Meet The Team Trying To Save People From Homelessness This Christmas

BuzzFeed - Latest 2015-12-24

Summary:

Rat-infested houses, forced evictions, and domestic violence are just some of the problems tackled by Shelter’s helpline in the Christmas month.

Protestors gathered to prevent an eviction in January 2015. Evictions from privately rented homes are a leading cause of homelessness in the UK

Newsteam

In a fifth-floor office on the outskirts of Sheffield, opposite a long-since shuttered department shop, a team of around 20 are operating a call centre.

Below a display showing they've received 138 calls so far this morning — 131 of which they managed to answer — the workers each note details of their callers on a tinsel-decorated monitor, while a second screen gives them the information they need to help tackle the questions they get.

The Christmas problems this team are tackling are not the traditional festive woes of shopping or travel, but those no family would want to face at Christmas: people facing losing their homes, callers facing domestic violence, or people in desperately inadequate housing looking for help dealing with their landlord.

The subject matter is grim, but that's the job for Shelter's helpdesk, which operates 365 days through the year, the largest of its kind working across the UK, and the first port of call for many facing losing their home.

"Before Christmas, people really try to push through," explains one of the centre's staff, Mark Cook, on a lull between calls, but says that will change within days. "Once Christmas is over, you really see a flurry."

Before he can expand on his point, Cook is interrupted by an incoming call. Andrew* (At Shelter's request, names of all callers have been changed), who's calling for advice about his friend Jim*.

Jim had lived in a secure tenancy in a council house with his wife for more than 40 years, but things started to fall apart after he had a stroke, which caused the collapse of his marriage. To register for new housing, Jim's wife ended the joint tenancy — not realising this also removed her husband from the tenancy.

In his 60s, needing daily care and regular hospital visits, Jim lost his eligibility to his home. The council, Andrew explained, have let him stay in the short term (though he has to pay bedroom tax), but he knows he'll have to leave.

His friends have found another council tenant in a ground floor one-bed flat willing to swap with Jim. Andrew asks: Is there any way to make the council do this?

Rough sleepers — the minority of homeless people who sleep in the streets — are the most visible sign of homelessness, but a tiny fraction of the wider issue.

Eddie Keogh / Reuters

Such is the complex nature of the problems presented to Shelter's staff, and with more people calling by the minute, Cook has to try to respond as quickly as he can. Without even needing to put Andrew on hold — he looked up the legal picture while listening — he begins explaining the situation, which isn't good.

"What you're proposing to the council sounds perfectly logical, perfectly reasonable, and obvious," he says. "But there might be no legal way to force them to do it."

Because Jim's wife has given up their tenancy, he has no council house to swap, meaning there's no compulsion on the council to allow it — he can only join the waiting list. Cook is left to suggest trying other forms of pressure: local councillors, the area's MP, in the hope of trying to find a common sense way out.

Despite the bad news, Andrew signs off the call sounding relieved.

"It saves me chasing around in circles, which is what I've been doing the last month," he says.

Over the course of that one call, the overhead monitor has ticked up to 149 calls received today, with another few callers in the queue.

Cook, who's worked at the helpline for five years, explains the call is quite typical, and says even when the answers he offers are discouraging, he still feels he's helped.

"I kind of fill in gaps for them," he says. "People get more knowledge, they get more understanding of their situation, and that's empowering.

"We get bad calls and people in bad times, as private renting is becoming unaffordable. It's harder and harder for people to stay afloat."

That's a view shared by Nadeem Khan, another of Shelter's call centre staff, who says things have got worse in his three years on the lines, echoing the problem that "the main cause of homelessness is private tenancies ending".


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Authors:

James Ball

Date tagged:

12/24/2015, 08:01

Date published:

12/24/2015, 08:01