Glasgow homeless

This letter appeared in the current issue of Weekly Worker and Socialist Courier see no reason to give it a wider audience. 

The number of homelessness care providers in Glasgow is being reduced from five down to one or two between now and November. There is a competitive tendering process going on at the moment. This is open to all providers at a UK level. It is part of the process of the Labour-controlled Glasgow council passing on cuts to services, following big cuts to its budget from the Scottish National Party government and, ultimately, budget cuts from the Tories to the Scottish government.

Pressure is being applied to the workforces ‘to do more with less’- ie, do more work, do it better than now and with far fewer workers. Subtle pressure is being applied - if your company is to win the tender, you may have to think about doing things you don’t do now: shift work, compulsory weekend and evening work, personal care, more community link projects, etc. If you object, then the tender will go to the providers that are willing to dramatically increase their workloads and be totally flexible and you will probably be out of a job.

Back in planet real world, this will mean workers who provide vital services to the homeless finding themselves being made redundant (and potentially homeless themselves) and facing an ever stricter work programme. It will also mean increased worker turnover and absenteeism. It will certainly lead to poorer-quality services to the public. All the current areas of support will reduce in quality - support with finding permanent accommodation, mental health problems and addiction issues not being addressed, more social isolation and exclusion. There will be greater poverty and debt-related issues. All these problems and many more will not be addressed to the same level of quality in Glasgow as they have been up until now. The care side of homelessness in Glasgow has worked so far. The cuts could see a wasteland created, as we go down more and more of an American-type road - more visible homeless, more begging, more people on the streets with mental and addiction issues, as more people fall through the current safety net.

It will lead to increased crime, family stress and break-up and shorter life expectancy. And even on cost grounds alone it will be the council that has to pick up the tab for all of this.

These services have already experienced redundancies on a wide scale in the years since the Tories were elected in 2010, resulting in increased workloads for existing workers. Casework teams who are responsible for moving homeless on to permanent accommodation when they are ‘tenancy-ready’ are in crises now and have been for over a year. Redundancies and new procedures that lengthened the waiting time for homeless people to be moved on have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. Many homeless now have to wait to get a caseworker allocated and, even once this takes place, the new procedures combined with less social housing stock can mean a long wait for permanent housing.

Those classed as homeless living in temporary accommodation have very high rents - on average about £180 per week. In the past homeless people who worked paid £60 per week from their wages towards the rent and the rest would be paid in housing benefit - fairly straightforward and unbureaucratic. Now a ‘revenue and property’ team calculates to the exact pound what they want in rent and council tax based on proof of all income supplied. Every time income adjusts - eg, a person gets some extra hours or an additional benefit - there has to be a readjustment of the claim. There is a delay between housing benefit processing claims and changes to claims and the revenue and property receiving money, leading to demand letters to the homeless for exorbitant rents and council tax.

If the homeless try not to work while they are in temporary accommodation to get 100% housing benefit and council tax benefit, they are hit with the ‘work programme’, so the council knows it can hound the working homeless for more and more rent and council tax. There is a scam in the midst of this that is causing real hardship. Temporary furnished flats (TFFs) that charge £180 per week rent on average are around £225 to £250 per month in rent if they are permanent and unfurnished for the same type of tenancies. This looks awfully like the council trying to line its coffers with state housing benefit money. It has been going on for years, but the removal of the cap means some of the working homeless are now being made destitute.

The attack on the sick is also causing huge stress. If a homeless person on employment and support allowance is assessed as ‘fit for work’, they are not only kicked off employment and support allowance (ESA), but also lose housing benefit. However, it is rare for the homeless person to be informed of this. Housing benefit are immediately informed, so the homeless individual is often unknowingly accumulating rent arrears, as housing benefit has been stopped at soon as their ESA was stopped. They can accumulate large arrears very quickly through no fault of their own. And rent arrears in one of the key reasons housing associations will not move people on from temporary accommodation to permanent accommodation.

And there are queuing systems now for everything. It used to be just the department for work and pensions where it was difficult to get a human voice on the line; now it’s everything - asylum and refugee teams, casework ... There is now a queuing system for housing and council tax benefit problems. A year ago a support worker could get straight through to them on the phone. Now the homeless person has to go into the city centre to deal with any housing/council tax issues, incurring transport costs, as there can be up to a 30-minute wait on the phone.

Glasgow council has moved from a ‘two reasonable offers’ policy of housing to ‘one reasonable offer’ - it’s take it or leave it. If the one offer is refused they ‘discharge duty’ - meaning the homeless are on their own, having to look for a private let. The person has to leave the temporary accommodation or face huge rent arrears and eviction. Many housing associations are now demanding one month rent in advance from people who sometimes only receive £73 per week jobseeker’s allowance.

Even people who are successful at moving on to permanent accommodation will not get a decision about receiving goods to furnish the permanent tenancy for three weeks after they have signed the missives for the permanent tenancy - meaning three weeks of rent arrears on the temporary flat if they have not moved out of it into a completely unfurnished permanent tenancy (and for people with family and young children this is a horrendous state of affairs, raising serious health and safety issues).

The cuts to caseworker numbers, cuts to council workers working on housing and council tax benefit claims, benefit cuts, cuts to support agencies such as translation, are all creating a perfect storm. There are fewer and fewer resources with more and more demand, leading to increased stress, frustration, anger and in some cases sadly intolerance. Immigrants are not responsible for austerity. The rich are.

The Defend Glasgow Services campaign ought to oppose the latest ‘race to the bottom’ cuts by the council with deputations, lobbies, demos, council surgery pickets and putting up anti-cuts candidates for next May’s council elections. The council ought to put forward a needs-led budget. We need an end to austerity!

Glasgow homeless support worker