Ian Duncan Smith shouldn’t rise to the bait to live off £53 for a week

The Welfare Secretary, Ian Duncan Smith, the architect of many of the changes in welfare provision, has been challenged on whether he would be able to live on £53 per week. He said that if he had to, he would. An online petition has been launched calling him to do just that for a year. At the time of writing, the petition had attracted almost 70,000 signatures. This is very clever campaigning.

But I actually hate gimmicks like this, asking someone who is well off (and IDS is not short of a bob or two) to pretend to be poor for a short time. Michael Portillo lived in a council flat for a week, and countless people do sleep outs each year. But all the while they know they can always go home if it gets too much for them.

The reality for poor people is not the impact of surviving on low wages, or on Employment and Support Allowance of just £71.70 (or £56.80 if you are under 25) for just one week. It is the week in, week out grind of trying to make ends meet. Most people on the lowest incomes are expert at budgeting, stretching their meagre resources, sometimes doing without. But they really struggle when something unexpected happens, a fridge or washing machine breaking down, new shoes needed, or an unexpectedly high gas or electricity bill.

It is in these circumstances that they approach payday lenders or loan sharks, starting a downward spiral of debt and desperation. They can’t return to a comfortable life after playing with poverty for a night or for a week.

So please, Mr Duncan Smith, avoid the temptation to participate in this gimmick.

Bullingdon Club Bullies dehumanise homeless man by burning £50 in front of him

This afternoon I was writing a no doubt worthy item for this blog on BHT’s preparation for the digital inclusion challenges relating to the introduction of Universal Credit when I saw the tweets by Aideen Jones, the Chief Executive of Southdown Housing Association, regarding members of the Bullingdon Club who allegedly burnt a £50 note in front of someone begging on the streets of Oxford. (26/02/13: Please note I have removed a link to the original article on another blog which has itself been removed).

Aideen is right to point out that £50 could have bought 40 pairs of thermal socks for homeless people.

Of course people will make a connection between this obscene flaunting of wealth by a group of rich boys. The Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Mayor of London, all were members of the Bullingdon Club during their misspent youth, but I imagine Messrs Cameron, Osborne and Johnson will today share the outrage felt by most reasonably minded individuals over this incident.

The thing that upsets me most about this incident is what it says about how homeless men and women are dehumanised by society. If the allegation is true, these Bullingdon Bullies are merely an extreme example, and are the rightful targets for the contempt of decent people. But this dehumanisation goes much wider, from the groups of lads who think it is funny to give someone sleeping rough a kicking on a Saturday night, or a drunken reveller relieving himself on someone sleeping in a doorway, or the security guard who pours a bucket of cold water over someone sleeping in a car park.

More extreme examples lead to the violent death of homeless people through assault or setting fire to a sleeping bag when the individual is asleep in it. Dropping a paving slab on the head of someone asleep on the beach or in a park is likely to do serious damage.

Yet this happens. What we need to do is to put an end to homelessness. A grand objective, but one that should be seen as historically important as the abolition of slavery or the ending of apartheid. This week, Homeless Link will be launching a manifesto aimed at seeing the end of homelessness in the UK by 2023. My colleague, Nikki Homewood, will be at the launch of this manifesto in the House of Commons on Tuesday.

But individually we can do something. In response to Aideen’s tweet, I will buy £50 of thermal underwear for homeless men and women who use First Base Day Centre. You, too, can help, either by buying something from Amazon using the First Base wish list on this link or for those of you who don’t wish to use Amazon, donations can be made direct to First Base through our Just Giving page.

But there is one other thing we can do. We can stop using the term ‘the homeless’, a phrase that dehumanises people. They are men and women, they are someone’s son or daughter, husband or wide, brother or sister, father or mother. They have names. They have hopes and aspirations, feelings and fears. I always try to refer to “homeless men and women”.

In South Africa, where I grew up under apartheid, the white rulers referred to “the blacks” who had second class status, and whose lives were valued less than those of white people. The murder of a black man and woman rarely attracted media attention, more rarely warranted a police enquiry. In the white community, black people had become dehumanised. Hopefully in Britain in 2013 we won’t allow the same to happen to homeless men and women.

Tackling Fuel Poverty in Brighton and Hove

BHT Advice Centre has recently secured funding to deliver advice to promote the reduction of fuel poverty in Brighton and Hove.  Fuel poverty is defined as any household which spends more than 10% of its income on fuel to keep the home in a ‘satisfactory’ condition.  In order to maximise income and reduce outgoings, our adviser, Rachel Butt, will be providing:

- help and advice on energy tariffs (including trust fund applications)

- benefits checks and applications

- low level debt advice and negotiation to reduce outgoings

Who we can help …

The eligibility criteria is quite simple: people will be eligible if they are in fuel-poverty (have problems in paying their energy bills and need our advice and assistance) AND live in Brighton and Hove.

