Displaying items by tag: Shelter

Tenants who complain of dangerous or potentially deadly faults in privately rented homes are being let down by councils. When landlords fail to fix hazards - including serious faults that pose an immediate risk to health - councils have a legal duty to act. But the number of times councils use enforcement powers is far lower than the number of reports made. In the last five years 135,687 hazards were recorded, including 42,654 which posed an immediate risk to safety, but council action was only taken on 25,243 occasions, while less than 1% of the registered faults led to a prosecution. The housing charity Shelter said the whole system was ‘a car crash’. The private rented sector is home to 11 million people: many are young professionals who are close to buying, but there are also families and older people who will be renting for many years.

Shelter revealed that 135,000 children are homeless in Britain, one in 200 people in England are without a settled home, and 280,000 people are recorded as homeless. However, the charity pointed out that these statistics could be the tip of the iceberg, with hidden homelessness and rough sleeping difficult to document accurately. The scale of the challenge that Boris Johnson’s new government must face is daunting. Pray for government action to address the lack of social homes. A spokesman for the ministry of housing said, ‘Everyone should have somewhere safe to live, and councils have a duty to provide accommodation to those who need it, including families with children’. There are 1,450 Big Issue sellers working on the streets each week. Homelessness blights lives, leaving lasting imprints of trauma, and many are only days away from becoming homeless.

On 27 June we reported that Scotland’s homeless status was up by 3% on the previous year. Four months later another report stated the number of deaths of homeless people in England and Wales had risen by 22% - nearly two a day. The number of deaths related to drug poisoning has risen by 55% since 2017, compared to 16% of the population as a whole. Homeless families living permanently in office blocks, and homelessness among old people soared by 39%. There are an undisclosed number of empty houses in England despite a homelessness crisis. The majority of known deaths (641) were of men. Shelter said, ‘This is a moment to pause and reflect on what matters to us as a society. These tragic deaths are the consequence of a housing system and economy that is failing too many of our fellow citizens.’

597 homeless people died in England and Wales in 2017, compared to 482 in 2013. 84% of this figure were men, and over 50% were because of drug poisoning, liver disease caused by alcohol abuse, or suicide (also known as the diseases of despair). The average age of death was 44 for men and 42 for women. Homeless charities say pressure on their services is increasing. The director of Shelter called the deaths a source of national shame, ‘a consequence of a housing system which fails too many people’. The CEO of Crisis called on the Government to fix the root causes of homelessness - building more social homes and a welfare system to support people who fall on hard times.

Trafficked from Bangladesh and sold into a brothel in Mumbai, Babli started learning Hindi last year at the shelter where she was put up after being rescued. She can now read, write and speak the language fluently, thanks to Hindi classes that help girls identify their trafficking routes and record more accurate testimony. ‘I was brought to Kolkata from Bangladesh, but I couldn't read the names of train stations that I crossed on my way to Mumbai’, Babli said. Two northern Hindi-speaking towns of Varanasi and Gorakhpur have been identified as hubs in the trafficking routes towards the major cities. Activists say that identifying routes is important - not only to step up police vigilance in these areas, but also to protect the girls who go back home after a court case and are once again exposed to trafficking risks. An inadvertent outcome of these lessons at the shelter is that some of the girls have obtained places in regular schools this year.