Whilst people on the streets are one of the most visible signs of homelessness, the problem extends far beyond rough sleeping. The majority of homeless people live in hostels, night shelters or B&Bs, but the impact of being without a home is still devastating.
Hostels and B&Bs provide relief in a crisis, and can be both the first step towards a solution, but also the first fall towards the streets. The accommodation is insecure, short term and hugely expensive. For single people it can mean sharing a room with strangers whilst parents are forced to share with their children. In particular private sector temporary accommodation is often dangerous, damp, dirty and unmaintained.
Some hostels and night shelters are ‘direct access’ where most residents were formally living on the streets and have been identified by charity outreach workers. These hostels have strict rules, sometimes not allowing access to the premises in the day time, with bed spaces being lost should a resident sleep elsewhere for the night. Many long term street homeless people find adapting to such a regulated environment difficult, whilst others find the atmosphere, where drugs and heavy drinking are commonplace (though usually banned), intimidating and frightening.
After a period which can be several weeks but sometimes months, most people are referred to longer stay hostels whilst waiting to be moved to some form of more sustainable accommodation – usually a council or housing association flat or bedsit. Residents can be in long stay hostels for anything from six months to a couple of years. Generally residents have their own rooms, albeit often little larger than a single bed. Meals are sometimes provided and any facilities are shared. Overnight guests, or even guests full stop, are often banned. Homeless people aren’t allowed to have relationships.
Those in temporary accommodation, whether long stay hostels or B&Bs, have ‘licence agreements’ rather than tenancies. This is more similar to the type of contract entered into when using a hotel and means immediate eviction should someone fall foul of the rules.
Temporary accommodation charges eye watering rents which are covered by housing benefits. This makes it very difficult for those in long stay hostels to work. Residents also pay a service charge out of their benefits to cover the costs of heat, light and water as well as food if available. Service charge arrears result in eviction.
A final large group of homeless people are the so called ‘hidden homeless’. People sleeping on a friend’s sofa, staying with family or squatting. Other people live in a vehicles – whether on the side of a road or on a traveller site, some pitch a tent away from view, many sleep in derelict properties or abandoned garages. This is often the first stage of homelessness as precarious accommodation collapses and people are left with nowhere to go but the streets.
Local authorities only have a duty to help those with children or who are ‘vulnerable’ which in practice usually means someone with a severe disability or those above pension age. To qualify for help a homeless applicant must also have a connection with the local areas and not be judged ‘intentionally homeless’. Families who are deemed ‘intentionally homeless’, having given up a property for some reason, or in some cases been evicted for arrears, may be told that the council will take the children into care but the parents can fend for themselves. With huge strains on the amount of emergency accommodation available, most local authorities will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid helping anyone.
It has long been the fashion, amongst governments and homelessness charities alike, to insist that homelessness is something caused by people, personalities and individual behavior. They point to some homeless people abusing drugs or alcohol, failing to find work, committing crimes and, worst of all, not doing what charity workers tell them to do. But many homeless people are just poor and have run into bad luck, although it is hard to stay a perfectly productive member of society when your world has collapsed around you. Homelessness drives more people to drink than the other way round.
One factor unites all of the experiences of homeless people and that is a lack of money. Whatever other difficulties someone is facing there will always be a point on the journey to the streets where homelessness is a purely economic matter.
It could be an eviction or repossession, or someone unable to afford a deposit on a property or not able to pay for a cheap B&B for the night. This is why the tsunami of cuts to welfare, and in particular housing benefits, will send homelessness soaring. Because when people need that kind of help most, when life has taken a terrible turn, to strip away payments available for housing will mean the fall to rock bottom is assured. People in desperate circumstances are not incentivised by having less money. They are demolished.
Everybody knows that when people are under great pressure they do not always act rationally or in their own interests. It is sheer bad luck that sometimes unfortunate and devastating events can happen in quick succession. Desperate people do desperate things. When a relationship breaks down, sometimes people turn to drink. This can lead to problems at work and even dismissal, followed by depression and heavier drinking. Benefits are unavailable due to being sacked. Rent goes unpaid, friendships deteriorate, support networks dismantle. Homelessness follows and it’s hard to sleep on a pavement sober.
None of this is unusual or outside of the realm of normal human behaviour. It is called a downward spiral and it can happen in a million different ways to anyone. There are former successful business people living on the streets of London right now, whilst the vast majority of homeless people had stable, fulfilling lives at some point.
It is only at the very bottom of this decline, that if you are lucky, the state might just step in and offer to try fix the problems they helped create. And so begins a climb back through the system of night shelters, hostels and temporary accommodation that can take years. One small slip along the way, breaching hostel or benefit rules, and it’s back to the bottom.
Homelessness has many contributing factors and subsequent effects, but remains at heart an economic problem. That’s why, even before the cuts, a stagnating economy was causing homelessness to rise. The number of people without a home is set to soar due to a toxic combination of cuts, rent rises, wage or benefit freezes and law changes. Every single one of those people will have a tragic story, and all too often one that begins with a letter from the DWP telling them that their housing benefit is being cut.