The referral process could not be simpler: either phone Rachel on 01273 234752 or email her rachel.butt@bht.org.uk who will send you a referral form.

When we can help … 

Rachel will do home visits between now and the end of March 2013, with a view to making at least five visits a week.

 

The Mayor of Brighton and Hove visits BHT’s Advice Centre

The Mayor of Brighton and Hove, Councillor Bill Randall, today visited BHT’s Advice Centre in Queens Road, Brighton.

The Mayor of Brighton and Hove, Cllr Bill Randall, visits BHT’s Brighton Advice Centre

Cllr Randall met staff who provide housing, welfare benefit, debt and immigration advice and representation.  Last year the Advice Centre worked with 3,912 men and women.

In 2011/12, because of the work of the Advice Centre, homelessness was prevented or accommodation found in 1,531 cases.

After the visit, Bill acknowledged that the Advice Centre makes a huge contribution to meeting many of the City Council’s strategic priorities including the prevention of homelessness and rough sleeping, reducing inequality through helping clients out of poverty, and achieving community cohesion through immigration advice helping families achieve stability and live together.

I a statement, he said: “Most distressing is to hear about the trafficked children brought here for domestic service or prostitution. Some are as young as 13. Often these children are referred to as ‘young people’. In reality they are children and need our protection.”

The Advice Centre prevented homelessness in 70% of cases. This represents a huge financial saving for the local authority but more importantly there are fewer people sleeping on the streets and fewer people in temporary accommodation.

The Big Interview (Argus 10th November 2012)

On Saturday, November 10th, the Brighton Argus carried an interview with me.  The focus was housing in Brighton. Unfortunately, the Big Interview (as the weekly item is called) is not posted online.  So here is the text of the interview:

What are the main housing challenges faced by Brighton and Hove?

Simply, there’s a shortage of supply to meet the ever-increasing demand for housing.  The rising cost of the housing that is available is making it increasingly difficult for people to meet their housing costs. The increasing demand for homes in the City is partly due to the increasing number of single person households, and partly due to more people are moving here.

Brighton has a low wage economy.  Those jobs that are available, often in the service and retail sectors, are subject to enormous competition.  It is not uncommon that graduates from our two universities end up in non-graduate jobs in order to remain in the City.

While people joke that this has led to us having the most qualified baristas in the country, the harsh reality is that this trend excludes less qualified, local staff out of the jobs market. Low wages, coupled with high housing costs, is not a healthy mix if we want to live in a City at ease with itself.

Do we face any pressures that other areas don’t?

Brighton and Hove is sea- and land-locked.  There are relatively few sites on which to build new homes.  It has a thriving economy and is an attractive place to live and work.  The challenge for the City is its ability to accommodate the businesses that will provide jobs, and the homes for people to live in.

I really hope that we get the balance right between jobs and homes.  I would hate to see Brighton become a dormitory town, with most residents commuting to jobs elsewhere.  If I wanted to live in a town like that I would move to Worthing!

I would support the building of housing between Falmer and Woodingdean, but that is unlikely to be agreed.  So if we can’t go south and cannot encroach on the National Park, the only way, as Yazz sang in the 1980’s, is up!  We need a debate on the number of high rise developments that the City needs.

Unfortunately, the debate on tall buildings has been skewed by the controversies surrounding the ‘Roaring Forties’ tower in the Marina and the King Alfred proposals.

Where we have a real advantage over other areas is the range and effectiveness of support services.  Where elsewhere in the country such services are being decimated, in Brighton and Hove, with all party support, most have been protected, and homelessness has been prevented.

What part do you and Brighton Housing Trust play in addressing these issues?

One of the most important things we do is to prevent homelessness.  Last year, because of our work, mainly through our Advice Centre in Queen’s Road, we helped 4,116 households from becoming homeless.

Unfortunately, because of changes to the Legal Aid system, from next April, we will be able to help fewer people unless we can attract funding from new sources.  The visible consequence will be more people living on the streets.

In addition to preventing homelessness, we do a lot of work addressing those issues that may have led people to homelessness. We help people to prepare for housing – what it takes to be a good tenant, how to work with, not against, landlords, and how to increase the housing opportunities available to people.

We provide relatively few homes but the work we do in preventing homelessness and finding practical solutions for people in housing need means that BHT’s contribution to resolving issues relating to housing demand is far greater than our modest size.

What would you most want to see happen to tackle these challenges? Can local or national Government help?

