Docu about Homelessness Last Night

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Thu, 2006-11-30 09:35

Did anyone else watch it? It was a total eye-opener for me - a family with four small children waiting in a bus shelter whilst the council sorted them out with a B and B for the weekend - yikes!

The worst case was where the rent should have been paid from the housing benefit office to the council and they screwed up resulting in the family's eviction.
If a council deems that you're intentionally homeless (it's your fault and it could have been avoided) they have no legal duty to accomodate you. Obviously, the severe shortage of available social housing means the council are desperate to prove this is the case which they did in this case. The benefit office admitted to the documentary makers they made a mistake and the family should never have been evicted.

The children are the innocent pawns in all this and the worst case scenario is parents without a roof over their heads and children in care. It costs over 100k to keep one child in care per year, that's nearly half a million pounds for this one family!

Thu, 2006-11-30 13:09

yan

It's horrid. Maybe each house owning member of a given town should donate Â£1 and we should build a half-way house to accommodate them. It's as simple as that really. No child should have to be put through that crap. Here in my town the church have an internet cafe, a large social club with countless rooms, and various other halls and such for prancing around in. Maybe they should think about converting some of their property. I dunno. Sad aint it. There's nothing more mind-teasing than the incomprehensible eagerly avowed - Dennett

There's nothing more mind-teasing than the incomprehensible eagerly avowed -
Dennett

Thu, 2006-11-30 19:41

bobblehat2023

While this case sounds bad, I'm not sure what it tells us - if anything - about the housing situation as a whole. I do think there are big problems with social housing, though, and as a significant proportion of those people still in social housing (and in need of social housing) post 'right-to-buy' are poor, otherwise excluded and/or more importantly non-voters, I wouldn't predict much improvement anytime soon. The solution isn't to make all buidings into housing, though. I support increased punitive taxes on second homes - can't see any government going for that in a big way, though. And abolishing 'right-to-buy', which is even less likely to happen.

Sat, 2006-12-02 06:21

mikepyro

In some parts of florida they passed a law making it illegal to feed/give money to the homeless on the street. Now maybe it's cause I used to be homeless butI think that is just sick.

Give me the beat boys and free my soul! I wanna getta lost in ya rock n' roll and drift away. Drift away...

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