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A rise in the number of rough sleepers? Bet those shocking numbers don’t show the half of it. Look at these two guys.
The Guardian has a story this morning about the shocking rise in the number of people who are sleeping rough.
The government should be smashed for that rise alone. Slashing social security to the point where more and more people sleep outside in this climate is a crime against humanity in anyone’s book. Winter is freezing cold, especially here in the north west. Forcing people to sleep outside during it is murderous. Simple as that.
Point I wanted to make is that there are people who may not appear in these counts, because they have options some nights – if you can call them options – which means they have a bed or couch for that night. Their existences ain’t exactly great. They’re still street homeless. They still have appalling experiences. They are still out a lot in the freezing cold and can be out any minute in the freezing cold. Someone needs to take Theresa May to meet and count these people, and to rub her nose in a few realities.
I’m thinking of two guys in particular – James, 50 and Roy, 64 – who I’ve interviewed in Oldham. They’re both street homeless – but they’re not always on the street.
James, who I often meet with, regularly stays with his friend Vance, who was street homeless for years, but was finally found a council flat about two years ago. This arrangement works well sometimes and badly at others. Late last year, James had the shit kicked out of him – apparently by another guy who was staying at the flat. A roof often comes with considerable compromise.
It certainly did for Roy, 64, who I spoke with at length at Oldham foodbank recently. Roy was street homeless (at aged 64, if you don’t mind – a crime in itself), but sometimes stayed with a “friend” in Chadderton who charged Roy money out of his benefits to stay on the couch. He attended the foodbank that day in the hope that someone could help him find somewhere better to stay.
You see the point. When you spend a lot of time talking with people who are in and out of street homelessness, you talk with many people who are street homeless, but who are sometimes able make other arrangements that remove them from view. Doesn’t mean they’re having a brilliant time of it. I don’t know how many of these people do or don’t appear in rough sleeper counts – the Guardian article makes clear that criteria for counting rough sleepers is strict and only takes in people who are outside. Whatever. My point is that government needs to be strung up for creating this hidden rough sleeper nightmare as well. Like I say – people don’t know the half of it.
Forget #metoo celebs for 5 mins. Where’s the wall-to-wall mainstream outrage and coverage about the violence the austerity state visits on women?
Am pissed off this morning. Here are my perceptions of celeb domination of #metoo and mainstream obsession with celeb suffering as a priority:
I just finished a phone call with a woman who has three young kids and is homeless. They’re all homeless. She and the kids sofa-surf at a friend of the woman’s some nights and some nights with the woman’s mother in her mum’s flat.
The woman was made intentionally homeless by her council for rent arrears – arrears the woman said she didn’t realise were building up, because her housing benefit, which was paid straight to her landlord, suddenly stopped last year. Her housing benefit was stopped, because there was a problem processing a JSA claim she’d made.
She was accused of “getting money from somewhere else.”
Just about every woman I talk to in these situations is accused of “getting money from somewhere else” – which, for so many women I speak to, often means accused of living with an ex, or sleeping with some bloke who pays, or your choice of variations on that charming theme.
This side of things is remarkable, now that I think about it. I’m actually sitting here as we speak thinking about all the women I’ve written about over the years who’ve received housing benefit, or other kinds of state support. It occurs to me that nearly all of these women were accused by a council or the DWP at one point or another of cheating the state by generating extra cash for extra goodies via a man – ie, living with an ex, or with new bloke, or with some bloke nobody had even heard of.
That should tell you all you need to know about the state’s real view of women. We’re all cheating liars who’ll suck anything for an extra fiver for drink and fags – and that goes particularly for women who receive housing benefit. No matter that the state accuses people wrongly. No matter either that some women need extra cash in austerity and that people take the options they have with good reason. The realities of real women’s lives in this era doesn’t matter a damn. Women are seen as graspers, whether we need money or not.
