People who need help actively avoid seeking it now. Applying for benefits, housing, etc, is too torturous

In the last few weeks, I’ve spent time with people in Oldham who’ve been in and out of street homelessness. There are some transcripts from some of these sessions at the end of this post.

You’ll see people talked about many things: reasons for homelessness, (“relationship breakdown”), Donald Trump (“you know on his head there… it won’t come off, that”), government, the state of the world (“atrocious”), Man City being full of wankers and so on.

I spent a lot of time with James, 49 and Vance, 43.

A few thoughts:

One point really stood out: the fact that James said he didn’t have any income to speak of. He didn’t receive any state assistance – no benefits, or council help with homelessness, or hostel accommodation. He hadn’t joined housing or hostel waiting lists.

He said that he tried, discovered that there was some problem with his National Insurance contributions (“your stamp when you work all your life,”) and ultimately decided to abandon the whole thing. He was reluctant to engage further. He was homeless and sofa-surfing at Vance’s place. Vance found James sleeping on the freezing concrete landing outside the flat that Vance had recently been placed in. Vance invited James in to stay.

James:

“Where Vance lives, it is a high rise flat. He find me on the top of it on the concrete floor sprawled out, sleeping. He come out of his flat. I’m on the floor on the concrete. Vance said to me: “go in my place.” He had a friend with him. He said go in there and knock on the door. He let me in. He picked me up.”

Vance:

“He was sleeping outside on the landing. I can’t see that, because I’ve been homeless meself…I did if for years meself. Absolutely years. I slept on the streets, but I got sick of sleeping on the streets, so I bought a tent. I lived in a tent for five year. It is very cold and wet… and with snow. You can’t sleep. You put your tent anywhere you can.”

So.

I mention James’ lack of income, because I have met a number of people in the same boat now – people who have no income and are in need for whatever reason, but who have abandoned attempts to get help from the jobcentre or the council and/or who give jobcentres and the council a wide berth. This needs pointing out as often as possible. People who should be getting help are not getting it. I’d go further and say people who are most in need of help are not getting it. If government’s aim was to put people off state help by making so-called support systems too torturous and painful to negotiate – job done and all that. I know that plenty of people are aware of this, but it’s worth another mention when you meet people who imply that sleeping on a freezing concrete landing is easier than applying for housing. Asking for assistance is not worth the wrangle. People hit hurdles early and leave.

“It’s called a rigmarole,” James said when we had a Sally Army lunch a couple of weeks ago and I asked him if he’d tried for hostel accommodation anywhere.

As I said, James reported that he’d been turned down for benefits and for housing – that problem with his stamp from his working days, he reckoned. Maybe there were other problems and other reasons. None of that matters. The point is that he and others I speak to don’t feel the system or those running it are inclined to sympathise, cut anyone a break, or sort problems out. Too many organisations are too controlling and too aggressive in their demands for paperwork, personal details and compliance with one ridiculous rule or another.

People expect to be pulled up for something they’ve *done* to make themselves homeless. Relationship breakdown (the starting-point a lot of people often give for their troubles), a prison record, mental health problems, job and house loss, the hardcore substance use that often goes with such losses – society doesn’t cut much slack for people with so-described self-inflicted wounds these days. Pity the same stringent standards aren’t applied to tax avoiders, or, say, MPs who blow public money on private tennis court repairs (hi, Oliver Letwin), or heating their horses’ stables (big shoutout to Nadhim Zahawi and his horses). David Cameron left his job recently due to a project fail and shitty colleagues, but I doubt he’s been round the jobcentre trying to get an adviser to understand why he walked away from work.

For everyone else, judgement permeates. Some charities are strident about not giving homeless people cash because they’ll *just* spend it on drugs and booze – for all the world as though withholding cash cured addiction and for all the world as though people are for charities to fix. Not all charities behave that way, of course. I’ve been to some drop in places where attendees have gone outside and come back smelling strongly of booze. Nobody has said a word. Rightly so. Punishment does not cure addiction. I think we’d know by now if it did.

“Foodbanks and stuff like that. And begging,” James said when I asked how he got by. Vance had some income from Universal Credit. “I’ve worked since I was 16,” James said. “I’ve not worked in the last couple of years, but I’ve worked since I was 16, since I was a child and paid the NI. They’ve going to scrap the benefit system. Nobody is going to get any benefits. Nobody. I’m not signing on. Not getting any benefits. No. I’ve not been claiming for a few years and it goes back on you. I just do it day by day.”

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About half the people who come to our foodbank are there because of benefit sanctions…

Yesterday, I was over in Oldham talking to Mike Kendrick from the South Chadderton foodbank. The South Chadderton foodbank is open on Mondays from 11am to 2pm.

He reckoned that about 50% of the people who came through the foodbank’s doors were there because they had been sanctioned by the jobcentre. A high proportion, I thought.

Needless to say, I have a big problem with government/DWP denials of any relationship between benefit sanctions and social security cuts, and foodbank use. One of the main reasons I find these denials hard to accept is that I keep meeting people outside jobcentres who say that jobcentre advisers tell them to go to foodbanks if a sanction/loan deduction/cut to money means they’re out of money.

So. There may not be a link between sanctions and so-called “welfare reforms” in the government’s mind, but there certainly is a link between all of these things in the minds of jobcentre advisers and people who sign on. There also seems to be a link in the minds of people who provide foodbank services.

More soon. Spending a lot of time talking with people in Oldham at the moment, so more updating next week.