How can the DWP STILL leave people to “live” on a pittance? Will any of this ever change?

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Let’s start the week with a rant:

I’ve said this a million times, as has everyone, but let’s say it again:

Some people don’t have enough money to live on. Nothing is changing that I can see.

People are deliberately kept in debt to the state and in crushing poverty as a result. The DWP sanctions and reduces benefit money to the point where people can’t meet basic bills, and then deducts even more for loans and that people can’t pay. People are forced to cough up fines and costs for court appearances for unpaid council tax and rent – bills that they couldn’t afford to pay in the first place. That’s why they’re in court. Something needs to be done, but it isn’t being done. I wonder exactly how long the turning-point will sit on the horizon. How long will people be forced to wait for change?

We’ve had plenty of chat recently in the MSM re: politicians accepting that austerity is terrible and that people loathe it. I’m all for that chat, but a timeline for actual improvement would be good. I realise that we’ve had major political movement in recent times, from Brexit to the Christ-ly rise of Jez, and I try to get/stay enthused/interested, but the truth is that useful results on the ground still feel a very long way away.

I still speak to people who didn’t vote in the general election. They still shrug and say, “it doesn’t make any difference.” You see their point. They’re still at foodbanks. They’re still fighting the DWP for a few quid in hardship funds. They’re still written off as scroungers. Recent political events haven’t meant much in real terms for them.

After squandering months on an election and its aftermath, our “leadership” and parliament will soon take summer break. I wonder if a break should be allowed. Then again – who cares. What’s a couple of months in the greater scheme. Even if Jez launches the glorious revolution tomorrow, it’ll take years – decades – to rebuild public services to the point where people who really need those services get them in a way that feels helpful. A revolution would look great on facebook, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for the rest. I realise that I take a childishly simple view of political realities here, but I feel the need to get down to basics. A lot of people have been waiting an awful long time for the aforementioned turning-point to really arrive. Quite a few people have died along the way.

Some specifics from real life out and about:

There are three key problems I hear again and again from people as I go from foodbanks to lunch kitchens to meetings with people who have housing problems:

1) The DWP, councils and housing associations are deducting money from people’s benefits by way of sanctions, loan repayments, council tax and fines, and rent arrears. The upshot is that people are left with a pittance to live on. It’s not uncommon to hear people talk about a figure of £50 a week and less. Doesn’t matter whether or not you think people deserve these slapdowns because they’re single mums, unemployed, low earners, ex-cons, or whatever. They’re stuck forever. The state and its offshoots crush people with debts that they’ll never repay. The state does not help these people. It owns them. We, or someone, needs concrete plans to change that.

2) People are waiting for an Employment and Support Allowance decision, or a Personal Independence Payment decision. The waiting is going on and on and/or their application is turned down. The mandatory reconsideration and tribunal appeals processes drag on and are extremely difficult to navigate if you can’t grasp complex government bureaucracies. Which many people can’t, because these systems are too hard to deal with even if you do feel up to it. At the moment, in one way or another, I’m dealing with/writing about three people with learning difficulties and health problems who have been found fit for work this year and have not been able to appeal these decisions, or sort out interim income, without help from local support groups.

3) People are fighting eviction and paying big court/bailiffs costs on the way. They’re always insecurely housed, because they must rent in the private sector.

Here are three very recent examples of these:

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Here’s a woman explaining in detail problems she’s had getting council homelessness help. This system is garbage.

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The aim of this post is to show you what it’s like when a person tries to get help from a council when that person is threatened with homelessness.

As you’ll know, there’s been a lot of discussion about the realities of these council systems after Grenfell.

I want to give you an idea of the shambolic and often startlingly unhelpful council bureaucracies that people must use when they need help to find a place to live. I want to show you the system as people who must use it see it. We live in an era of massively oversubscribed and under-resourced council homelessness offices (god knows I wouldn’t want to work as a frontline council homelessness officer these days). We also live in an era where big councils are very keen push poorer people out to live in cheaper areas, because housing benefit doesn’t cover private rents in expensive areas. These things show.

To the story, then. This is one person talking about the systems she’s experienced:

In the past few weeks, I’ve been talking with a 32-year-old Newham woman called Chantelle Dean. For much of this year, Chantelle has been threatened with eviction and homelessness. She tells a story that will be very familiar to anyone on this circuit.

