As today is Red Nose Day I thought I might look at one of the issues affecting the UK as much of the media for today is focused on the issues faced by other countries. While there is no doubt at all that other countries face terrible hardships and poverty there is also many similar issues much closer to home.
Following some research I found that there in England in 2007 the number of households officially recognised as newly homeless was 99,500. While this in its self sounds quite high I found that Government statistics do not include people who satisfy the legal definition of homelessness but have not applied to be classified as such, nor people who were officially recognised as homeless in previous years but were deemed 'not in priority need'. The charity Crisis has estimated that there are around 400,000 additional hidden homeless people that would need to be included in the above figure.
These figures really shocked me the actual level of homelessness is almost 4 times the governments published figures. As I carried on reading I realised that there are many different types of and definitions of homelessness. Crisis has the following definitions:
· Legally homeless: A household is legally homeless if either there is no accommodation that they are entitled to occupy or they have accommodation but it is not reasonable for them to continue to occupy this accommodation.
· Officially recognised as homeless: Those who are both legally homeless and have successfully applied to their local authority to be classified as such in the current year. A household can be legally homeless but not recognised by the state as being homeless because they have not applied to be classified as such.
· Statutory homeless: Households that have been found to be eligible for assistance, unintentionally homeless and falling within a priority need group and thus owed a main homelessness duty by a local housing authority. In 2006-07, 73,360 households were accepted as statutory homeless in England. Local Authorities made 159,330 decisions on homelessness applications.
· Hidden homeless: This refers to homeless households, which may or may not have applied to local authorities for homeless status, but are not entitled to any accommodation. Crisis estimates that there are around 400,000 such 'hidden homeless' adults at any point in time.
These definitions go some way to explain the way in which the figures are so misleading. The Government only recognises people in its statistics as homeless if they are considered to be vulnerable. Looking closer it appears that 72% of acceptances are people with dependents or pregnant women, which would suggest that if a person is single or has no dependents then they are unlikely to be officially recognised as homeless and therefore will not qualify for any government assistance. Since the largest percentage of homeless people are male (61 percent), white (51 percent) and not suffering from any chronic illness or substance abuse, it is clear that the governments current method of classifying people are excluding the highest numbers of people in need.
I found another Charity, Thames Reach, again had very similar figures for homelessness. They had the following breakdown:
Statutory homeless: 74,690 households in temporary accommodation (up to June 2008)
Around 16,000 people annually are found to be homeless but not in priority need
Over 8,000 people annually are found to be homeless but not entitled to housing as a result of being intentionally homeless.
Rough sleepers: 483 people sleep rough on any one night in England (June 2008)
200-300 people sleep rough on any one night in London
3017 different people sleep rough over a year in London (2007-08)
Hostels: 16,686 hostel bed-spaces in London
40,000 hostel bed-spaces in United Kingdom
At least 75,000 individuals use hostels over a year
Hidden homeless: Estimated at 400,000.
Once all the categories of homelessness are included in the figure it shows that nearly (approximately 574,000) 1% of the population could be classed as homeless. To make that easier to visualise it is about the number of people who live in Sheffield or Glasgow. It is significantly more people than live in any of the following cities: Edinburgh (450,000), Liverpool (440,000) and Manchester (420,000).
So although I would still love to encourage you to do all you can for Red Nose Day today I want to ask you to also consider getting involved in a local charity to help some of the people in this country who equally need your help and support.
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