In Brighton and Hove, local government could help by agreeing to build 750 homes at Toads Hole Valley.  Perhaps more homes should be considered on this site, a thousand or fifteen hundred, but I doubt there would be support for that.

The government should invest in truly affordable social housing.  The campaign group, Homes for Britain, says that every £1 spent on housing puts £3 into the economy.  And for every £1 spent on construction, government gets 56p back in reduced welfare payments.

Over the lifetime of this government, £35 billion will be spent of housing benefit, yet just £4.5 billion is being spent on building.  It is economic madness.

The right to buy doesn’t help.  Over the last 25 years housing has moved from being affordable and available to meet local demand, to being available only at unaffordable rents.  I heard the other day about a former council house, once with a rent of £120 per week, now being let out privately for £750 per week.

Are more people coming to you in crisis now than in the past and is that down to the recession or other factors? i.e. are economic circumstances driving people onto the streets?

Over the last two years we have seen a sharp increase in the number of people sleeping on the streets in Brighton.  That appears to have steadied over the last year partly due to excellent work being undertaken by Brighton and Hove City Council, CRI, Sussex Central YMCA, BHT and others.

I am amazed at the resourcefulness and sacrifices people make in order to keep themselves and their families in one piece.  We regularly come across single people, holding down jobs, but living in cars because they can’t afford housing.  Parents, usually women, are going without food, to ensure that their children have what they need or to heat their homes.

The latest increases in fuel charges might well push some households over the edge, and there is plenty more bad news yet to come.

So do you foresee the situation getting worse in the immediate future? What is your worst fear? What is your best hope?

The introduction of Universal Credit from next year, changes to the Social Fund and further restrictions on housing benefit, will likely result in more people getting into difficulty.

The plan with Universal Credit is to merge into one payment most of the benefits received by a household.  Universal Credit will be paid monthly, leading to new challenges for households to stretch the cash throughout a longer period.  It will also incorporate housing benefit payments.  This could lead to an increase in rent arrears resulting in losses for landlords and an increase in evictions.

The Department of Works and Pensions expects 80% of claims to be made online.  At BHT we have carried out our own research and have found that 71% of our clients appear to have the means and support to make claims online.  But when you take away the facilities and support BHT provides, that number falls to just 19%, similar to the assessment the DWP itself has made.

My biggest fear is that more people will fall foul of the new welfare regime and will lose their benefit entitlement, sometimes for prolonged periods.  This will result in three H’s: hardship, hypothermia and hunger.

The challenge for charities like BHT is how we can find a twenty first century solution to poverty.  Food banks are already doing a roaring trade. I fear we will soon see the opening of food kitchens.  A depressing note on which to finish.

The work of BHT’s Advice Centre: preventing homelessness, reducing inequality, community cohesion

This morning I reviewed the impact made by BHT’s Advice Centre in Brighton. Here are some basic statistics. I would ask you to reflect on the difference we make to the City and the consequences should this service close:

• 35% clients belong to a BME group
• 42% clients have either a disability, addiction or suffers from mental or physical ill health
• 55% of housing clients are in “priority need” and so the possible responsibility of the City Council.

Positive Outcomes (expressed as a percent) of Cases Closed during 2011/12

• Housing Advice 88% (This includes homeless prevention, conditions improved, accommodation found, better able to manage affairs)
• Housing court duty 85% (This includes homelessness prevented through stopping a possession order or execution of bailiff’s warrant)
• Accommodation Advice and Assistance 60% (This includes Homelessness prevention, PRS Accommodation found or sustained. These statistics are based on tracking 317 clients over 12 months).
• Welfare Benefits 95% (This includes clients who received increased or backdated benefit, and who are now better abled to manage their affairs)
• Debt 87% (This includes debts negotiated to an affordable plan, client better able to manage debt, debt reduced/written off etc.)
• Immigration 78% (This includes being granted Leave to Remain, refugee status, citizenship, family reunion etc. and includes 63% of appeals won)

Our legal services directly contributes to City strategies on:

• Prevention of homelessness and rough sleeping by reducing the numbers in temporary accommodation.  In 2011/12 homelessness was prevented or accommodation found in 1,531 of cases above. A 70% homelessness prevention rate.
• Reducing Inequality through helping to lift clients out of poverty (often suffering multiple problems, for example mental health, addictions, offenders, street homelessness, anti-social behaviour, poverty)
• Community cohesion through immigration advice helping families achieve stability and live together

Housing Benefit and Under 25’s

In a speech later today, the Prime Minister will say that he is considering removing housing benefit from those under-25s.  This appears to be one of the most ill-thought through, headline grabbing policy announcements that I can recall.

