I visted the homeless officers and they told me I was homeless

Last Tuesday I made an appointment with my local Housing Options Service officers at Copeland Borough Council. I thought about pretending to be homeless but then I felt worried that I might use up some vital resource, so I went along and had a sit down meeting. After a hypothetical discussion of my “homeless” situation, it turned out that they could do nothing to help as I fell short of criteria. I was out on my own.

In all fairness these guys were really nice and one of them is busy beavering away getting me stats, facts and figures. However it really scared me to see how their hands are tied when it comes to assessing cases, basically there are five points that you must fulfill in order for the local authority  be able to house you in an emergency accomodation flat,they are:

* Homeless or threatened with homelessness (in the next 28 days)

* Priority. Are you 16/17, are you pregnant or do you have children

* vulnerability. Drug/alcohol problem, mental illness

*Intentionality. Have you made yourself deliberately homeless, ie not paid rent

* Local connection. If any of you Londonites come up here and say you’re homelss – you ain’t getting a bed!

In my hypothetcial homelessness I fulfilled only two; I was homeless and I had a local connection but I wasn’t classed as vulnerable or a priority. If I were to then go and sleep on a park bench it would be classed as a police matter and i could be moved on. This is known as street homeless. A lot of people also sofa surf at this stage. This is really tiring and awkward as I have discovered and I’m not even doing it for real.

Quite often the local community report people who see sleeping rough ( this is one of the differences when living in a small town compared with a city) and the council are informed of them and they can reassess the situtaion and see if they can do anything more to help.

If they can help they quite often put people into emergency accomodation in the form of a self-contained flat that has basic furnishing such as bed, sofa bed, fridge, cooker, washing facilities. There are only five of these in the local area and demand is high. If all are full the council have an agreement with  some hotels which will then provide a bed for the homeless person. I’m going to visit one of the hotels later on today.