Back to the story. The woman I talked to this morning was eventually evicted and found intentionally homeless. The woman says that the council told her that it would house her kids, but not her. The council would find the kids somewhere to go if social services got involved – but not her. The subtext there was pretty clear, to her at least: she’d be separated from her kids if she went down that line. I hear this story again and again and again and again. I hear this story every time I interview a woman who has a housing problem, rent arrears and kids. “You’ll go one way and your kids will go another.” It’s the threat to beat all threats. It never, ever ends.
Which brings me to my main point. Where is the wall-to-wall #metoo mainstream press outrage for women in these situations? Where’s the non-stop support and mainstream press coverage that #metoo celebrities have now had for months on end? Why is a night out or a trip in a cab with a groping celeb or politician now the only sure way to get women’s issues on the mainstream agenda, especially as a viral and ongoing concern? Reading the mainstream press at the moment – even those publications we’re supposed to rate for maturity and depth – feels like spending too much time on rubbish celeb sites. I know this, because I do both.
Where’s the widespread mainstream press and political eagerness to believe and report non-stop women’s stories of abuse and dismissal at the hands of the austerity-enforcing state? I tell you this – I bet a lot of the women I speak to wouldn’t even be believed by the media and political classes at the moment. They’d be called liars and exaggerators. Even in polite liberal circles, there’d be smirking about the choices made by these women and about women who have children in poverty (for all the world as though women always have a choice). Councils and the DWP would say that women had lied about making rent payments and about missing jobcentre meetings and all the rest. They’d be believed – not the women. There’d be snarky remarks about the feckless and irresponsible poor, and the working-class mother’s terrible and destructive sense of entitlement.
Celebrities are admired by the mainstream and generate web traffic. Women who are throttled by the state in austerity are not and do not. I know this. I get this. I can’t accept it.
Schizophrenia, aged 55, #PIP payments stopped, forced to the foodbank – why are guys like Andrew called society’s leeches but rich Carillion bosses are not?
Back to Oldham foodbank last week, where I talked at length with Andrew Smith, 55 [there’s a transcript from the interview at the end of this post].
Keep Andrew in mind when you read about the extraordinary salaries and bonuses trousered by people who are responsible for the Carillion disaster. Ask yourself how we arrived time and place where people such as Andrew must grovel for food at a foodbank while Carillion chancers are paid unbelievable sums of money for risking and destroying vital public services and jobs.
How dare anyone claim that people such as Andrew are the leeches?
Makes me sick.
Andrew was at the foodbank, because the DWP had stopped his Personal Independence Payment. This meant that Andrew was down several hundred quid a month*. He said the local CAB was appealing the DWP’s decision on his behalf.
Said Andrew:
“I said the wrong thing [at Andrew’s face-to-face PIP assessment] and they [the DWP] stopped it [Andrew’s PIP]… I’m just hoping they give it me back, because if I don’t [get that money], I’m going to be in an absolute mess.”
He was right about that. Andrew’s chances of getting the money elsewhere at his age and with his health problems were zero.
Andrew had a schizophrenia diagnosis. He also had varicose veins which ran the length of both legs (I won’t forget seeing those). He said that it hurt to walk – a statement that was extremely easy to understand when you saw the state of his legs. The DWP didn’t give a damn about the state of Andrew’s legs, though – or any other aspect of Andrew’s life. The department stopped Andrew’s PIP about three months ago. Some genius DWP decision-maker had decided that a man of Andrew’s age and with Andrew’s health problems could manage without money or support – or, I suppose, that he could find that money and support elsewhere.
I despair at these decisions – or at the people who make them, anyway. The benefits bureaucracy is disgusting. It stops people’s benefit money and consigns them to poverty at the stroke of a pen. People are not even given lead time or a grace period to deal with such decisions. They just get a letter saying the money’s stopped, or not coming, or whatever. Benefit decision-makers who cut guys like Andrew loose know full well that the Andrews of this world have neither the health nor the opportunities to make up lost benefit or support money. They can see people’s paperwork and the bank statements. They know the dire financial circumstances that people will be left in when money is cut. The bureaucracy makes the decision all the same.
