Readers of this site will know that I’ve been interviewing homeless Newham woman Marsha, 30, this year.
Marsha is living in temporary accommodation in a one-room hostel with her little daughter. The two have lived in this cramped space together more than two years.
Marsha has severe depression and anxiety. She sometimes cries when we talk. She is stuck in dreadful poverty in a way that she fears is permanent: “They [Newham Council] will put me in housing (out of London, away from jobs, training and free childcare with family) and I will be on benefits for the rest of my life.”
Marsha gets no respite from a public sector that should be in place to help. Marsha is being crushed by that sector. The public sector has no resources and no patience, imagination, or humanity as a result. That’s austerity.
On her own, Marsha can’t get housing in Newham near family who could look after her daughter while Marsha studies to qualify for the jobs that will get her off Universal Credit.
Marsha relies completely on her mother to look after her daughter and for much-needed emotional support. If Marsha is housed miles away from her mother as the council has historically insisted she must be, she’ll be isolated on benefits and in debilitating depression forever. The facts are also that job and training opportunities are much better in London than they are in the places that councils suggest people live.
This is why homeless families fight so hard to stay in the city. It’s not because homeless families can’t stand the thought of living in towns that don’t have a Harrods. It’s because employment and training opportunities in smaller towns can be hard to come by.
People also worry about racism in other towns, just by the way. We live in febrile times on that score.
Meanwhile – social services and her daughter’s school are constantly on Marsha’s case in a threatening way. They demand that Marsha and her daughter attend same-day meetings to discuss her daughter’s mental and emotional health – health that is inevitably deteriorating because of the conditions that Marsha and her daughter are kept in. Like so many people I speak with, Marsha worries that the mental and emotional health problems that are caused by the family’s living conditions will lead to her daughter being removed.
Meanwhile again, Marsha’s jobcentre adviser has sanctioned Marsha for attending college – rather than sending off the hundreds of never-answered applications for minimum-wage jobs that the DWP demands.
I talk to too many women with children who are held in poverty in this three-way clamp housing, social services and DWP all keeping single mothers in their place.
On the housing front:
I think that Newham council is stringing Marsha along when it comes to promises of better (ie fit for human habitation) housing. Such promises are as cruel and dangerous as they are empty – particularly when you are dealing with people who live in hellholes and have very serious depression.
A couple of months ago, officers showed Marsha a pigsty in Woolwich and told her to live in it, or else (the “or else” being that the council would give Marsha no more “help” if she didn’t shut up and take the flat).
Later on, under pressure, the council apologised to Marsha for treating her in this way.
Councillors said that they would find Marsha and her daughter a better home – ie, something human beings could just about live in. They even said they’d located such place.
That was months ago. Absolutely nothing happened after that. You started to wonder if this better home existed at all.
The council told Marsha that she couldn’t move in, because it was fixing the flat. I can’t imagine what sort of fixing this has involved. It’s been months.
And maybe Marsha was right to wonder if this promised flat was real. Certainly, the promise of it wasn’t. Marsha just told me that the council has rung to say that the flat is off the menu. The council says it has another flat in mind. Marsha was crying when she said that she doubted this. She said she was thinking of giving up – of leaving the homelessness hostel and bunking down wherever she could. This – from someone with very bad depression and anxiety.
You can see why homeless families in Marsha’s situation beg councils for social housing and secure tenancies. It’s not just that private tenancies are notoriously expensive and insecure, and that you’re likely to be facing eviction and homelessness again in a matter of months. It’s that councils can’t keep a grip when they’re farming people out to these places.
I could go on and I will in another post. I have more to post on the non-stop interference that Marsha and women in her situation get from social services.
For now though – Newham council needs to sort this out. Destabilising people with depression in this way is disgusting and dangerous. I’d ask Newham council for comment on this, except that I’ve been blacklisted. I will still ask councillors directly, though. The hell with it.
Thanks, Kate.
I notice that there is this on the website of Newham Green Party,
Forcing homeless families out of London – our report on London councils ending their homeless duties with private rented accommodation.
Best Wishes
Cheers I will take a look at that now
It wouldn’t be so bad if Labour councils actually acknowledged that they offer people these shit places to live because of the limitations imposed upon them by the Tory government. It beggars belief sometimes that Labour can wonder why people don’t support them and just dismiss them as yet another political party that pretends when they tolerate Labour run local authorities behaving like this. Unless there is a clear culture of opposition nothing will change. Whilst Corbyn is arsing around brown nosing the Tories to try and get a Brexit stitch-up sorted, Labour councils are being given carte blanche to operate in a disgusting manner such as highlighted by Marsha’s plight. It may be that tough times are demanding tough decisions being made, but they should never be made without it being loudly pointed out every time that it’s the Tories ideological and unnecessary austerity that’s behind it all. There are always creative ways to hold nasty governments to account, and Labour should be doing this every moment of every day, digging as much dirt as they can on the Tories. Instead they seem to be colluding and supporting and remaining true to their old mantra ‘Vote us in and we’ll change things’. I don’t think anyone has believed that since about the 7th of May 1997, a week after we got Tory Bliar as PM.
I’d love to be able to say that having a Labour government is great, but sadly I live in Wales where we’ve had a Labour government for the past 20 years, and things haven’t got any better, and in some ways they’re actually worse. Instead of actively campaigning for the devolution of social security, our Labour First Minister has gone on record as saying that he believes that the social security system works better as a reserved function, i.e, that it’s better that the DWP in London operate the system. This is despite the DWP wreaking havoc in many communities in much of Wales where the economy is bad, and has been since Thatcher destroyed the industries that sustained those communities without replacing them. Labour hasn’t done anything to improve conditions for people living in those places as there is little incentive to do so, as they more or less take power for granted, and if the people in those communities don’t vote Labour it’s of little concern as they are unlikely to vote for anyone else either. Sadly, the opposition to Labour aren’t a lot better, and certainly haven’t built up the trust needed.