Chantelle lives in a small, rickety, two-bedroom rented flat in Newham. Rodents and cockroaches are a problem, as they often are in houses in cramped, older rows. There are gaps in walls which rodents use as entry-points: “the [exterminator] guy said no matter how much foam they put in, the mice are going to be coming through. It’s so old and there are so many holes,” Chantelle said. I’ve posted photos of the anti-mouse plastic foam the exterminator sprayed into wall-holes below.

Chantelle has a three-year-old son. She was placed in her flat about three years ago by Newham council after working her way through family problems and contact with social services. Chantelle receives Income Support. She plans to find work when her son starts nursery in September. She said she’s applied for jobs. Her mother lives nearby and can provide free childcare. That’s the plan.

Unfortunately, the plan is threatened by Chantelle’s precarious housing situation.

Chantelle is about to be evicted from her flat. As of Friday last week when we met at her flat, she still had nowhere to go when eviction day comes. She’d been trying to sort the problem out for months. (Chantelle managed to get another meeting with the council this week, so I’ll update this post if there’s progress to report).

The trouble began at the start of this year when Chantelle’s landlord gave her a notice to tell her that she had to leave the property (a section 21 notice, I think. I don’t mind saying the paperwork that comes with these things confuses me as well). She had to leave the flat by March.

She was very upset about this, as well she might be.

Chantelle went to the Newham Council Housing Needs office in East Ham in January to tell the council about the notice and to ask for help find another flat in the area. This is where things began to get messy, as they do.

Chantelle said the council told her that the council couldn’t help until the day that she was actually evicted from the flat – when the bailiffs turned up at her door, as she understood it. She said she was advised to stay in the flat and to wait to receive a possession order – which, I gather, is the next stage in the so-called system (the possession order is mentioned in the officer email below). This was, needless to say, of concern. Chantelle wanted help as soon as possible. She wasn’t keen to wait until bailiffs hammered at the door. She was also worried that she’d end up with court fines and costs if things went as far as possession orders and bailiffs (this is exactly what happened, as you’ll see).

She said that getting anyone to listen was extremely difficult. Noting this frustration is important. People constantly report this sort of frustration with frontline services:

“All they [the council] repeat is that, “we’re not going to help you until you get the bailiff’s warrant.” Once you get that, you come back up here [to the East Ham housing office] and give it to her, my caseworker, and then she will give me an appointment at [Newham Council’s] Bridge House on the day when the letter says that the bailiffs will come. Anything from that – they don’t want to talk to you. They don’t want to see you. Anything.”

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DHPs are a stopgap. They don’t fix the real housing problems. The whole system is wrecked

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A few thoughts on the government’s disingenuous guidance to *help* Grenfell residents with housing costs by providing Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs):

On Friday morning on twitter, some of us were discussing this DWP memo on getting DHPs to Grenfell residents. (This was hours before the Guardian finally picked up on the memo and ran a let’s-brown-nose-the-government-by-putting-the-government-defence-up-front story on it. That story didn’t offer an interview with anyone who had actually gone through the often-invasive and thankless process of applying for a DHP. Don’t start me on that. I’m not in the mood).

Anyway.

The memo told councils to prioritise Grenfell residents who applied for Discretionary Housing Payments for help with rent in advance, deposits on new homes and rent shortfalls in new homes. This memo made me furious, for many reasons.

One is, of course, that people who survived the Grenfell fire should not have to apply for anything at all, through any of these council processes. Deposits and full rents should be paid on the homes of their choice for the rest of their lives. I genuinely think that. I can’t see why people wouldn’t think that.

Another reason for disliking this government memo “initiative” is that DHPs are only stopgap payments. They are short-term payments made by councils from a government allocation. They are used to cover housing-cost problems for people on housing benefit, or the housing component of Universal Credit – say, a rent deposit for a flat for someone on a low income, or the bedroom tax, or a shortfall between the amount of housing benefit people can get and their full rent, particularly when people must rent in the expensive private sector. (I’ve helped people apply for DHPs).

