Yahoo News We need social housing, not warehouses, for homeless kids
In 2009 David Cameron’s Conservatives pledged to do everything in their power to strengthen families in order to prevent poverty. With the news that thousands of families are now homeless and raising their children in converted shipping containers, it’s safe to say they’ve failed on that score. The children’s commissioner for England says that 210,000 young people are homeless, either living in hostels and temporary accommodation or sofa surfing.
The report says that one in 10 new homes created in England and Wales since 2016 are in office blocks such as Terminus House in Harlow, which is known locally as a “human warehouse” and was described as “social cleansing” by local Tory MP Robert Halfon. Children are often being moved hours away from their homes, told they’ll only be in temporary accommodation for a few months then left to languish there for as long as a year. The conditions in temporary accommodation are often cramped, crowded, isolated from supportive family networks and schools, and in areas blighted by crime and anti-social behaviour.
These are the kind of living conditions you’d expect to learn about in a history lesson on the Victorian slums. And the NSPCC says these Dickensian dwellings are harmful to children – which is hardly surprising, when they’re being forced to live in sardine tins and are maligned as “office block kids” by bullies in the playground.
Being excluded from schools and growing up in the care system caused me to move around a lot in my childhood. By the time I was 16 I had lived at 10 addresses and attended six schools. I can tell you from experience that this is not the best way to build up a strong support network. Because I often lived outside the areas that my school was in, I found myself not fitting in among the kids who played out where I lived. And I wasn’t involved in the same after-school clubs, sports clubs and hangouts as my classmates, meaning I struggled to fit in at school, too.
The psychological cost was enormous. I began to feel like there was something wrong with me. Paralysed by my own self-consciousness, I started to avoid social interactions altogether and withdrew into my own bubble. I became a miserable and resentful misanthrope in my early adulthood, something that has taken years to break free from. I’m still not comfortable in my own skin. I can’t help but think that this would have been different if I’d had a conventional upbringing.
On top of the social exclusion, these children will be exposed to things they would have been sheltered from under normal circumstances. There is reported to be a drugs network operating outside Terminus House, which provides temporary accommodation for homeless people from the capital,, while many of the B&Bs, hostels and other temporary housing in the UK have people struggling with drug abuse and serious mental health problems living alongside young families. It won’t be a surprise if those kids fall into that lifestyle after being desensitised to it at such a young age.
If we continue to ignore this problem, as well as the obvious solutions to it, we risk raising a generation of underprivileged children who feel worthless, alienated and only good enough for an old office block or a disused shipping container. Because we know why this is happening: austerity and lack of social housing. We know what we need to do about it: increase spending and build enough social housing. But this government refuses to recognise the causes and is ideologically incapable of recognising the solution. This will doubtless be evident in the forthcoming conference season with endless routine Conservative pleas for personal responsibility.
Related: Politicians must listen to young people on how poverty and mental health are linked | Mary O’Hara
In 2009 Cameron said: “We want to see a more responsible society, where people behave in a decent and civilised way, where they understand their obligations to others, to their neighbours, to their country.” Indeed there is a line where society’s responsibility ends and personal responsibility begins, but how can you be expected to make the “right” choice when it’s simply not available to you?
• Daniel Lavelle writes on mental health, homelessness and social care. He received the Guardian’s Hugo Young award in 2017