The government and the DWP know that Andrew will not step out of a PIP assessment and into a job. Job opportunities are especially scarce when people are older. I’ll punch the next worthy who says otherwise. I’ve lost count of the number of men who I’ve talked to at foodbanks and jobcentres who are in their 50s and 60s, who did manual work when they were younger and who are now on the scrapheap. Fitters and joiners, painters and decorators, general kitchen assistants: their health goes and they’re dumped.
Andrew said that in his working days, he had jobs on building sites:
“I did wet stone walling with sand and cement,” and, “I worked on canals and paths at Greenfield… building sites.” Needless to say, Andrew can’t do that work now. He’s too old for it and his health has gone, as health does in these circles.
“They [the CAB] have put an appeal [against the DWP’s PIP decision] into tribunal and the tribunal should get it me back… I’m very poorly. I’ve got schizophrenia and I’ve got very serious varicose veins. Horrible, love… I said the wrong thing [at my PIP face-to-face assessment] and they stopped it.”
Yeah. That’s what they do. The bureaucracy casts people adrift and lets them sink. There’s no justification for that, no matter where you sit on the political spectrum and no matter what you think people should or should not have done to “take responsibility” in their lives. I don’t pay my taxes to keep people like Damian Green on the payroll, or to line the pockets of the swindlers who’ve run Carillion into the dirt. I pay tax to keep guys such as Andrew from having to visit foodbanks. Continue reading
How the DWP makes random deductions from #UniversalCredit accounts to “recover” tax credit debts people can’t afford to pay
Article by me on politics.co.uk today:
The dreadful DWP is now in charge of tax credit debt collection. It deducts random amounts for debts from people’s Universal Credit accounts without telling them. People say they don’t even owe these so-called debts
These deductions leave people in even more debt and with nothing to live on.
“Without warning the DWP started taking about £25 a month from Susan’s Universal Credit payments for this ‘debt’. She says the deductions stopped and started through the year.
She is now also repaying a Universal Credit advance loan at £67 a month. She took the loan out, in part, to cover the tax credit debt repayments that the DWP suddenly began deducting from her.”
64, homeless, sleeping on a couch that a “friend” charges money for…the Tories should rot in jail for all of this
Posted below is another transcript from interviews with food parcel recipients at Oldham foodbank on 5 December.
This interview made me wonder again where our world went so disgustingly wrong. Plenty of people wonder about that, of course, but there are times when you really ask yourself.
We have Theresa May and her gruesome cabinet playing Brexit and stuffing themselves with holiday food, and then we have people who literally eat and sleep on the pavement.
It’s unfathomable that such excess exists alongside such poverty in the modern age. We don’t need to do this. We know how to feed, clothe and house people. We have the resources to do those things. We just don’t. I can’t tell you how much I hate “reformers” who insist that an individual’s extreme poverty is entirely that individual’s responsibility. Personal responsibility is neither here nor there in such situations. Societal responsibility is the part that matters. That’s the part that is missing. We’re in a place where extreme poverty persists and is allowed to persist.
The Oldham interview was with Roy, 64.
Roy said he was homeless – not a situation you particularly want for a 64-year-old. Roy’s clothes were unwashed and crumpled, and his glasses smeared and greasy. He was working on a crossword when I sat down at his table.
“Cruciverbalism – that’s what crosswords are,” he said. “Cruci – cross. Verbalism – words.”
Roy wasn’t sure which benefits he received. He got a payment each month, so the benefit might have been Universal Credit. Roy said that he was staying on and off in Chadderton on the couch of a “friend” who charged him for the privilege (no doubt the repulsive Theresa May would say Roy’s occasional access to that couch meant he wasn’t homeless):
“He [the friend] is not a very kindhearted person. He’s always after money and I’ve got no money. [I] got some benefits. They only come in once a month. Me bank balance is now down to £1.99 … I don’t know when I get paid again. I have to go to the bank again to check me statement. I don’t know. It might be two weeks.”
