Hidden reality
Posted: May 29, 2012 Filed under: Homelessness, Housing benefit Leave a commentIf you missed Britain’s Hidden Homeless last night it’s well worth making time to catch on iPlayer.
The BBC documentary was presented by Speech Debelle, the Mercury-prize winning rapper with personal experience of what she was talking about. She spent three years sofa surfing and in hostels after falling out with her mum at 19 and wrote the opening song of what went on to be her prize-winning first album while in a hostel.
So this was far more than the standard celeb-fronted BBC3 documentary. You believed her when she said that hidden homelessness is three times bigger than the official figures suggest and that things are worse now than they were for her ten years ago.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing.
The many (more) faces of Grant Shapps
Posted: April 29, 2012 Filed under: Homelessness, Housebuilding Leave a commentNo sooner had I written about a vintage week for Shapps watchers than another one followed quickly behind like a No 19 bus. Could this week be yet another?
Last week for our esteemed minister began with housing topping the agenda on the Today programme as Newham prepared to ship its homeless people to Stoke and all points north, south, east and west. This was proof, surely, of the impact of a combination of cuts in investment and housing benefit and the weakening of the homelessness safety net. Shapps on the ropes?
Stoke-on-Thames: location, location, location
Posted: April 24, 2012 Filed under: Homelessness, Housing benefit, Private renting 5 CommentsThe news about Newham and Stoke has touched a nerve like few other housing stories this year. I wonder though if the coverage so far has identified the crucial issue.
The story broke on the Today programme on Tuesday morning. Newham had written to 1,179 housing associations around the country asking for help in finding homes for people affected by housing benefit cuts. The reason Stoke is in the headlines is that a housing association there went public with the letter (here). Housing minister Grant Shapps appeared alongside Newham mayor Robin Wales and accused him of ‘playing politics’ with the issue (something that Shapps himself would of course never do). I blogged my initial take on the issue for Inside Housing here but there are excellent blogs out there too from Polly Curtis, Steve Hilditch, Nancy Kelley and Toby Lloyd.
Stoke-on-Thames
Posted: April 24, 2012 Filed under: Homelessness, Housing benefit, Private renting Leave a commentStoke? Hull? Newham? Croydon? Westminster? Housing benefit cuts are a story in search of a location.
What I mean by that is that the story that dominated this morning’s Today programme could have been about just about any borough in London and any city in the north and midlands. We all know that sooner or later there will be real faces to put to the victims of the housing benefit cuts and real places where the problems will emerge. Up to now, though, and with several of the more draconian cuts still to come, we’ve had largely anecdotal evidence.
Read more on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing.
Repeating the same mistake?
Posted: April 5, 2012 Filed under: Homelessness, Housing benefit 7 CommentsI am getting an appalling sense of déjà vu reading a story in today’s Telegraph that ‘young unemployed may be forced to live with mum and dad’.
The ‘radical proposal’ is apparently being worked on by Downing Street and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) as ‘part of a drive to make sure people are better off working than on benefits’.
Jules Birch 