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It’s too cold to be sleeping rough

January 25, 2012 8:30 am

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A surprisingly mild winter has turned into a cold and wet new year. If you’re anything like me you‘re persisting with the double duvet and the heavy coats. Now think about what you’d do if you were homeless.

No double duvet, no central heating, no heavy coats.

Mark Ferguson was right on Monday to place the benefit cap in the context of homelessness. Yet we don’t have to wait to see the effects of welfare cuts.

Take homelessness at its most extreme – rough sleeping. Across London I’m shocked at just how established rough sleeping has become again. Sitting next to the Parliament and all the major Government Departments you can see people bedding down on Victoria St, Charing Cross, Notting Hill, many have taken the opportunity to join the Occupy movement in sleeping rough outside St Pauls. You’re probably walking past a dozen each day, on your way to college, work, the shops.

Take a moment and see if you can spot any next time you’re in central London.

It’s not that rough sleeping ever went away, but I can’t remember the last time it was this obvious a problem.

This year at Crisis at Christmas, its 40th year, I joined 8,000 other volunteers across 9 centres to welcome 3,200 (7% more that 2010) homeless people for Christmas. Out of these 591 guests were referred to residential centres for a safe place to sleep. But the monumental effort by those volunteers lasts only 7 days, afterwards Crisis continue to work with homelessness throughout the year.

So if 2011 has been a visual reminder of how bad rough sleeping in London can rise as well fall, then the figures point to something even more worrying.

The Greater London Authority funds the ‘Combined Homelessness and Information Network’ (CHAIN) which collects information about rough sleeping from outreach workers, rough sleeping centres and street counts. It’s report for 2010/2011 counted 3975 people sleeping rough in the capital, 8 per cent higher than 2009/2010. That is 1,000 more people sleeping rough than in 2005/2006.

It is likely that 2012 will be even worse as the true extent of the Government’s austerity policies have yet to bite. January has brought not only housing benefit cuts for under 35s but the end of transitional protection for those housing benefit cuts the Government brought in April last year.

The impact on young people is especially frightening and threatens a return to 1980s scale youth homelessness.

Whilst Monday’s attention was focused on the Government’s proposed benefit cap, the Government’s approach to housing benefit and the cost of housing remains intransient.

It is a shame. 2012 should be the year of the Olympics, a chance to showcase the best London has to offer. The £9.2 billion Olympic budget, the effort and hard work of all those involved will count for nothing if Olympic visitors see gleaming stadia punctuated by the return of the card box city.

There is already pressure on the Olympics to deliver a boost to economic growth, with the Government responsible for ensuring our public investment leaves a lasting economic, social and structural legacy. But what’s the point if our streets a filled with people with no home to go to?

The London Mayor will have to keep to his promise of ‘zero street sleepers’ in time for the Olympics. Leaving his successor to pick up the pieces will be no good.

Otherwise how do we explain to our children how we spent all that money on something so special but also ignored all those homeless people?

  • Anonymous

    Well OK whom do I write to for advice on how to help, the Liberals might be our best bet, sadly labour will tell you we are following the Tories, because we do not want to rock the boats and if the Tories  have a hung party at the next election we will go in with them after all we are the second Tory party.

    They got the world Olympics, imagine the mess now if we had the world cup

  • Anonymous

    All credit to people like you, Vincenzo for the work you do for Crisis At Christmas. At the time of year when self-indulgence is the rule rather than the exception it is marvelous that there are those who care enough to give up their time.

    It is a matter of regret when those seven days are over that so many people will be back to the coldness and despair of the streets and it is little short of scandalous that we can find money (even when there isn’t any) on vanity projects like HS2 and frankly the Olympics which is a financial millstone for whomever gets it. We don’t “need” these things, but everyone needs and should get a roof over their heads.

    Duncan-Smith, as odious and useless as he was when he was the Conservatives most ineffectual leader, has shrugged off his defeat in the Lords on Monday, and sadly Byrne has already signalled his approval of the current bill, with a few dissembling caveats. I would like to think under Labour people would be treated better, but given the currrent direction of the party, the anxiousness not to frighten the voters with a clear alternative  with the insistance on an  ”us, too” stance on policies, I am not at all confident.

    • Anonymous

      sadly the biggest group in my area are not people  with children we have  housing and we have care centers people can go to, but it’s the Military people who have been on active duty in the Falklands and people now from Iraq.

