’t happy with their lifestyles, they are LGBT, started smoking, changed college course, dropped out of college or didn’t want to follow the family religion
• Being kicked out following assault from a parent or step parent or someone else at home
• Being abandoned because the parent or carer moved 250 miles away to live with a man she met on the internet and didn’t tell her 16 year old she was going
• Being expected to leave foster care because you’ve turned 18
• Being asked to leave because younger siblings arrive and there’s no room/money left for you
• Being asked to leave because the new step parent doesn’t get on with you
• Having to leave because you have been physically or sexually assaulted at home
• Having to be removed due to planned forced marriage at 16
• Having to be rehoused as an emergency because the parent or carer has died. (2 suicides)
• Having to come back to us a second time after move on because the partner you set up home with has assaulted you
The variations on this theme are endless.
For others, their parents need help and are struggling with issues such as debilitating illnesses, mental ill health, addictions, extreme poverty or learning disabilities. Many clearly love their children.
I can’t make a sweeping statement and say that they are all blameless and deserving, it’s not my place and not my business. Apportioning blame is no good anyway, it solves nothing. But I can look at facts.
• 350 young people a year are accommodated through our projects. Another 100 get referred and we cannot or do not help them. (Risk might be too high or they find somewhere to go)
• 100 young people are with us at any one time.
• We have an 85% success rate for move on and supporting independence.
• It takes only 3 weeks to adapt to a sleeping rough lifestyle.
• People who have been homeless (and rough sleeping) die 30 years younger than those who have not.
So, let’s assume young people in our scheme can access HB because we are exempt. What happens when they move on? Where will we rehouse them if they are not able to access HB until they get on their feet? Solving someone’s homeless position doesn’t automatically link to becoming employed. It’s hard for people of all ages with no obvious support issues to find work these days. The registered providers are not going to rehouse them knowing that they won’t get their rent paid so they will remain with us until they find work or access education. We will become “bed blocked”. Some young people will be able to find work, and they do. But not all. Access to Housing Benefit once they leave us is a complete lifeline.
If it turns out we are not exempt or there are further caps, then we wouldn’t be able to rehouse anyone aged 18 – 21. 60% of our current caseloads. What then? Stay at home? We can see that’s not always a safe option. What’s next?
• Rough sleeping – this is already on the increase and will further affect young people health and well being, safety and life expectancy.
• Butterfly beds – insecure hopping from place to place, few weeks or days with a relative or friends. This could be on the floor, sofa or in a bed.
• Sexual or other exploitation for a bed – grooming or manipulation of young people to commit sexual acts or crimes so they have somewhere to stay. For some this goes on for days/weeks and feels nice at first.
I never usually get worked up and never publicly. But I am waiting for the day when I am constructing a budget to pay for dormitory style or communal accommodation and I use the term accommodation loosely, as it won’t be rehoming. It will be warehousing. I joke with people about the term I could sleep on a washing line, which my mum says all the time. It came from an age when the workhouses were overflowing, disease was rampant and Jack the Ripper was knocking about. It came again in the depression.
“To say that one feels tired enough to sleep on a clothesline seems like a mere fanciful metaphorical way of saying one is extremely sleepy. No one would expect you to actually balance on a line and the idea that the phrase originated from such a literal event sets the folk-etymology alarm ringing full pelt. Nevertheless, there are well attested stories that, during the depression of the 1930s, destitute men did spent their nights hanging over ropes which were strung across rooms for them to sleep on.
In Down and Out in Paris and London, 1933, George Orwell recorded a London sleeping establishment, known as The Twopenny Hangover, with just such an arrangement:
At the Twopenny Hangover, the lodgers sit in a row on a bench; there is a rope in front of them, and they lean on this as though leaning over a fence. A man, humorously called the valet, cuts the rope at five in the morning. “
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/sleep-on-a-clothesline.html
1864 saw the first “houseless poor act”, making it obligatory for metropolitan board to provide casual wards for destitute wayfarers! But way before that in 1576 we had the “Act for setting of the Poor on work and for the avoiding of idleness”; this was to get every county to set up materials for the poor to work on and to set up a house of correction for anyone refusing to work. This was followed by the “Act for the relief of the Poor” in 1597. Amongst other things this set the poor and children to work, “bind” out pauper children as apprentices….” The act was updated in 1601 and added the following clauses:-
• Suppression of begging.
• Use of county houses of correction for vagrants.
Prior to 1918 those in receipt of poor relief were disqualified from voting. Does this all sound familiar? We are slipping backwards into old and very bad ways. In the 1800s in Bolton, some of the local work house provision was on the site of our hospital before it was converted into Townleys in 1874. Adjacent to that, was Hollins Cottage Homes, used to bring children out of the main work house. This was later known as Clare Court, the local authority’s homeless families unit used up until 2005. It took a 100 years to stop using that for vulnerable families and in only another 12 we are fast heading towards a framework that might mean we have no choice, but to offer that kind of sub standard, over crowded and cheap accommodation because there is literally nothing else for those in need.
BYPHS currently offers all young homeless people good standards of self contained furnished accommodation, some of this is funded through Housing Benefits. Just because you are homeless doesn’t mean we cannot offer you dignity, privacy and some basic human rights. I dread the day that we can only offer shared or dormitory style or heaven forbid the washing lines. “Oh that’ll never happen, THEY wouldn’t allow that?”
I keep telling myself they will see sense. I really bloody hope so.