Roy was waiting to speak to one of the foodbank volunteers. He hoped that she could help him find accommodation that night. He was worried about having to sleep outside, as well he might have been. Oldham freezes in winter. There was ice on the streets that day:
“The lady over there [the foodbank worker] – she’s very helpful. She’s like a careworker. I wanted to see her today, because I’m homeless outside… it’s not nice in this weather….I got evicted from me last place…bedroom tax. Got evicted for not paying it.”
I don’t know if Roy had a drinking or addiction problem. Doesn’t matter if he did. Backstories interest me less and less. I can’t be bothered picking through people’s histories for evidence that people do or don’t deserve the basics (which is the main reason anyone picks through back stories these days). Everyone deserves the basics. All that matters is the present – that there are people who live in dreadful states while others have everything. Who cares what has gone before in people’s lives?
I tell you this – I doubt Damian Green will pay this kind of price for his past.
Interview transcript (Oldham foodbank, Tuesday 5 December 2017)
“I come here at least probably once a week. People are nice, the staff are nice and the lady over there… she’s very helpful. She’s like a careworker and I wanted to see her today because I’m homeless outside… yeah… it’s not nice in this weather.
I got evicted from me last place, so…bedroom tax. Got evicted for not paying it…
See – the council come around. I lived in…the place where I was evicted from was a two-bedroom place, two-bedroom cottage flat, me and me mother.
Me mother become very ill and had to go into a carehome, so that left one bedroom empty. During this time, a council come around to insulate the loft. They went up there and it took them a week or something like that, but up in the loft, just above where the steps go, I had been saving some money out of me benefits to pay for me mother’s funeral because I knew that she wasn’t going to get better. Continue reading
Back in the New Year
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all. Thanks to all who read and commented this year. More in 2018. xx
“I got sanctioned nine months altogether – sanctioned, sanctioned, sanctioned.” And £2k rent arrears. No money for fares to work. More stories from the foodbank
Below is another transcript from an interview made at Oldham foodbank on 5 December.
I post this as an example of the lives that people without money must lead when they’re trying to get things together (after prison in this case).
This interview is also an example of somebody who has decided to put distance between himself and the jobcentre as he re-organises his life. I find this a lot. People sign on at jobcentres, because they need the money (such as it is), but that’s the sole reason they attend. They don’t expect support, or help to rebuild from jobcentres and the DWP. They expect aggro and a lot of cat and mouse around sanctions. No more and no less. That’s it.
This interview was with Terry, 43.
Terry was an ex-heroin and crack addict who’d recently done time in Risley for burglary. He said that he’d been in and out of jail since he was a teenager – mainly for robberies which paid for his habit. Terry said that he’d cleaned up in jail and hadn’t used for a couple of years.
Terry had a small flat in the Spring Street hostel in Oldham. He also had casual work as a labourer across sites in Greater Manchester. He was meeting a friend the next day who had a day’s work for Terry at another site.
That was the good news.
The not-so-good news was the number of obstacles that Terry faced getting to these jobs.
A charity had paid for the work boots, hard hat and work clothes that Terry needed for labouring work on construction sites. Terry said the jobcentre had not helped with these costs.
He shrugged when I asked why. I see that shrug a lot. Could have been that the jobcentre didn’t offer to pay for the clothes as it should have. Could have been that Terry kept the jobcentre at arm’s length and sorted things out himself where he could. Terry did not view the DWP as a go-to place for anyone who wanted to rehabilitate. Terry said he’d been sanctioned three times in the past for three months at a time.
“The dole should be doing all that [paying for work clothes], but they didn’t…the charity paid for my CSCS [worksite accreditation card]. They paid for me work boots, work pants, work coat work gloves, hard hat, everything. They got me everything to be able to work. Without any one of those things, I wouldn’t been able to go.”
