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Report
Vicky Spratt meets the 'hidden homeless' mothers exported across the UK
inews
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25/08/2023
Category
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News
Transcript
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00:00
I'm Vicky Spratt, the Eyes housing correspondent, and I hear day in, day out from people who
00:05
are being socially cleansed from their homes and communities.
00:10
For this investigation, I've spoken to one woman who has been told by her local council
00:15
she's got to move across the country from London to Yorkshire.
00:19
If you refuse it, we will stop your rent if you choose to be homeless.
00:24
I've spoken to another who has been moved from London to Hertfordshire and now faces
00:30
four hours worth of trains back to her job as a care worker.
00:34
This feels like they just tossed you somewhere and forget about you.
00:39
I want to find out how this got so bad. What is going on?
00:43
I've been driving for about an hour to get out of London to a place called Greenhithe,
00:48
which is in Kent and it's near the Dartford Bridge. Luckily, my producer is driving because
00:55
I can't drive. If I had taken public transport, I'd just checked City Mapper and I would have
00:59
been travelling for around 94 minutes.
01:03
I've made this journey, this long journey, to meet a woman called Blessing. She is a
01:09
mother of two kids, one of whom is autistic and has complex needs.
01:13
They've been moved out here to Greenhithe by their council after being made homeless.
01:19
Blessing, when were you made homeless?
01:22
We were made homeless on the 24th of May. My landlord served everyone in the building
01:31
as Section 21.
01:32
OK, so the first stop after all your stuff being put out in the street by bailiffs was
01:38
the travel lodge in Croydon. Were you all in the same room in the travel lodge?
01:42
Yeah, we were given one room in the travel lodge.
01:45
So that Section 21 eviction notice has started a chain of events that brings us to where
01:52
we're sitting today, which is in Kent, more than an hour away from your old home. How
01:59
far away are we from your children's school?
02:01
We go by bus, it would take us like two hours plus. Because I don't have a home in Woolwich,
02:07
I can't drop them and come back home.
02:09
So what do you do while they're at school?
02:10
I hang around. When we leave the house at half seven, we are home at half seven. The
02:18
journey is stressful for me and for the children. And then coming home as well, by the time
02:24
we get in, it's already late and we just eat our dinner and then go to bed. I understand
02:30
that I'm not here to demand and then things be handed over to me. But I don't like the
02:42
way I've been treated. Because if I didn't have a child that have a special needs, right,
02:51
I would have gone out there and get a job, just like my husband, and work full time.
02:57
And I would be able to provide for my family. We want to work, we want to do things. But
03:04
with my daughter and her needs, especially when she hasn't been in school for a year,
03:10
I can't do nothing. I'm just stuck.
03:13
Blessing has been bounced around, evicted, put in one room in a hotel with her entire
03:18
family and now moved out here to Kent, over an hour and a bit away from everything she
03:24
needs to be near. Councils have a solution to this homelessness problem. But to be honest,
03:29
it sounds almost as bad as being homeless in the first place.
03:33
I'm in Hanwell in West London to meet Rim. She's a mother of two who's been homeless
03:37
for over a year. She's been moved from bed and breakfast to bed and breakfast, both over
03:42
an hour away from her children's school. And then the council did come up with a solution.
03:46
But it's one that would be so disruptive. She's not sure if she can accept it.
03:52
Rim, we're in Hanwell in West London. You've had to move several times in the last few
03:57
months. Why? What happened?
04:00
I started moving from place to place from July 2021. I'm going first in Hays, bed and
04:07
breakfast. They said it's emergency leave. I spent there around 19 months in bed and
04:15
breakfast with two kids. It was very, very difficult, not only for me, for my two children.
04:22
Why did you and your children become homeless? Because the landlord for the rent is coming
04:28
very up and we cannot do it. So Rim, they moved you to Hays, which is over
04:35
an hour away from your kids' school, then to Southall, which is no closer to the school.