      • Anonymous

        Yes I remember a Radio 4 programme a couple of years ago which mentioned a lot of ex-military men end up on the streets. So much for appreciating their contribution.

        Politicians of all parties are very good at warm words, but they don’t follow through with practical measures.

  • Anonymous

    Genuine question. How does capping benefits at £26k result in homelessness? I don’t make £26k after tax and yet I somehow manage to pay my rent.

    • Anonymous

      Duncan-Smith and Freud are known to be keen on time-limiting benefit claims of all sorts (of course when you are a multi millionaire retiredf investment banker like Freud or an out-of-touch idiot  like Smith you don’t know about poverty).

      The fact that they are going to disregard their defeat in the Lords on Monday on the HB issue suggests they will go ahead with their other cuts.

    • http://twitter.com/vmrampulla Vincenzo Rampulla

      Hi smcconnell, it is a good question and I think it really depends on two things – where do you live and what does your family look like. 

      I could live on £26k easily if I was by myself and living in Scunthorpe, but I’d severely struggle if I had a family of two children and was living in London. 

      The problem with the public’s perception of the benefit cap is that they are imagining what a random family could do with £26k. And nobody is polling whether the cap is liveable for specific family examples.

      It’s a bit like asking someone what the price of bread is, they imagine the cheapest loaf and then still underestimate the real cost. 

      • Anonymous

        But that is sort of my point. I do live in London and if I choose to have two kids (and it is a choice) then will my employer suddenly raise my take home pay after tax, NI, union fees and travel to work? No they will not. Will any child benefit I receive make my wages up to £26k take home after all of the above? No.

        So why should I as a taxpayer subsidise someone else’s family to a level that I wouldn’t get myself?

        The next arguement no doubt is “what if the person has five kids or six or eight?”. But then surely it starts to become about personal responsibility?

        I can’t afford the have five kids on my salary, frankly three would be a really stretch. But for some reason I am expected to support someone else’s inalienable right to have a massive family tht I couldn’t afford myself? Why?

        If I was unable to financially support a large family then I would have to have less kids plain and simple.

        • Anonymous

          Well for all the shouting your doing , yes of course if you had two kids you would get benefits, you’d have  Tax credits and you’d have family allowance and if your not earning enough to pay your rent your going to get rent and council tax allowance, things change when you have kids.

          But you know something with all that money your earning mate I’d not worry to much your not going to be paying enough tax to keep a mouse in cheese.

          • Anonymous

            When you include travel (purely to work and back) I’d say I’d need to be earning about £45 – £50k a year to take home over £26k. And all the benefits I would be entitled to for having kids wouldn’t get me that high combined with wages. So again why is £26k not enough? The fact is that if your getting £26k free and clear and you still ed up on the street then it’s entirely your own fault

        • http://twitter.com/Newsbot9 Newsbot9

          So you don’t care you’ll end up subsiding people who never get another job because you’ve driven them away from anywhere with it? *claps*

          And oh yes, screwing with a basic biological imperative is such a good idea. What next, forced sterilisation?

          • Anonymous

            If your biological imperative is to have more kids then you can feed and look after then it’s hardly a sin to question it is it? We are not animals we don’t have to have sex without contraception and keep knocking out kids that we can’t look after. A rapist could argue that it was his biological imperative to have sex with any attractive woman whether they were willing or not as a paedophile could equally claim the same for kids. We aren’t animals we have free will, common sense and self control. People should try using them.

  • Anonymous

    I suppose according to platitudes in the gospel of St. Liam Byrne of Birmingham Hodge Hill rough sleepers should most likely be numbered as feckless men and women dwelling lackadaisically at the bottom of society who are failing to show responsibility by not doing the right thing and choosing a dependent lifestyle incompatible with a something for something society which gives people a hand up not a hand out in order to encourage them to become productive members of hard-working families. 

    Just joking but it really can’t be too long now before even these most abject and abandoned souls start being demonised by the political parties. After witch-ducking every one of those dreadful teenage single mothers of course. Must have a sense of propriety after all.

  • Anonymous

    With our benefits system, there is no reason to sleep rough.

    No sympathy whatever.

    • http://twitter.com/Newsbot9 Newsbot9

      Oh of course, you get magic money for…wait, no, you don’t.

      And you have no sympathy for anything or anyone, so no surprise there. This country, which had nearly eliminated sleeping rough apart from a few hardcore/mentally ill people is seeing it spiral upwards again.

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