DHPs do NOT change the welfare reform policies and issues that cause the problems in the first place – the bedroom tax, local housing allowance caps, benefit caps, the fact that homeless people must be placed in the expensive private rental sector because there’s not enough social housing to go around, and the fact that everyone who rents privately is exposed to runaway private-sector rents. Those problems go on – seemingly forever, at the moment. They’re not changed by DHP allocations. The DWP memo on DHPs made clear Grenfell people remain subject to welfare reforms such as the benefit cap.

It’s the short-termism of DHP help that really gets my back up. Covering payments and problems such as deposit and rent shortfalls with DHPs is a real get-out for government and councils. It means that the government via councils can use DHPs to mask housing and rent problems caused by the high rents, the discharging of homelessness duties into the private sector and welfare reform for six months, or a year, or, to put it crassly in this case, until mainstream press attention moves away from Grenfell and people are left alone to battle council and DWP bureaucracies. DHPs don’t address reasons for a housing crisis at all.

There’s another problem, too – one that isn’t discussed as often as it should be. People (I mean a lot of the mainstream media here) seem to assume that the bureaucratic systems that people must use to apply for DHPs, housing, housing benefit and the UC housing component function reasonably well, or even at all – ie, that there’s an operational system in place for people who are homeless and/or who need housing benefit and DHPs and so on. The truth is that these systems are in absolute shambles. I realise that government says rules should be relaxed for Grenfell residents and every effort made to assist people. I’m saying that I have no confidence in this being the case in an ongoing way. That’s because wherever you go in the country, things are so often an unbelievable mess. I can’t tell you how often I’ve gone to housing meetings, or jobcentre meetings, or whatever, with people, and come out with nothing resolved. This needs to be addressed in councils and bureaucracies all over. These problems apply all round.

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If austerity really is over (ha), everyone must benefit. That includes people we’ve been told to hate.

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Have been thinking about the much-discussed end to austerity and public sector cuts ever since the politically-resuscitated (regurgitated?) Michael Gove floated the concept: “we…. need to take account of legitimate public concerns about ensuring that we properly fund public services,” blah, blah, etc.

An end to austerity would be tremendous, of course. Can’t wait, etc. I only hope that EVERYONE gets to share in the largesse. The time has come to throw out poisonous notions of Deserving and Undeserving poor. God knows that’s achieved nothing apart from division. Everyone is deserving and must be seen as such. When I say “everyone,” I mean even people who successive governments have made very sure are unpopular with taxpayers. “Everyone” must include the people that the Daily Mail et al like to dismiss as dead weight – the single mums, the people with drug and alcohol problems and people who don’t, for whatever reason, work (or vote). I tend to feel that when the political class talks about righting austerity’s wrongs, the recurring themes are stagnant pay, and funding the NHS, the police, social care, education and housing. Fair enough. Those services are vital.

There are other people, though. There are people whose lives have been wrecked by public sector cuts – particularly because the DWP and council frontline services they must use have been outsourced, reorganised, and/or cut past function – but who are less electorally pertinent than, say, nurses and the police. These are the people who have been abandoned to our era’s most spectacularly callous and defective bureaucracies. These are people who are judged harshly for their circumstances and often left with nothing to live on as a result. I trust our new wave of Tory austerity-relaxers will throw them a lifeline as well. Bit more carrot and less stick, and all that.

It is with this in mind that I take you towards Oldham now, to the South Chadderton foodbank where I spent several hours last week. I talked there with people who’d come in for food parcels because they’d run out of money.

I spoke with two women at length. One woman had lost income through benefit sanctions. The other had no income, because she’d failed a sickness benefit assessment, was mired in appeals and had no idea what to do next. Both women were having a hell of a time trying to make sense of the endless letters, cut income and confusing instructions that people are given by the DWP in our punitive and unhelpful austerity age. These people could have been anyone, really, in the sense that I see this confusion and incomprehension all the time.

The first woman was a young mum called Emma.

Emma was 31. She had three kids aged 13, five and six months. She told me a story I’ve heard variations on before. Emma said that her Income Support payments had been reduced, because she’d missed two work-related interviews at her jobcentre. I found out later that these interviews may not even have been mandatory. This sort of thing happens, though. People are told by jobcentre staff that they have to attend work activities or courses when they don’t. I’ve seen that more than once over the years, as I say. It’s the sort of thing I mean when I say that DWP systems are a shambles.

