An update on this story: Candice, one of the homeless women I’ve been talking with in Newham and who is quoted below, was offered a place in Canning Town by Newham council today. Yesterday, she was told that she’d be sent out of London to live in Liverpool and that her case would be closed if she didn’t accept a place there. That would have been very difficult for her, because her family live in Newham and help her look after her 17-month-old daughter as you’ll see. Anyway, things seemed to change today when Candice went back to the housing office with a few people from the Focus E15 campaign. Canning Town it is.

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Yesterday, I spent several hours at the Newham council housing office at Bridge house with a number of women who are homeless.

Two things were noticeable right off: 1) that by the time I arrived at Bridge house at about 11, the waiting room was already full of people who had housing problems and 2) there were a lot of kids in the room. Some of the children were very young: in prams, or pushchairs. Some of the children were schoolage, though. I hadn’t thought about this aspect of things before – that instead of going to school on Monday morning, some kids go to council housing offices and wait while their parents try to sort out emergency housing. That’s surely got to put kids at a disadvantage as far as their schooling goes. I pretty sure there wasn’t a school holiday in Newham yesterday. I certainly asked around.

So. Below are a few interview excerpts which will tell you a bit about life for people who spend a lot of their time at housing offices asking for help because they don’t have a secure place to live.

One of the women with a child at the housing office yesterday was Charice Thompson. Charice said that she had been in the housing office with her ten-year-old daughter since about 9am. She had her belongings and extra clothes in bags with her. She had a plastic clothes rack with her as well – that was leaning against the back wall in the housing office. Charice said she’d been evicted from the revolting flat she’d been living in for three years for complaining about the standards in the place. She said that the flat had no hot water a lot of the time and that it was so badly infested with bedbugs that she’d ended up with a blood infection from the bites. She was clutching a letter from MP Stephen Timms which asked the council to house her and outlined her health problems. (I rang Timms’ office while Charice was waiting to see a housing officer, because she was concerned that she wouldn’t get to see someone and she and her daughter had nowhere to go last night. Someone from his office did ring me back yesterday afternoon). Charice and her daughter were given an emergency room in a hostel in Ilford at a charge of £196 a week. Her housing benefit would cover a lot of that, but she would still have to meet some costs.

Charice said:

“I’ve been living for three years in a property with no hot water or heating, and there bed bugs that are affecting my blood. I’ve got this letter from Stephen Timms. I wanted the manager to see the letter, but they don’t want to see the letter. They have been ordered by the MP to place me. Nobody wants to receive it.

“I’ve been looking [for another flat]. Me and my solicitor have been phoning up [estate agent] numbers nearly every day and basically, there was a letter that they gave me with three pages that had a list of numbers on it. We rang up a lot of numbers and then rang here and said “well, we’ve been ringing these numbers. Then on top of that, the lady said that it has failed and we can’t find a two-bedroom DSS property.”

Charice was extremely concerned about ending up in another place which was also bug-infested and kept repeating that to the officers who came to see her. She was about to start treatment for the problems caused by the bug bites at her most recent place, but said her doctor wouldn’t start the treatment until she was in settled accommodation – in case she’s exposed to another bug infestation. All of this made me wonder if that sort of bug and pest infestation is known to be quite common. “It’s the same thing with moving into accommodation with someone else’s mattress. Why are they putting me in now in someone else’s bed?” She was also worried about her ten-year-old daughter’s safety in shared emergency accommodation. “She looks older than ten,” she kept saying to me. Then, to her daughter – “ you can’t be wandering about when we get there. You have to stay with me. Are you listening to me? You have to listen to me.”

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Kelly Abnett, 51.

I spent several hours with Kelly on Friday at the Plaistow hostel that she’s been living in since she was evicted from a privately-rented flat in Biggerstaff Road earlier in November. Kelly has a room in the hostel and shares the kitchen and bathroom with other people who are living there. The room has a bed, a sink, a table and a wardrobe. Kelly said that when she was first placed in the hostel, she’d been told that she could stay until about the eighth of December, but that she was told later that she might have to leave on Monday (yesterday). She was very confused and concerned about that: “I’ve got nowhere else to go.” I went with her to the housing office with her yesterday – and things turned out better than expected. She handed over her medical documents and a letter from her GP, and officers said she could stay in the hostel.

