‘Hidden homelessness’ is a term I became very familiar with last year. After spending time in Manchester and Blackpool for a 2018 Children in Need documentary I was filming on the issue, I realised just how many of our children and young adults are living without a fixed address. Essentially, they don’t have a home to call their own.
It struck me that, prior to the documentary, I hadn’t given this anywhere near enough thought. We’ve all noticed the desperate situation on our streets – with a rise in people sleeping rough. But it’s easy to forget the huge numbers who have also been affected by the housing crisis, but who are suffering under the radar, behind closed doors.
Statistics show that it’s a growing problem. It’s thought tens of thousands of people are living in cramped, uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous emergency accommodation (offered while the council assess your case for housing) or temporary accommodation (when they accept they need to house you but have no home ready). That could be in shelters, hostels, B&Bs or even – if deemed suitable – sofa surfing. Irrespective of the environment, the common thread is it’s often hidden from view.
A few months ago, I was back in Blackpool again for an entirely separate gig when I coincidentally bumped into one of the young women I had spent time with in 2018. This time she was pushing a beautiful little baby around. It reminded me how tough life can be for those battling to find a stable home, let alone doing it while trying to raise a child.
It’s a struggle Inreece Malone-Ruddock can certainly relate to. Inreece, 21, is a single mum to one-year-old Rejheney, and she’s currently homeless, living in emergency accommodation in East London. Recently, we sat down together, before Inreece had to rush off to her shift at Asda. None of her colleagues know about her situation.
‘I try and portray that I’m not in a bad way and that I’m not going through something. I don’t know why I do it, because they could maybe help,’ she tells me. ‘But I try not to open up and say that I’m going through this difficult housing situation. I don’t want to disclose that.’
Inreece had been living with her mum and her two younger siblings when she became pregnant with her daughter. There wasn’t room for a new baby in the already crowded flat, so Inreece became homeless. She went to the council for help and was placed in emergency accommodation, a shared house several miles from her friends, family, support network and her job.
Her decision to hide her housing difficulties from the people around her is something I’ve seen in many people I’ve spoken to in similar situations. I’ve heard this so many times before from people trying to make the best of pretty unbearable circumstances.
Women are disproportionately affected by homelessness, too. Some 64% living in temporary accommodation in England are women – despite us only making up 51% of the population. Worse still, the number of female single-parent families living in temporary accommodation has increased by 53% in the last five years. It’s thought there are more than 37,000 single mothers, like Inreece, in this situation.
‘There are some points when you’re like, “I’m never going to get out of this situation.” I sit there and I start crying because I’m there, just me and my daughter, thinking, “It’s never going to happen, I’m never gonna get a house. I’m always gonna be here.”'
She talks me through the difficulties of living in a shared house, alongside strangers she knows nothing about. They all share a kitchen and a bathroom, which means Inreece has to carefully plan when she can bathe her child. She describes how deflating it feels when she realises somebody has stolen her food from the communal kitchen space again.
‘Everyone’s in the same situation,’ she says. ‘Obviously, because you are living in the same house, [they] know what you’re going through. Why would you then make it even worse for someone else?’
At the moment, Inreece is on a waiting list for a long-term home from the council. But not enough social housing (which people can rent from councils or housing associations at cheaper rates than private housing) is being built and a lot of the existing social housing stock is being sold off. Meanwhile, private renting is extortionately expensive for many and the hope of saving enough for a mortgage can feel totally unattainable.
Housing charity Shelter have helped Inreece make a homeless application and they’ve supported her in challenging the suitability of the B&B she’s been given. But her optimism is often tested when she slips further down the queue for her own place.
‘There are some points when you’re like, “I’m never going to get out of this situation.” I sit there and I start crying because I’m there, just me and my daughter, thinking, “It’s never going to happen, I’m never gonna get a house. I’m always gonna be here.” Some days, I see that I’m number 22 in the queue and I think, “OK, this is the day.” Then it [my number on the list] goes up even more and I think I’m going to be here forever.’
Inreece’s case is, sadly, all too common. Ronnie Haynes, a 26-year-old who studies part-time at the Open University, is just as sick of living a life of uncertainty.
She, her partner Andrew, who is a plumber, and their two-year-old son Orlando live in temporary accommodation in North London, but before this they spent six months in emergency accommodation elsewhere. She welcomes me into her house and we sit down on the sofa for her to tell me how she’s found the past 18 months.
She urges me to make myself comfy as adorable little Orlando runs from room to room. Shelter also helped them make a homeless application and secure this place – where they’ve been for just over a year – and she’s clearly house proud. They were delighted to move in, but they could get a letter through the door from the council any day saying they have to leave. ‘Why make it nice only to be told in two or three months you’re out?’ she says of that feeling of instability.
Although their current temporary accommodation is far from ideal while they wait to be allocated a house from the council – there’s damp and mould – it’s a million miles away from the previous emergency accommodation they were living in before. Ronnie explains that their nightmare began last year, when they were asked to leave their previous accommodation.
With nowhere else to go, they were forced to live in one room with no window, cot or kettle to make up baby bottles; there were bugs on the bed covers and the floors were ‘horrific’. Having worked as a mental health support worker before, Ronnie says she recognised the smell of heroin and could tell people in the rest of the shared house were using it there.
Understandably, she was concerned about bringing a then nine-month-old into a potentially hostile, dirty space, but when she voiced her concerns to her housing officer, she was told her family could be seen to be making themselves intentionally homeless if they refused to stay.
‘They made you feel as if, “I’m going to give you this option again because if you are that desperate then you’ll take it,” and that is exactly how they make you feel,’ she tells me.
With no other choice, they got to work trying desperately to make it feel like a home: ‘We got a steamer and a bucket of cleaning products and spent around six hours in the room, steaming the carpet, the walls – everything was filthy. We didn’t want to have Orlando in there until we knew it was OK,’ she says.
During last summer’s heatwave, Ronnie says she recorded the temperature in the room hitting 42°C. Through tears, she tells me how it felt to have to check that her son was still breathing in the heat. The situation brought out worrying behavioural traits in him, too, and he’d scream and headbutt the walls, she says.
Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, explains the impact of not having a permanent home is profound, particularly on children. ‘Whether it’s not having a safe space to play or nowhere quiet to do their homework, homelessness robs thousands of children of the security and stability they deserve. We’ve heard awful stories about children having to share bathrooms with strangers and being scared to go to sleep because of rats,’ she says.
Ronnie is clearly an amazing mother who only wants the best for her boy. But she’s dreading Christmas this year because she will be forced to choose between buying Orlando a toy or some new clothes, which he needs. ‘You want to provide and make sure your baby is happy,’ she sighs.
That’s why Shelter are working to help families dealing with the misery of homelessness get back to a good place. Otherwise, young families like Ronnie’s and Inreece’s have no choice but to live a life of uncertainty, with nowhere to call their own. ‘You try to make it as cosy as possible,’ says Ronnie. ‘But you never feel like you’re at home. It’s so horrible.’
To support Shelter’s Christmas Appeal text SHELTER to 70030, or visit shelter.org.uk/donate__. Texts cost your standard network rate plus £3. Shelter receives 100% of your donation
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