http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-885f-Ariam-come-home#.Uzqg_ajD-70
Ariam come home
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*Apr *2014, Tuesday 1st
In the last part of his features mini-series GLYN ROBBINS reveals the story
of one migrant woman who escaped domestic violence only to by made homeless
by an uncaring system
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Cathy Come Home, Ken Loach's 1966 television film about homelessness,
shocked the nation. It shone a light on the bleak conditions, moral
judgmentalism and stigma suffered by those falling through the net of the
welfare state.
Behind the politics, policy analysis and statistics of our broken system
are real people's lives blighted by a crisis that's taking us back to the
1960s and beyond.
Ariam came to England from war-ravaged Eritrea in 2009. She married a man
she barely knew and quickly became the victim of an abusive and violent
relationship.
In 2010, this culminated in a serious physical assault that led to Ariam
fleeing her home.
She went to a women's refuge, then to Tower Hamlets Council where she
registered as homeless.
As the mother of a one-year-old, Ariam was entitled to temporary
accommodation - a two-bedroom flat in a former council block.
For the first month, Ariam and her baby had to sleep on the floor because
there was no money for furniture. The rent was £330 a week.
The rent for a similar home in the council's stock is £130. Ariam lived in
the flat for two years and was reliant on housing benefit, so the net cost
to the public purse was £10,800.
In 2012, Ariam was offered a council flat, but on visiting the block she
was scared. The area was unfamiliar, intimidating and removed from the
small but vital network of support she'd established.
She has a medical condition that intensified these anxieties. With limited
English and no-one to advise her, Ariam refused the offer.
It was, she says, the biggest mistake of her life. In perverse, Kafkaesque
language, the state now regarded Ariam as "intentionally homeless."
Ariam tried to explain her predicament to the council, but it was't
listening any more.
Nor did it offer a translator or take any account of the trauma Ariam had
suffered, despite a high-profile campaign claiming to support victims of
domestic violence. From the council's perspective - with 4,500 other
families waiting for a two-bedroom flat - Ariam had created her own problem
and was no longer its responsibility.
The brutal wheels of the system began to turn in July 2013 when Ariam was
evicted by court bailiffs from her temporary accommodation. After a
two-week stay in a grotty B&B she was placed in a hostel run by a religious
charity on the outskirts of London.
The regime was austere and paternalistic, with a whiff of the Victorian
values applied to "fallen women."
In December, Ariam was expelled for allegedly breaking the rules.
Ariam had no alternative but to return to Tower Hamlets Council which
initially refused to help, but was eventually compelled to do so by child
protection regulations.
For the last three months Ariam has been sharing a bed with her two
children in a single room of a B&B costing £300 a week.
There are 22 rooms, all occupied by homeless families at a cost to the
public of £6,600 a week, or £343,200 a year.
Ariam will be evicted again on April 2. She has nowhere to go, but is
resigned to finding a private rented flat outside London, possibly in
Coventry where she has a friend.
She can't afford to live in London where housing benefit doesn't cover the
exorbitant rents and landlords demand up to £3,000 as a deposit. Ariam
remains optimistic, but her children have never had a home of their own and
she worries that the strain of constantly moving is taking its toll on them
all.
Ariam's story is one of thousands. Shelter, the charity created in reaction
to Cathy Come Home, says that 80,000 children are condemned to the limbo of
temporary accommodation.
It is unlawful for families to be housed in this way for more than six
weeks, but the practice has increased by 800 per cent since the Con-Dems
were elected.
The financial and human costs are enormous, but the solution is simple. We
need to build more council houses. Until we do, people like Ariam and her
kids will continue to fall through the ever-widening gaps of the welfare
state.
Ariam's story illustrates the issues covered in the last five weeks of this
series. The Con-Dems are using the camouflage of "austerity" to finish the
job of smashing public services and moving housing provision wholly into
the private market.
Three decades of under-investment and denigration have seen council housing
wither on the vine. People like Ariam are paying the immediate price, but
we all pay in the end.
Increasing reliance on private renting is destabilising our communities,
making housing ever more unaffordable and sub-standard. Property
speculation is feeding on scarcity and state subsidies, while reflating the
bubble that burst to disastrous effect in 2008.
Caught in the vice of benefit cuts and rising rents, poor people are being
socially cleansed from parts of our cities. Far from causing the housing
crisis, immigrants are far more likely to be its victims. We are witnessing
a downward spiral that is fertile ground for racist scapegoating and
blaming the poor for being poor. Between now and the next election, the
Labour Party needs to decide. Does it care about people like Ariam or not?
Ariam's name has been changed to protect her identity.
This is the last in the current series, but you can follow Glyn's writing
on his blog - Housing is Boring
http://glynrobbins.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/housing-is-boring/
Received on Tue Apr 01 2014 - 08:43:43 EDT