Emma said she’d missed the workforce interviews because she didn’t realise they were taking place.

“They’re every three months now (the work-related interviews at the jobcentre). They used to be every 12 months. It’s if you miss the appointments, that was why…

“I thought they were going to sanction me. I thought they were going to stop all my money, but they haven’t. They’ve just reducted [sic] so much money off of my benefits.”

Emma said that she hadn’t appealed the decision to cut her benefits, because she didn’t know that she could appeal.

“They said when I went to the jobcentre, when you’ve attended your workforce interview, they [the payments] will go back to normal.”

Emma doubted these workforce interviews would lead to work. I’ve attended enough of these work-related meetings to doubt the point of them myself. At best, work-related interviews are box-ticking exercises: proof by jobcentres for the DWP that people who sign on have been encouraged to look for jobs. At worst, they’re a means of keeping benefit recipients on a short leash – of making people return repeatedly to their jobcentres where they know they’re being watched. Here’s a story I did about such pointless demands being put on people who signed on at the North Kensington jobcentre: a place that was harsh on benefit recipients in my experience and that is in the mainstream news re: signon demands at the moment after the Grenfell disaster.

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While we’re talking austerity, can anyone help with this question on Income Support, conditions and sanctions

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Any help on this one appreciated:

On the topic of compliance and Income Support – I’m speaking atm with a woman aged 31 who has a five-year-old and a six-month-old (we met at the South Chadderton foodbank on Monday). She said that she’s been called in every three months to her jobcentre for a “workforce interview” – sounded like some sort of work related activity type interview from her description. She’d been sanctioned (had her benefit total reduced) for missing interviews that she didn’t realise were taking place. She was at the foodbank getting a food parcel and nappies for the baby, because, needless to say, she’d run out of money. She was having social fund repayment money deducted from her benefits as well. Total shambles, to say the least.

My question – how often are people who are in receipt of Income Support with a child under the age of a year now required to attend workforce or work-related activities? Gave this question a google, but I don’t know that I’m further ahead. This woman said she was getting a lot of letters about attending with all kinds of dates on them and calls changing dates, and everything was in the usual mess.

I was also wondering (again) how low the DWP was permitted to cut a benefits income, particularly for people with such young children. Readers of this site will know that I’ve asked the DWP about this before. The woman in this post today and another man who I spoke to at South Chadderton foodbank on Monday both said that they were having money deducted from their benefits for social fund loan repayments that never seemed to get smaller, or end (I hear this a lot – people feel they’re paying social fund loans off for years). They couldn’t afford the deductions. They also said that the DWP had told them they must put any requests for a repayment reduction in writing. Not so long ago, you could call the DWP up to ask the department to reduce loan repayment amounts if people were really struggling. I’ve done that for people myself. Now, in the Oldham neck of the woods at least, people are told they must write in. Good luck with that, etc.

Anyway. I am so glad the great and the good on the political scene have decided that austerity is over. I can only suppose the memo on that hasn’t reached the DWP yet. I’m sure that will happen in good time.

If you can shed any light on any of this, but prefer not to leave a comment below, feel free to drop me a line here.

You don’t end austerity simply by announcing it’s over. You have to undo the damage that’s been done

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I’ve been thinking about these suggestions that new government or leadership (whatever any of that is now) will take another look at austerity and public sector cuts, because worthies have suddenly discovered how much people dislike austerity.

A few of those thoughts:

Yesterday, I went to the South Chadderton foodbank to talk for a few hours with people who came in for food parcels.

I spoke to Emma, 31, Theresa, 50 and one bloke who’d lost his job as a cleaner after an accident and still had all his kids living with him at home.

Emma had two very young children living with her – a boy of five and a baby of six months. She’d had her benefits cut for missing a so-called “workforce meeting” that she hadn’t known about. She also had all sorts of problems with child tax credit – the HMRC was demanding several thousand pounds which it claimed she’d been overpaid back in the day. A lot of money was being deducted from her benefits – for a social fund loan that she thought should be paid off by now and other repayments and totals which she did not think made sense. She said that she was trying to live on about £105 a fortnight. That was with two little kids. Things were going about as well for Emma as you’d expect.

Theresa was in recovery and living on nothing while she waited to see if she could win an appeal against an ESA fit-for-work decision.