Kelly said:

“I moved to this side (from Woolwich [Greenwich borough] to Newham) about six years ago, which I didn’t want to do because I was vulnerable on my own and I didn’t know it. My daughter, she was very high on drugs and she attacked me and she was having children that were being taken away from her from birth. So, they moved me here (to Newham). Then my daughter find out where I was, so I tried to help her again. I was just like literally ready to do myself in, because I couldn’t take no more.

“I just been over here. I been to Newham council. At first, they said to me “you have to go back to Woolwich.” So I went to Greenwich. They said to me, “No, you go back to Newham, because you are a Newham resident now.” So I just stayed and lived comfortable [in the privately-rented flat] and then my landlord wanted the property back.

“I ended up giving the stuff to the neighbours. I just got everything I could and left it down there [when I was evicted]. Basically, they put me here [in the hostel]. I left the keys under the mat and I phoned my landlord and I said I have to be outside Bridge house for 9am because I want to be there as soon as possible to be first in the queue. [At the council] they said they are going to allow you to have this [hostel room]. He said it’ll probably be two weeks and then you’ll have to be out and now I’ve got a phone call telling me I have to leave here on Monday. They said my medical reports aren’t strong enough.

“They sent me a letter yesterday saying I was in arrears [for the week in the hostel room]. I’ve not had a rent card. When I went back to the housing, I told them “I need a card.” I said “can I just go into the post office and pay it?” And he said, “No you have to wait for your rent card.”

“I am worried that they are going to argue that they don’t have to rehouse me. I don’t want to be on my own. I’m looking on Gumtree, but it’s nearly a grand a month for a studio flat. There was one there in my range, about £700. We phoned, but it had already gone.”

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Candice, 24. Has a 17-month-old daughter. Lives with her mum sometimes and friends sometimes. I spent some time with her last Friday at her mother’s two-bedroom council flat in Newham. Candice sometimes stays there.

“Last year, they were saying that I had to go and live in Liverpool. That’s 200 miles away and I don’t have the support. I’ve been brought up here all my life. There’s no work up there either.

“I didn’t really have a clue. They put you on the bidding scheme, but I didn’t know what to do. And people get taken off of it.

“Since then, I been sofa-surfing with the baby. I had a home visit from the lady from the council and she said “you have to get on to us,” but I didn’t know. I’ve just fell in a hole. I need somewhere to live. And then I can think about that and what to do. I want to do a carpentry course. I also want to go to university and do a course in art and things like that. I am really good at drawing and fixing things.

“My mum’s fine with me here a few days, but all the time – that’s a no-no. We love each other to bits, but it’s such a small space [to live in] here. [I’m worried that] the council will probably turn around and say it’s fine for me and the baby to live here. To live in a room [Candice sleeps on a pullout sofa in the lounge when she stays with her mother].

“They gave me a list of [estate agent] numbers the first time I told them I was pregnant. I called a numerous amount of numbers, but they don’t accept DSS. A lot of places around here don’t accept DSS.

“I’m staying at two other friends’ [homes] as well. One is in Canning Town and one is in Bow. They’re okay with me staying with them, but you can sometimes feel, you know – here she comes again.

“Before the baby was born, I left school when I was 15 and did hairdressing and that. Then I was on jobseeker’s. They did get me some work from cleaning and then I fell pregnant. My mum works as a cleaner and kitchenwork as well. In the evening, she cleans the school as well.”

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So. A few thoughts before signing off this evening:

Let’s not forget that while all this is going on, perfectly serviceable homes sit unoccupied on the nearby Carpenters’ estate.

And in case anyone reading this feels tempted to start up on the Scroungers rhetoric – ie, the usual “why should taxpayers support/house/give a damn about these people” – let’s just take a moment to remember who is really on the take in our charming era. Let’s think about the landlord who is getting the best part of £1100 a month in housing benefit for the airless, dirty, rodent-infested single room flat that he is letting to the disabled man in this story. Let’s think about MPs like Nadhim Zahawi who decided that it was perfectly fine to charge the taxpayer to heat his horses’ stables, or Oliver Letwin, who happily charged the taxpayer to fix his tennis court, or George Osborne, who fleeced the taxpayer for an actual paddock in his taxpayer-funded expenses. One rule for them, etc.