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Not begging but drowning

August 01 2024

On the dismal failure of government to confront the increase in homelessness in the UK and how policy has actively worsened the situation. By André Rostant

As I write, a young man lies in St Mary’s, Paddington, his pelvis shattered. Ben – a West-End beggar – threw himself under a tube train last month.

Toddler, dog, level with knees, shopping bags. Sat amid cigarette butts, spat out chewing gum, on a crap-covered pavement, straining to peer up at passers-by. You could be Taylor Swift sitting naked and most won’t notice you, foundering as they are in a fog of their own preoccupations, noses pressed to phones, personal theme tunes filling their ears. You make a noise: “Spare change? Can you help? Change please?” You may get drops, a few quid, occasionally a note. There’s food and drink, too. Oh, the excitement! So wonderful are the benefits and marvels that our former Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, thinks people, “many of them from abroad,” make a lifestyle choice to sleep and beg in the street. Interestingly, 120% more people have been seduced into this attractive way of living since Braverman’s party was elected in 2010.

Fourteen years of Tory rule made temporary housing more popular, too. They came to power, meeting just under 50,000 households in temporary accommodation. By 2022 they had doubled that to nearly 100,000 – 57,000 of those in London. Nearly all these people would be on the breadline, struggling. Before you say it, no! They’re not all unemployed: 55% of households in temporary accommodation have somebody working – only slightly below the 59.1% national average.

But the Tories will never be short of suggestions: erstwhile Safeguarding Minister Rachel MacLean feels people in hardship should be “taking on more hours or moving to a better paid job,” which brings us back to the West End, and our seated beggar. Well, not so much him…

Yes, ‘him’: 85% of those found rough sleeping in Westminster are men. One caveat here: at the times of counting, many female street sleepers might be riding on the underground or ‘hiding’ in cafes or public buildings – because, in our chauvinist society, they are considerably more susceptible to many kinds of assault.

But the people he (whom is most likely to be between 18 and 55 years old) looks up at, who are they?

London, the City, conjures images of wildebeest-like suited herds trampling from tube stations (well, for me it does). However, commuting to Westminster eclipses that in the Square Mile: over half a million, plus half a million tourists and 296,000 shoppers, that’s two million legs a day traversing the horizon of Westminster’s street beggars. Our main concern here is those coming into work. Why travel? Why don’t they simply move to Westminster? Now I am forced to assail you with more statistics. The real median income in London is £36,708: £566.67 a week take-home. The median weekly rent for a two-bed flat in Westminster is £825. And there you have it. It’s not rocket science.

There is the odd bargain, though, look it up: a four-bed house on Chippenham Road, Maida Vale. a snip at £911.54 per week. No catch. One simple explanation is that this is a former local authority property. Over 40% of right-to-buy homes now generate fat profits for private landlords.

None of it is a mystery. Suella Braverman is herself a landlord, in a party of whose MPs – before so many made the lifestyle choice to leave Parliament – 20% were landlords, a party that receives significant donations from property developers like Graham Edwards, a party which seamlessly continued Margaret Thatcher’s policy of preaching free markets but vigorously intervening at every turn to shape those markets in favour of particular commercial and property interests, not least in the housing ‘market’. And here, fishing among the statistics, is an interesting pattern emerging? While there has been a 12% decrease in poverty among private renters in the capital over the last decade, in the surrounding area the poorest 40% of the population has swelled by 400,000. It’s almost as if policy is forcing a particular demographic out of London.

Somehow, despite Lee Anderson’s cookery advice, despite Ian Duncan Smith’s shroud waving over sinful despondency and in the teeth of the Kafkaesque Universal Credit regime, thousands still flock to a lifestyle they can only savour until their death at 42 (compared to the national average of 74 for men, and 79 for women), which makes them nine times more likely to kill themselves and four times more likely to die from unnatural causes.

We can only hope the Starmy Army gets a handle on all this, and that Ben’s surprise at still being alive brings some positive outcome.

Meanwhile, please give some thought to why – or whether – you have actually chosen to live as you do.

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