Extracts from Karen Buck MP's opening remarks during her debate on Homelessness and temporary accommodation today

Extracts from Karen Buck MP's opening remarks during her debate on Homelessness and temporary accommodation today

Karen Buck MP: “ I feel like I am being punished’. The words of a desperate mother accepted as homeless after experiencing domestic violence, and placed in Temporary Accommodation. Like tens of thousands of others- there were 98, 300 households in TA in June, including 127, 240 children- she was found a private flat by the council- somewhat misleadingly described as ‘Temporary’ even though she has stayed in this limbo for 7 years already- my current record is 21 years, 10 is not unusual. The properties she has been placed in are expensive- with rents similar to full market level private rents. With a particularly cruel twist, the high rents mean a very high percentage of homeless households are caught by the Benefit Cap, even though the occupants had no choice regarding the rents they pay.

They are also insecure. Families like hers are forced to move constantly, not just within the local area but across the city and beyond- regardless of the schools their children attend, largely regardless of their personal needs. A heavily pregnant constituent who is registered blind was placed first in North London in a property with multiple stairs and not self-contained, then in East London, expected to navigate totally unfamiliar surroundings. As she said: I’m very frightened from places I’m unfamiliar with as I can’t get around I don’t know what to do

A family with two blind young adult children attending college was told that they simply had to learn new routes when they were sent to the other side of London.

Another told me this:

We were living locally for 19 years, and working in the hospital

We were evicted from our flat and had to approach Westminster council for help. We were placed in an emergency self contained flat that were told for just six weeks, so we couldn't change our daughter's school.

But unfortunately its lapsed to 7 months. The transport is too expensive from West London just to take my daughter to the school. The cost is £60 weekly which we can't afford any more- and the journey is too long- my wife has to leave home at 6AM to reach school at 9 Am, taking or She find it very hard with little girl who is just 28 months old.

But what is almost beyond belief are the conditions so many homeless people are forced to endure alongside the expense and the insecurity.

The family commuting five hours a day to school also reported:

“The condition of the flat is very bad & cold we are on the top of the building & all is glass with damp every were, the water leaking through the glass all around us”

This same mother who was homeless due to domestic wrote a few weeks ago to say:

“The property we are in is a shambles with mice, rats and rising damp and mould throughout. The Council has contacted the housing association managing the property, who has contacted the landlord. She sent her surveyor to the property in August. He was shocked to see how much damp we have. He said it would need major work done. I have postnatal depression and suffer from an illness which means I get migraines with stroke type symptoms with them. I am on medication. My eldest son also has asthma and the rising damp is in the kids room. The damp in my room is so bad myself and the baby are now sleeping on the floor in the front room and the new born is having problems breathing”

Another wrote:

“I am in shock that the council can give properties to people in the state I was given mine especially with a six week old baby. I was told last minute after just giving birth that the temporary emergency accommodation I was in needed to be vacated. I was given a flat on the other side of London despite explaining all my support system was locally which is important to me as someone who suffers depression and anxiety with a history of attempted suicide which has gotten worse since I’ve been moved so far already. Now I’m sitting in the living room on the first night nursing my new born when suddenly there is leaking from the ceiling and water is falling fast. The next day a contractor comes and tells me this is a previous issue that wasn’t fixed by Westminster and if he hadn’t come today the ceiling would have collapsed on me! He had to cut two big holes in the ceiling to dry out the ceiling as a water pipe had been leaking for some time before I moved in. Now the ceiling in the kitchen is leaking with water falling through the smoke alarm upstairs”

And there are more. Oh, so many morel

“The mould is so severe because it was left for a very long time untreated….I can send you a copy of the EH report and at least 40 pictures to outline the severity of mould and dampness and how it ate the plastering off the walls This mould releases spoors in to the air which makes everybody inside this place always in hayfever condition. We have to keep all windows open for at least 5 hours every day. You could imagine the cost of heating due to that as we have a little boy who is autistic and had a very serious breathing condition and needs medical attention if he gets a simple cold.

It is not only my son getting constantly ill but our food is mouldy and the clothes inside cupboards are mouldy too..

I am a mother of two autistic children under the age of 10. Both suffer from several disabilities and many other health problems.

My temporary accommodation has horrid dampness condition which have affected our cardiovascular medical condition and has made my children and I suffer tremendously during the past one year and a half ever since we moved into here. The carpets are damp to the point where you cannot keep your feet on the ground for too long while sitting.

In addition to rats and mice that were roaming through the flat freely my electric meter caused a huge fire in the building, which was luckily put off by the fire Brigade. Due to this, I have been without electricity for almost a week now.

Since my whole flat depends on electricity, I am unable to live in my accommodation. Putting in mind, I am a single mother, with 2 children with special needs.

My flat is managed by A2Dominion but the access to the meter is under the control of Westminster Council.

I have spent the last 6 days in the most difficult state. I have not had any help or support from A2Dominion not the council. Both are throwing the responsibility on another, while I am staying in a different home everyday in order to keep my kids warm and fed in this cold winter.

We are literally homeless right now and nothing has been done to fix the electricity and replace the meter, regardless of the hundreds of calls and pleas for help that I have made.

I have no option but to turn to you for help.

I am desperate and exhausted. My children as struggling and suffering with me. Their medical conditions are a huge obstacle, as they are unable to accept change.

These, and dozens of cases like them, are happening even as the pandemic has been raging. No wonder those affected feel they are being punished for finding themselves homeless

The harshness of the system, and the conditions so many are being exposed to are almost beyond imagining. I’ve taken up all these cases, and a number are being dealt with, sometimes after unconscionable delays. I know there are many good people in the sector trying their best but something is going catastrophically wrong, at the local council level, at the level of some of the housing association providers including A2Dominion, Stadium and Genesis amongst others, and on the part of the private landlords.

This may not all be wholly down to the pressures of rising need and falling support. We are rightly concerned about getting people off the street- although even that doesn’t extend as far as actually *ending* street homelessness- but I genuinely fear that there is very little interest in what happens to homeless people beyond that. The experiences of so many of my constituents should not be tolerated because it is doing untold harm to their physical and mental health and to the life chances of hundreds of thousands of children- yet it is tolerated, accepted and largely ignored.

Yet it is also true that the pressure of numbers is taking its toll. The figures are creeping up every year, year on year since 2011 and local councils are unequipped to cope with and pay for the homes that are required. Two thirds of the total - 62,670 households- were placed in temporary accommodation by London local authorities, and even prior to Covid-19, London boroughs' expenditure on homelessness was expected to rise to a total of £1 billion by 2021/22- nearly a quarter unfunded by central government, thereby increasing the pressure on other services. Unless the government acts, the brutal experiences being endured by my constituents will only continue to get worse.

Research from Shelter earlier this year revealed the explosion of the temporary accommodation industry. Between April 2018 and March 2019, councils spent over £1 billion on temporary accommodation – a rise of 9% in a year and 78% in five years. Our research also shows that 86% of this money is flowing directly to private providers, most of whom are unregulated. This explosion in expenditure has been fuelled by a chronic lack of investment in decent, genuinely affordable social housing.

The Minister will, I fear, just tell us how much is being spent. That is meaningless unless it recognises how far short funding falls compares with what is needed, and the wider context of cuts to social security and the LHA, to local councils and to social house building. I hope I will be disappointed and this is not what the Minister will say.

Local councils need their homelessness costs fully funded. Homeless households need to be accommodated locally except in exceptional circumstances and the routine use of out of borough housing ended. Capacity and resources need to be available to ensure standards are acceptable. Homelessness is already a hellish experience. It should not be a punishment. It should not be a punishment in the year of Covid. But it is.