There are some questions that demand answers:

• How can parents be obliged to take their adult children back into the home, and what happens to those young people where they can’t ‘go home’?
• What protection will there be for children and young people who have left their family home to avoid abuse and domestic violence?
• What happens in those cases where the parents have “done the right thing” by moving to smaller houses once their children have move out and there is now no spare room?
• What happens if there is no room in the parent’s home for other reasons, such as second families with children?

I have to ask why David Cameron is bringing this proposal forward now?  We are already witnessing the most profound changes to the benefit system in my lifetime.  If this is such a pressing issue, why was it not identified and enacted when all the other changes were introduced?

The BBC’s political correspondent, Vicki Young, has suggested that Mr Cameron’s speech will be seen as an attempt to reconnect with disgruntled Tory backbenchers.  I don’t know if that is true, but if there is even a hint of reality in her analysis, it ill becomes a Prime Minister to risk a huge rise in youth homelessness for internal party expediency.

This isn’t the pressing problem it is being made out to be. Those under 35 living in the private rented sector are entitled to just £77 housing benefit per week. Just 6% of those under 25 living in the private rented sector currently receive housing benefit.

92% of new claims for housing benefit are from those in work.  They are already “doing the right thing” but this measure will hit young people already in jobs.

The consequence of this proposal will be an increase in overcrowding, homelessness, begging, crime, and prostitution.

We have begun to see the impact of unemployment and austerity on possession claims

For many months, BHT has been warning about a likely increase in the repossession of homes as people lose their jobs and the impact of austerity measures begins to be felt.

The Ministry of Justice recently reported that the number of possession claims issued in 2011 (the first stage of the repossession process) saw an increase of 4% on the previous year to 220. In West Sussex there were 775 claims and 575 in East Sussex.

In the latter part of 2011 I regularly said that the real effects of austerity measures, job losses and changes to the welfare benefit system would take several months before the real impact would be felt. We’re beginning to see, for example, the fallout from changes to housing benefit that were introduced at the beginning of this year.

I fear that when the Ministry of Justice publishes similar figures in 2013 we will see a far greater rise than the 4% reported in Brighton and Hove this year.

Behind these statistics are men and women who are being homeless for economic reasons.

What is poverty in the United Kingdom in 2012?

In 1978, my last year before I left South Africa, I did some work amongst the children of migrant workers in an area with incredibly high infant mortality levels. I recall the faces of very young children who were deprived of both maternal care and sufficient nutrition to survive. The area had an infant mortality rate of 20%.

That experience has stayed with me ever since.

While it is not directly comparable, I have found myself involved in discussions in recent weeks regarding poverty in the UK in 2012. At a recent BHT Board of Management away day the issue of poverty was an ever-present theme.

In my opening comments I warned Board members that we can expect to see new forms of poverty over the next few years. In addition to our traditional work of combating homelessness, addressing housing need and delivering specialist services (such as those that address mental ill-health, alcohol and drug problems and worklessness) we need to think about alleviating the worst aspects of this new poverty.

But the question that remained unanswered is quite what we mean by poverty in the UK in 2012. We touched on issues of parents, faced with the introduction of universal credit, housing benefit changes and increasing unemployment, having to make decisions about priorities such as paying the rent, service charge, heating bills and food.

I don’t think that I’m being alarmist. Tough choices like that are already being made.

But what does poverty mean today? I would really be interested to hear your views on this. Please leave a comment on this blog.

Foodbanks – we will be seeing much more of them in the future

I read an article on the Eastbourne Foodbank in the Eastbourne Herald last week. It was a very positive article, yet at the same time extremely depressing. The Foodbank opened a year ago in Bridgemere Road but has outgrown that premises and at the beginning of February moved into new premises at Cornfield Lane.

I couldn’t agree more with the project manager, Howard Wardle, who said: “In many ways it’s very sad that our services are in such demand but times are very tough for people and supplying an emergency pack of food is really the least we can do to help ease the situation.”

He explained how the Eastbourne Foodbank provides three days worth of food per household. It is entirely reliant on donations.

Since the Eastbourne Foodbank was opened, it has helped more than 1,200 individuals. Howard says he knows that there are many other people out there who do need their help.

Today (Shrove Tuesday) I read a tweet from someone from the Big Lottery who was at the opening of a foodbank in the Midlands. They commented that the turnout was great and the pancakes even better. Food banks seem to be emerging everywhere.

In Brighton and Hove, the City Mission provides food, very often to people who have had their benefits suspended and who would go without food without this essential service. It is a sign of our times, and a very sad one, that food banks are springing up all over the place.

I have just added the word ‘foodbank’ into my dictionary on my PC since it is a word I suspect we will all be using a great deal in the future, and a service that people living in poverty will depend on.