Terry also had trouble meeting travel costs to and from work sites. The jobcentre would pay for his travel, but only as a reimbursement if he paid up front. That’s always a problem for people who can’t afford fares.
“They will help you get to work – but afterwards. If I am working with my mate tomorrow and it’s in Salford, I haven’t got a penny. So I can’t get there. If I had the money and had the bus fare and showed them [the jobcentre] the ticket two weeks later…[they’d pay]. They won’t give it you up front.”
Council contempt for homeless people, rotten temporary accommodation: why is this acceptable for people who are most in need?
Article by me at politics.co.uk today.
“You’ve got all the benefit porn on TV,” the officer says. “This whole idea of unemployment and benefit claimants being scroungers and getting the blame for having to bail the bankers out… that is coming into housing as well.”
The officer overturned one intentional homelessness finding made in the case of a woman who left her flat and local area because she’d been raped by a local man that she kept seeing around. She wanted to get away from him and the area they lived in, which was hardly surprising.
“Somebody found her intentionally homeless [for leaving her flat voluntarily],” the officer says. “They [the council officer who made the decision] were like, ‘I overheard her friend say, ‘You’ll come down here and you’ll live near me.’ They [officers] jump on this and say, ‘see – that means that they [the homeless person] tried to leave the place and it [the person’s story] is all contrived’.”
In a refuge, domestic violence, no Universal Credit money since October. This government is vicious
Yesterday, I spent another couple of hours at Oldham foodbank for more interviews with people who needed food parcels.
Here’s one of those interviews.
I spoke for a short time with a young woman.
She’d been abused by her partner, had left him and had been living in a refuge since July. Her kids were in care, I think (she was emotional and had struggled to speak at points). She said she was waiting to find out from the courts whether or not she’d “get my kids back.”
She had a Universal Credit claim, but hadn’t received any money since October. There was a problem, because she’d moved addresses to get away from the violent partner:
“I haven’t been paid for two months, because of a mixup in address – something to do with the address and all that… I suffered a domestic violence relationship, so I went into refuge.
[I am] trying to fight for my children in court. Don’t know if I’m going to bring the children back with me or not. All depends on whether I’m entitled to a three [unclear] or a one bedroom property.
That relationship. I lost everything.”
The foodbank volunteer asked her if she needed tampax. She said yes, so the volunteer made up a bag of sanitary items for her.
This woman’s mother was with her. She’d come along to do what she could. She was obviously concerned.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, because it becomes truer by the hour – we don’t have a safety net now. Social security hasn’t been reformed. It has been reduced to this rubble. People who need help most – help to stay alive, if you will – can’t access it. I meet more and more people whose circumstances should put them at the head of any queue. As things stand, they’re not in the queue at all. This is criminal.
I gave the woman and her mother my number. Maybe they’ll call.
Excerpts from the interview transcript:
“I’m ashamed of coming here, I don’t know why, but I’m ashamed… food, because I can’t afford to feed myself. Can’t afford to live let alone feed myself.
Haven’t had any money since October …Universal Credit. Can’t afford to go anywhere… if it involves money, I can’t do it
The foodbank volunteer came over with bags. “Not got any tampax in there… do you want…?”
“Yes, tampax please…”
“Haven’t been paid for two months, because of a mix up in address. Something to do with the address and all that, because the refuge I’m staying at. I suffered a domestic violence relationship, so I went into refuge…
Trying to fight for my children in court. Don’t know if I’m going to bring the children back with me or not… all depends on whether I’m entitled to a three [unclear] or a one bedroom property. That relationship… I lost everything.
Trying to fight for my kids… been in refuge since July… ex-partner isn’t the father. He’d hurt me by using the children and hurting me physically and emotionally. I was on Universal Credit with my ex and then I went onto a single claim, from where I lived… and now have made it into my own combination.
I don’t know my future until I get the result of what is happening with the children… haven’t got a clue, had no money for a month.”