Barry Hughes reflects on the first 12 months’ work delivered by the Brighton & Hove Housing Coalition.
BRIGHTON & Hove Housing Coalition was launched last August at St George’s Church in Kemptown, in the presence of MPs Caroline Lucas and Lloyd Russell-Moyle and 200 delegates from 20 organisations who signed up to the Coalition’s aims and objectives at the end of the day. In the intervening 12 months this group of largely volunteer housing activists, supported with a grant from Pride’s Social Impact Fund, have been extremely busy but there remains a growing need for our breed of activism.
SOME CHOICE
Statistics published in January 2018 estimated that 4,751 people bedded down outside in 2017, up 15% on 2016. The numbers have increase by 169% since 2010, although those of us who walk the city streets may feel that these statistics are on the modest side.
Homeless people are significantly more likely to suffer from mental distress as a result of finding themselves without a home; at least 25-30% of the homeless population suffer from mental health problems including major depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The most prevalent health problems among homeless individuals are substance abuse (62.5%), mental health problems (53.7%) or a combination of the two (42.6%). Given that these problems are causally linked to homelessness it indicates these individuals not only need homes, but they need ongoing health and social care support. Not, as someone once said to me, to be put in a hostel with a bed and a light bulb and left to their own devices.
A recent piece by Owen Jones (The Guardian) indicated that up to a quarter of the young homeless population are LGBT+ and many have been rejected by their families. The Big Issue flagged this up in July, pointing to the fact that whilst Pride events were celebrating the half-century of the introduction of the Sexual Offences Act 1967, every day thousands of LGBT+ people are still subjected to suspicion, discrimination and violence.
A study by the Albert Kennedy Trust estimated that 150,000 LGBT+ people were homeless or at risk of homelessness. The main reasons given were parental rejection, abuse within the family, or exposure to aggression or violence.
Stonewall Housing say that two-thirds of young people who access their services state that their housing problems are related to their sexual orientation or gender identity. This against a background of cuts in crucial services.
Jones’s piece in The Guardian says that, in surveys, more than four out of ten respondents believe “most homeless people are probably homeless because of circumstances beyond their control.”
He also makes the disturbing observation that a quarter of those expressing an opinion, say; “Homeless people have probably made bad choices in life that got them into their situation.” This is the mindset that Brighton & Hove Housing Coalition utterly refutes and seeks to change as a matter of the greatest urgency.
SEVERE WEATHER EMERGENCY PROTOCOL (SWEP)
Coalition members were integral in getting Brighton & Hove City Council (B&HCC) to open a night shelter at the Brighton Centre and have continued to put pressure on the council to up their performance going forward. The Brighton Centre can only be described as a partial success with 27 people being ‘decanted’ into the pouring rain on the morning that the shelter closed. Luckily Sussex Homeless Support was on hand with their converted bus to look after 19 of these guests whilst the others were found secure accommodation.
The multi-agency Night Shelter Group has developed into Community Action Group on Homelessness (CAGH) chaired by B&HCC Councillors, with members of the Coalition represented.
Fundamental to the work of the Group is SWEP and Chairman of the Coalition’s Legal and Advocacy Group, David Thomas, has taken the lead in ensuring that the council open the shelters for street sleepers taking into account such factors as wind chill. David has also pushed the council to ensure that all forms of extreme weather, which may pose a risk to the lives of rough sleepers, are taken into account – including extreme heat.
HOMELESS BILL OF RIGHTS
The Coalition is at the forefront of taking up an idea, which has been adopted in Barcelona and other European cities – a Homeless Charter or Bill of Rights. It is the Coalition’s ambition that the city of Brighton & Hove will be the first local authority in the UK to adopt such a charter which is a compilation of basic rights from European and International human rights law. By endorsing it, cities reaffirm their commitment to human rights, which should guide all players towards tackling the root causes of poverty and homelessness.
Penalisation strategies can push homeless peoples further into poverty and exclusion. Rather than punishing them, local authorities should extend a hand to encourage homeless people to claim their rights, the fundamentals of which are set out here:
The right to exit homelessness; the right to access decent emergency accommodation; the right to use public space and to move freely within it; the right to equal treatment for all;
the right to effective postal address of last resort; the right to access basic sanitary facilities; the right to emergency services; the right to vote; the right to data protection; the right to privacy; and the right to carry out practices necessary to survival within the law.
Will the city of Brighton & Hove have the courage to adopt such a Bill of Rights? The Coalition has started the campaign to make it happen for a launch in October.
STREET ADVOCATES
The Coalition has teamed up with Law for Life: the foundation for public legal education, funded by Lush Charity Pot, in providing training for volunteers to create what we call ‘Street Advocates’ – people with sufficient knowledge to help the vulnerable when faced with seemingly insurmountable problems of poverty, homelessness and injustice.
MORE WORK TO DO
At the end of this first year of campaigning any tendency towards complacency should be cut short by reflecting on the case of Bobby Carver, whose plight remains unacceptable. The Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) investigated Bobby’s case at the end of 2017 and stated that the council’s assessment raised Bobby’s expectations, but noted, probably, as a result of the LGO’s intervention, that the council had agreed to an independent assessment of Bobby’s case from outside of the council. In the meantime Bobby doesn’t have accommodation or support services appropriate to his needs.
Written by Barry Hughes
Brighton and Hove city council were asked to respond to explain at what stage the independent assessment of Bobby Carvers case was at.