04:40
This is all temporary accommodation where you've been homeless for over a year.
04:43
Bed and breakfast. And they've offered you somewhere else. Where
04:47
is it? In Halifax, West Yorkshire.
04:50
So that's about four hours- Four hours and a half from London.
04:54
When they offered you Halifax, you were very worried about what this would mean in terms
04:59
of disruption for your children. Yes.
05:01
What did the council say to you? Is your business? We believe it's safe for
05:07
you. We cannot offer you anything. If you refuse it, we will stop your rent and you
05:13
will be the responsible that you choose to be homeless.
05:20
Rim faces an impossible situation. Move halfway across the country or be completely homeless
05:26
with no access to state support. I found out that she's not alone. Using the
05:31
Freedom of Information Act, I've asked local councils how many people like Rim are being
05:36
moved out of their home area. The data shows that in London alone, 21,000 households were
05:45
moved out of their area in the first quarter of 2023. But this isn't just a London problem.
05:52
Outside of London, out of area placements have increased by 120%. You can read more
05:59
about this data at inews.co.uk. So I've got the numbers. I know that this
06:04
issue is affecting thousands of homeless families. But what is it actually like to be told at
06:12
a moment's notice that you are going to have to move miles away from everything you know
06:17
if you don't want to be on the streets? Now I'm in Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire,
06:22
miles away from London. And I am going to meet Stacey, a mother of three who had no
06:28
choice but to accept a last minute out of borough placement. It has completely changed
06:33
her life. Stacey, what did the council say to you?
06:38
Well, they said to me that I have to take the property. If I don't take it, then they
06:42
will discharge their responsibility. They will relieve me of the responsibility, so
06:47
I'll be on my own. How did you feel when they said that to you?
06:51
I was, I feel very stressed. Like I had no choice. If I don't take it, I'll be here
06:57
like on the street with my kids. And they have no choice except to just pack up and
07:05
come down here. And when they said Hemel Hempstead, do you
07:10
remember how you felt? I felt distraught. My head was spinning. I
07:16
don't know what to do because I couldn't get through to any of them. I tried to call
07:22
them for them to change their mind and keep me closer to my family and support team. No
07:29
one picked the phones up. I came down the next day and up to today I'm trying to get
07:37
in touch with the caseworker. I haven't heard from him since I came down here. Since
07:42
he gave me the address, I haven't heard from him.
07:45
How does that feel? It feels like they just tossed you somewhere
07:51
and forget about you. It's like they throw you away like garbage. That's how it feels
07:57
like. There's no choice. They left me with no choice.
08:03
If you could have an ideal outcome to your situation, what would it be?
08:09
Know what next. I would know at least they're communicating with me to tell me what's
08:14
going to happen next. So I would, my mind would know, say this is what's going to happen
08:19
next. But at the moment, they don't really communicate with me so I don't know what's
08:24
going to happen next. I don't know what the situation is, what's the next move.
08:29
I asked every local authority involved in this investigation for a response. RIMS council
08:34
Ealing said that they believed that offering her a home in Yorkshire was appropriate. However
08:40
they said they would keep her situation under review. Stacey's local council Lewisham
08:47
did not want to comment on the specifics of her case but said that they were struggling
08:51
to find accommodation in the area for people who were experiencing homelessness. And when
08:57
I spoke to Blessings council, that's Greenwich, she was moved back to the borough. It sounds
09:04
perverse to say it because of what she's been through but Blessing is one of the lucky
09:08
ones. Thousands of people have been moved away from everything they know and they don't
09:13
know when or if they will be able to return. The housing crisis is now so bad that local
09:20
authorities are quite literally exporting the issue of homelessness and the people affected
09:27
by it around the country. This is devastating for the people being moved, it puts a strain
09:34
on the local councils that are receiving them and in the long run if they are moved back
09:39
to their home area it's going to put a strain on their home local council because they're
09:44
going to have to deal with all of the problems that have been caused while they've been
09:48
away.
09:48
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