12 May The rise of homelessness in London
Thousands of people are sleeping under no roof in winter in central London
Homelessness is a big issue in Britain
Homelessness is on the rise in Britain particularly in London and experts are blaming substance abuse as the main cause.
Homelessness is a big problem in Britain as a nation and especially in London which has the highest number of homeless compared to other regions in England. According to shelter which is a national charity that helps homeless people by giving them housing advice, 150 families are made homeless everyday in Britain and the number is rising every year. It’s hard to believe that homelessness can be a big issue in a country that is economically secure and lots of jobs available for everyone. The number of rough sleeping has been continuing to grow bigger in England since 2010.
The article is going to look at the homelessness in London area particular and the reason for behind it. London has highest number of homeless people with the highest number of rough sleeping. The majority of these people are based in inner London with 31% in west minister and 42% in inner London boroughs.
According to Cavin O’garman who is the group leader of initiatives in Harrow and the catholic church where he has a welcome centre for homeless people, there are certain factors that can make a person homeless and something must be done to stop these factors from happening in order to prevent homelessness, “ there are various reasons that can make a person homeless, it just depends on the situation of the person”.
Everyday as we walk are going out of our houses, we are faced by lots of homeless people on the streets of London who could have been just like us if they weren’t homeless. Have you ever thought why these people are so helpless and not privileged like the rest of us? Homeless people are all around England with the same poor situation that one’s heart will melt for. For us it might be a car, a better house or posh clothes that we are aspiring to wear, but for these homeless people, the only thing that they wish to have is a safe and warm place or shelter to live under and sleep comfortably at night times.
Kimberly Gilberd who is homeless person and live in one of the homeless hostels provided by the SHP charity in Kings cross London tells her story of being homeless. Kimberley is a 53 year old female who is originally from South Africa. She been to prison because she missed her probation appointment and while she was at the present, they put suspension on her all of her benefits as well as her housing benefit, so when she came out of the prison, she had no where to go, so she ended up on the streets and became homeless. She has been living on the streets for nearly 3 months until she was put on a homeless hostel by the local housing.
She is also an alcoholic person and suffers from liver problem due to excessive consumption of alcohol. She explains that being homeless is the worst thing that could happen to anyone and one would be worried about how to survive everyday and how to find a warm place to pass their nights especially in winter. Kimberley thinks that homelessness can cause mental and physical harm to a person “since I have became homeless, I started drinking even more than before which has affected my medical problem and being homeless has also given me mental distress and depression”. Kimberley gets on well with other people in the hostel and wishes to stay in the hostel as long as let her because it’s better being off street.
8,000 people are sleeping rough on the streets of London every year and they were just like us before becoming homeless and many of them want to find a job and rent a house, but unfortunately their situation enables them to work or be employed by a work place. Homelessness begins with something bad happening to a person and not having family or friends around to help them, so they end up living in the streets. Homelessness was not that much of a big problem in Britain in the past.
There are many reasons that might make a person end up living in the streets such as relationship breakdown, thrown out of the house, poor mental health, not being qualified to work somewhere decent. Drug and alcohol abuse, domestic abuse, financial cut down by the government and many more reasons. Although these factors might be one of the reasons of making someone homeless.
However the main reason of homelessness in London currently is due to alcohol. According to the researches the majority of homeless people are those with substance abuse in particular alcohol. Priteh Mukher who is the service manager of a homeless community Radiate in Harrow says that alcohol addiction is a major cause of homelessness in London, “ all the homeless clients that have came our service so far are suffering from alcohol addiction”.
Alcoholism not only affects the sufferers themselves but also people living around them. Alcoholic people are isolated from family and friends as they don’ want to live with them anymore and they spend a lot of money on alcohol, so they end up living in the streets or become homeless. According to a survey research by Homeless link, 63% out of 389 homeless people in London said that drug or alcohol use was one of the reasons they first became homeless.
More than 9 million people in England drink more than their daily recommended limit and most two third of them are males. Also another facts is that the percentage of alcoholic people who are between 18-30 are less than those who are 40 plus. Also the number of homeless people are mostly consists of males and majority of homeless people are usually middle age people or 40 plus, this could be because middle age people have less priority in terms of receiving financial help from the government and same reason can apply for the gender factor.
The number of drinking alcohol has increased a lot than the past and over 1 million people are being admitted in hospital in a year are alcoholic people. So this clearly indicates that there is a high link between being alcoholic and being homeless because similarly according to an article by guardian, the number of homelessness has also risen. Once someone gets addicted to alcohol, they find it hard to withdrawn themselves from it and in fact they continue to drink even more because they think that the only way that they can keep themselves warm is by drinking.
Most of London’s homeless charities are filled with alcoholic sufferers. Katie Karmer who is the team manager of a homeless hostel in London by SHP charity talks about her experience of the kind of homeless clients that she has and the kind of support that she gives them. Katie says that all the clients that live there have problem with alcohol and drug. She adds that the clients have other support needs, physical health issues which relates to their substance abuse in their body. The clients are also suffering from emotional trauma due to being homeless “high percentage of clients are going through mental health struggles”. The hostel are mainly for clients who are age 18-40, however most of the clients are aged 40 and above. The clients are mostly male with only 10% of females.
She (Katie) further added that nearly all of the homeless clients in her hostel are British and European background. It’s a two year hostel, they can move live independently after two years if they can get support, if not then they can continue to stay in the hostel for longer period of time. Katie confirms that the number of homelessness are rising in London by 5.6. The ways that the hostel tries to tackles the problems of homeless people or their clients are by providing them an access to services such as drug and alcohol services, mental health team and GPS “it’s a psychological informed environment”. Through the uses of these services and activities provided in the house for the homeless clients, it helps them in recovering with their mental and physical problems.
In order to tackle the homeless problem in London and stop the number from rising, the government has taken some serious actions such as, providing more free services for alcoholic sufferers to get treatment, providing more funding for charities to help homeless people.
The government is trying to strengthen the council responsibility to stop homelessness by providing more housing options for people so that people have more options of housing rather than becoming homeless. Some charities are working hard to tackle this homelessness problem. Shelter is trying to improve government policies for homeless people through their campaigns
The government has set rules and laws to prevent alcoholism by running campaigns to raise awareness and educate young people about the risks of alcohol abuse. The government is supporting the licensing and trading department to tackle the alcohol problem as well as empowering the council to deal with it.