The situation as it is is very worrying indeed, as it’s almost the ideal environment for the incubation of far right ideas and the growth of those of a fascist disposition, who will just cynically exploit people’s concerns. This doesn’t happen by accident, but happens because of inaction by Labour, or parties in opposition, or the kind of treatment meted out by local authorities such as Newham who, with their every action, confirm their real belief that the poor deserve the treatment they get.
It was interesting in the immediate aftermath of the Grenfell disaster when it was ordinary people coming together in spontaneous action in providing aid whilst the authorities were still running around like chickens with no heads, or were still waiting to be told what to do. As Benjamin Zepahaniah gleefully pointed out on an edition of the One Show soon after the disaster, it was anarchy in action – fully aware that most of the people doing what came naturally to them, i.e. to spontaneously organise help and support wouldn’t have considered either themselves, or what they were doing as anarchist – which is probably the point.
I just think that we’ve arrived at a point as a Society and as a country whereby anyone who is, or once was, or should be, in any position to help anyone has more or less stopped caring and given up trying. That may seem very pessimistic, and rather unfair to those who do care and try to make a difference, but it often seems like pretty much everyone in an official capacity no longer gives a fuck.
It is a big problem.
They offer these places because they think the person they put in them will do repairs to things like mould and damp walls, replace broken doors and cupboard doors. If they later move on the place might be habitable for another family and its cost the council or social landlord nothing.
Some private landlords can be a bit like that too – “feel free to decorate if you like but neutral colours” – and I’m thinking how about you decorate the place before you let it? Cheeky buggers. They didn’t even clean my flat before letting it to me.
I know someone who got a place that had mould broken cupboard doors and even the front door was dodgy, he did it up but in Black paint he changed the lock and took it with him when he left putting the dodgy one back in even replacing the doors with the ones that were in when he got the place. He kept all curtains closed and was on the PC all day watching any catch up program and live if there was nothing on he wanted to watch all without a TV licence. They never found him to pay for the paint but he sent the landlord pictures of the place when he moved out and they were before and after pics then back to before, he’d given his dads name who was in a care home as his name and had been for many years
Haha 😆 wow, I thought I lived in a crazy place. I have a tv licence but it’s in someone else’s name, a woman I’ve never heard of who has mysteriously been paying for the licence for my address for the last 2 years, and not a former tenant either so far as I know. Weird. My place needs decorating, looks like it’s not been done for years, but I sure can’t be bothered doing it. Talking of general weirdness though, there’s just been some commotion out in the street, car horns blaring, a man (unseen) shouting “get out of my car now!”, a woman in pyjamas on the street corner shouting “I’m calling the Police”, traffic slowing down, some guy laid out prone in the middle of the road further up the street who then just got up walked across the road got in a taxi & drove off. What the? This is a mad neighbourhood!
For some really obscure reason whenever the housing association I’m with relets a place they only paint the walls, and not the woodwork for some reason. They repainted my place about 12 years ago after I had to move out so that they could install acoustic insulation, (not that they did a good job) and got the place painted, luckily I caught them before they’d started and painted the place magnolia – I got white, but I wish I’d insisted on doing it myself as they a really crap job. I’m now redecorating the kitchen and bathroom, and it isn’t in neutral colours, unless you consider deep red, (kitchen) and dark grey, (bathroom) neutral. 🙂
Why is it always bloody Magnolia and woodchip?
I’ve only got woodchip on one wall in the bedroom where the wall plastering was a bit rough, and I can just see the outline of a large bricked up fireplace – I think it was originally the kitchen, though as it’s a semi (very large Victorian semi so large it’s now 8 flats) I have what both of what were kitchens, with massive chimney breasts what would originally accommodated ranges. Massive chimney breasts, which means the wall between my living room and ktichen is about 2′ 6″ thick. Most of it was magnolia when I moved in, except the bedroom and bathroom, which were an awful shade of pink. Needless to say, the pink was soon gone! But yeah, magnolia… shows a distinct lack of imagination. I think white is much better,
Three year sanctions to be abolished! Now all that needs to happen is that the rest of them go as well. But it’s a start…
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/09/tories-ditch-ineffective-three-year-benefit-sanctions
Thank goodness for that, not before time too. Now how about compensating all those affected for the duress, maybe pay for it directly out of IDS and Freud’s pockets. Two year Sanctions need to go too, in fact ALL bloody Sanctions.
Hear, Hear! Couldn’t agree more Trev. Hopefully we’ll have a half-decent government before too much longer, (not that I’m holding my breath exactly) and Labour will do what they are saying now, and that is get rid of ALL sanctions.
Hopefully a lot of other things will be changed, and this time Labour will make sure that they make changes that the Tories can’t easily reverse.
Mike Sivier asks the question why the Government are keeping the Sanctions system when it has been established that they are ineffective in helping people into work, and are damaging to peoples’ health.
Labour, apparently, would abolish Sanctions and have a system that involves “personalized employment support”, whatever that means:
https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/05/11/how-suspicious-tories-are-keeping-benefit-sanctions-that-they-know-dont-work/
Homeless deaths:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/homeless-deaths-homelessness-housing-rough-sleeping-a9055671.html
https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/08/14/homeless-deaths-the-scandal-isnt-just-the-figures-its-they-way-they-had-to-be-collected/