I took longer interview recordings with everyone I spoke to, so will post those as an update when I’ve transcribed them.

Point for now is that all these problems still rage on. I am hardly convinced that a government in chaos will undo them. I’m not convinced any government will ever undo them, if I’m honest. I don’t think a lot of people know how badly the public sector has been hit. Frontline services everywhere are in tatters. A lot of the time, you can’t even get through on the phone to council or DWP officers to ask for help with a problem or a claim. If you do get through, often as not they’ve got nothing to help with.

I know a great many people who’ve been clobbered on myriad fronts – endless ESA fit for work assessments, PIP applications which go nowhere, the bedroom tax, problems with tax credits, sanctions, council tax debts, court debts for evictions, the benefit cap and god knows what else. I am of course delighted (ha) to hear the likes of Michael Gove deliver the world of pearlers such as “we also need to take account of legitimate public concerns about ensuring that we properly fund public services,” but honest to god and really. They’ve decimated public services already. They really have. I’ve been writing about this destruction for years now, so I’ve had a good look at the mess. Where would you even start?

We consider you housed, because you have a grotty caravan to live in. This is austerity.

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This one goes out to all those politicians who seem only newly acquainted with the notion that austerity is rotten and ridiculous, and that people are very sick of public sector cuts:

I’m posting here yet another story from a frontline homelessness office which will tell you something about hopelessly stretched housing resources in austerity. It will also tell you something about the farcical conversations that homeless people and housing officers must have during austerity – ie, at a time when all sense of proportion has left the building.

In the discussion reported below, a housing officer at First Choice Homes in Oldham (First Choice provides the homelessness service for Oldham Council) told the 67-year-old man called Paul who I was with that Paul was considered adequately housed because he had a crappy old caravan to live in on a site in Oldham. Take that.

Image: in the caravan

This conversation took place in the last week of April. A month or two before that, Paul had been offered sheltered accommodation, I think it was, but he was too concerned about the spectre of escalating service charges in sheltered accommodation to go with that. Nothing is easy in austerity. Every option has a sting in the tail and/or one on the horizon. The idea of service charges – in sheltered accommodation, or anywhere – scares the shit out of people generally. Nobody ever knows how big service charges will get. Certainly, nobody believes the sky will be the limit when it comes to service charges going up. The mere mention of service charges is enough to put people off further dialogue.

As we talked about sheltered accommodation, the officer agreed that service charges were a thing: “we pass that [court manager] charge onto the customer, because it’s the customers that are in need of that service…maintenance charges, we charge those to all our customers…. communal areas,” etc, etc.

That being the case, the caravan was it.

“The advice that you got… is that you were able to return to your caravan, so you’re not homeless… that’s why they’re not giving you the homeless priority,” the officer said to Paul. So, there we were – an older bloke with a heart condition being told that living in a caravan was acceptable. We knew that this line was ridiculous. The officer, to her credit, knew this line was ridiculous too, but there we were all the same, going down together. Again. God knows how many similar conversations I’ve witnessed in the last few years. Austerity has redefined our notions of “acceptable,” and “logical.” You hardly know what you’ll hear next.

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Can real problems like homelessness get more than fleeting attention these days?

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Let’s start this one with a story from the large collection in my Nobody Gives A Stuff If Women And Children Are Homeless file:

Image: dead mouse in the bathroom

I’m talking at the moment with a young Newham woman called Chantelle. For some time now, Chantelle has been living in a private-rental craphole. She has a three-year-old son. Cockroaches and rodents roam around their rotten flat. Chantelle told me that exterminators have visited a couple of times, but that they may as well have saved themselves the trip. The roaches and rodents have always come charging back. Wonder if they’re galloping in through a hole in a wall somewhere. Chantelle took some pictures of the roaches, which I’ve posted above and below.

Image: dead cockroaches in the flat

A couple of months back, Chantelle’s landlord told her that she had to leave the flat. Chantelle says that she doesn’t have rent arrears and hasn’t damaged the flat. Her landlord just wants the place back. Sometimes, landlords want to charge somebody else even more to live (should I say “live”) in a flat. Who can really say.

Chantelle went to Newham Council to explain her troubles and to ask for help. You can guess how fulfilling that visit was. Chantelle would’ve been better off waiting for December and writing Santa for a tent. The council was supremely unhelpful as councils can be these days. It hardly matters where you go. Frontline officers have no resources, which means they have no answers. You hit a gatekeeper as soon as you arrive at reception, or send an email, or make a call, or whatever. The opening line is often Goodbye. Some put this more politely than others, but that’s the essence. I’ve seen emails from the council which demonstrate that was the essence here. Chantelle was advised to look for cheap places out of London. People don’t know how to fight for more.

At the very least, councils give people instructions that they find almost impossible to follow. Chantelle says Newham told her that she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, be helped as a homeless person until she was actually evicted, or the bailiffs were at her door to evict her, or her notice expired, or something to that effect. She still wasn’t entirely sure when we talked and anyway: technicalities. The technicalities mean little to people when it comes down to it. Everyone still ends up at the same place – ie, nowhere. The long and the short of it was that as far as Chantelle was concerned, she was told to wait, to try and find herself another flat out of London (she has no chance of that now in London’s private rental sector, which she can’t afford) and to only come back to the council when the bailiffs were racing up the road after her, or something along those lines. I’d ask Newham council to clarify the situation, except that Newham council has refused to talk to me for several years on account of my Focus E15 housing campaign stories and general attitude to press offices and life, etc. Those guys can really drag out a grudge.

Chantelle’s understanding was that if she left the flat before she was thrown out of it, the council would say that she’d made herself intentionally homeless. This is the kind of understanding that a lot of people are left with these days. I went recently to First Choice Homes in Oldham with a 67-year-old bloke called Paul who was told while we stood there that he was considered to be adequately housed because he had a tiny, rotting caravan to live in. He was also told that he would make himself intentionally homeless if he left the caravan voluntarily – ie, without being chucked out of it by whoever owned it and/or the campsite. True story.

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Why we’re on strike: Eastern Avenue jobcentre staff out against jobcentre closures

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Staff at the Eastern Avenue jobcentre in Sheffield are on a PCS strike today in protest at the government’s proposed closure of Eastern Avenue jcp and a raft of other jobcentres around the country.

People are furious about these jobcentre closure plans. As readers of this site will know, local people who claim benefits have told me that they can’t afford to travel to jobcentres in other towns, that public transport to other jobcentres is patchy at best as transport is cut and disappears, and that they worry they’ll have no access to computers to use locally to search for jobs if local jobcentres close. People say they can’t always afford internet access on their phones.

Local people also say that these non-stop closures of public services in their towns are destroying smaller places. Post the Brexit vote, government is supposed to be deeply concerned about people in the regions who feel left behind, but you wouldn’t know that from government’s ongoing removal of local services.

Clare Goonan, PCS rep and Eastern Avenue jobcentre worker (she is jobcentre’s disability employment adviser and has worked at the jobcentre for 12 years) said on the phone from the strike this morning:

“We [at the Eastern Avenue jobcentre] offer a personalised, one-stop service… people can pop in from local, whereas if it was closed, they’d have to get on a bus, or two buses, and go online. We have a lot more interviews than what they would do if they were in town.

“And the jobsearch and computers – we’ve got 12 computers [at Eastern Avenue] that customers can come in and use if they want on internet. What people would have to do [if the jobcentre closes], is to pay to go into town, because there is no other services around here.

“There is a library, but the possibility is that the library won’t stay open, because of cuts, so if we don’t – we [at the jobcentre] send a lot of people around there [to the library], so if we are not sending people around there [if the jobcentre closes], they [the library] may not stay open. [We have] more a personalised service than town.

“It costs £4.90 a day to go into town [on the bus]. The cheapest ticket is £15 a week, is the cheapest one to go to town.

“Not sure on the reimbursement of travel… in town, there would be a lot more reimbursement of fares. If we get a customer to come in and it’s not their signing day, then it would be to their expense, so they would have to claim it back. [People need to pay for a ticket themselves first].

“[We are striking] to show management that we are standing together. At the moment, there are no members gone in [to work past the picket line] as yet. We’ve not seen any staff go in, apart from higher management that usually go in, we’ve not seen any staff go in as well. The office is not definitely open yet. We want to show management that we’re serious about it, we don’t want the community to lose the last public services that around here. If it’s [the jobcentre] is closing, then this area, which is one of the most deprived areas of Sheffield, will lose its last public services.

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You don’t cure addiction by insisting that addicts are trash

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This post is about drug and alcohol testing for people who claim benefits – and a worldwide government enthusiasm for encouraging loathing of addicts and alcoholics who claim.

I had a few thoughts on this a week or so back when reading about a ridiculous drugs-testing-for-benefit-claimants concept that Australia’s caring government (ha) plans to trial.

You read about such targeting of drug and alcohol users a lot, of course. The general global theme is that you treat addiction best by treating addicts harshly (and, needless to say, that there are votes in being seen to treat addicts harshly). Here is America and Australia extolling drugs testing for people on benefits. Here are various UK press outlets moaning (in chorus – I presume they all took delivery of the same press release or story on the same day) about the number of addicts and alcoholics who claim Employment and Support Allowance. Pursuit of the marginalised is a global game. There are no borders when it comes to free movement of ideas such as screwing social security recipients for political gain. The message is as clear as it is hopelessly simplified: all addicts take the piss, so cut them loose. It’s a message which is particularly suited to our times: mean-spirited, small-minded, based in vindictiveness rather than fact, and the exact right size for a tweet. Long gone are the days when society accepted that there were some people it should just support and had grownup discussions about that.

Anyway.

I’ve been thinking about this, because I’ve been spending a lot time in Oldham recently with Vance, 43 and James, 50 – two blokes who’ve been in and out of street homelessness and trouble at least in part on account of the drink over the years. Vance says he’s done the odd stretch in Strangeways. Both guys have been banned from malls and lunchrooms from time to time on behavioural grounds. Whatever. That’s how addiction and alcoholism can look. There’s good in there as well, as there often is. Vance, for example, invited James to stay with him in Vance’s housing association flat when James was street homeless. Vance found James sleeping on the concrete landing outside his flat and invited James in.

“He was sleeping outside on the landing. I can’t see that, because I’ve been homeless meself…I did if for years meself.” You find a mix of good and bad behaviour right across the social classes, as any AA or Al-Anon attendee will tell you. The only difference between well-appointed addicts and guys like Vance and James is that well-appointed addicts and/or their families have resources to paper over the cracks.

Pool table at the Salt Cellar

Image: At the pool table at a Salt Cellar lunch

Back to the story.

Lately, there’s been a twist to things. Vance has started to become ill. On some level or another over the past few months, we’ve all been watching Vance get sicker and sicker from the booze. I’ve known Vance and James since about October last year. We talk on the phone and meet up in Oldham’s free lunchrooms to play pool and to make snide remarks about the world. I’ve enjoyed this, because I like Vance’s and James’ company, we’ve had a laugh and there’s much to be said for snide remarks.

The regular meetings, though, mean I’ve been in a position to note Vance’s deteriorating health over the months. He lost an awful lot of weight very suddenly. By March, he’d reached skeletal. He was shaky and clearly concerned. He sometimes didn’t turn up to lunch, because he was in pain. His health seemed very bad on some days and better on others. He’d improve and deteriorate and deteriorate and improve. That’s the way things rolled for a while. I’m not a doctor, or any sort of addiction expert, so I don’t suppose I know exactly what I’m looking at.

I do know about conversations and events that stick with me though. There have been a few of those:

“I got to cut it [the drinking] back, but it gets worse when I do,” Vance told me one Tuesday in March as we walked to the King Street tram stop after a lunchroom meeting. That day, Vance and James were drinking Frosty Jack’s from the big plastic bottles. Vance said that the week before, he had tried to go without a drink for a bit. He was in pain and he’d lost a great deal of weight, as I say. Hospital appointments had been booked. So, Vance cut his drinking down for a day – and promptly, he said, had a seizure on the concrete in the Oldham shopping precinct. He was still upset about that, as well he might be. People don’t find illness, seizures, or – if you will – concerns about impending death easier to accept just because they’re addicts or drinkers. Certainly, those things are not easier to watch, or hear about first-hand, just because a person is an addict. There’s nothing like sitting in a cold tram-stop with someone who is damned with or without the bottle of rotgut he’s clutching to leave you with a dim view of governments that want to abandon people in these situations for political gain. Continue reading →