The Doorstep Challenge

They can be seen sleeping rough on the doorsteps of thousands of buildings across the country any night of the week, an indictment of our society. How many (apart from too many)? Gauging the size of the problem is a problem in itself. The official government statistic, suggesting the average daily number of rough sleepers in England in 2020 was 2,688, is ludicrously low. 

The homelessness charity SHELTER suggests there are over 250,000 statutorily homeless people in the country, not that many of them sleep on doorsteps, for there are friends' couches and floors, plus hostels and night shelters providing a safer night's sleep for the majority. Nevertheless, CHAIN (Combined Homelessness and Information Network) claims that 10,726 people were living on the streets of Greater London in 2019, the last time its outreach workers conducted a comprehensive street-by-street survey. And if there are over 10,000 in the capital alone, the figure for the whole of the UK will be embarrassingly and unacceptably high. 

The financial 'crash' of 2008 and a decade of Tory austerity measures are pointed to as significant contributing factors, as in a sense they are, but they are akin to the tip of a very nasty iceberg.  

Here are a few interesting statistics. The first is from the Land Registry and states that in 1990 the average UK household income was £20,000 per year and the average house price was £58,000. By 2020 average household income had nearly doubled to £37,000 per year but the average house price had leapt over fourfold to £240,000 (that's almost seven times annual income)! The second is from the Local Government Association which warns about the alarming decline in the number of council houses, the UK government's very creditable social housing initiative after WWII. There were 6.5 million in 1980 before Margaret Thatcher's invidious 'great State sell-off', the number had fallen to 4 million by 2000 and now stands at less than 2 million and the Tories' target to build more has fallen well short in every single year of the last decade. The third, from a recent survey of the rental sector, reports that the number of households living in private rented  accommodation has more than doubled in twenty years from 2 million in 2000 to 4.5 million and that by the beginning of next year nearly 6 million households - that's a quarter of the UK population - will be in private rented housing, as the percentage of people owning the  house they live in continues to fall.

That young people on good salaries are finding it almost impossible to buy a house of their own, given house price trends, ought to be obvious. That council housing is no longer the option and safety net it once was is also abundantly clear. That those surviving on a minimum wage and zero hours contracts are struggling to pay their way in the private rental sector ought to be equally obvious. No wonder that more and more people are ending up sleeping rough on doorsteps.

rough sleeping on the doorstep

That very nasty iceberg I alluded to earlier has been growing steadily more menacing since the 1960s and has to do with the shameless way that capitalism became unshackled from international regulation in the decade following WWII. I've recommended Oliver Bullough's book 'Moneyland' in previous blogs. It remains the best account I've read of how a small group of London bankers invented 'offshore' and gave rise to shell companies, opacity in the movement of funds and the obscene power of globalised finance now controlled and manipulated without check by gangsters and oligarchs who have raped their own countries and laundered multi-trillions of dollars with impunity, a lot of it in the purchase of property in the UK and other western countries. 

To quote from 'Moneyland': "Across England and Wales, more than 100,000 properties are owned offshore. It is impossible to say how many are empty, but perhaps as many as half the new-builds at the top end of the market are rarely used, according to one study. These are not houses for living in, but house-shaped bank accounts." 

The rampant, unlimited greed of laissez-faire capitalism is the iceberg, allowing a very few wealthy people to become insanely richer while the majority become poorer, not just in developing countries but in the west as well. Attempts by the USA and the EU to legislate against 'offshore' have only chipped away at the surface of the problem. It was a plan by the EU to introduce stricter controls over 'offshore' that was the principle drive behind the orchestrators of Brexit. It wasn't to do with 'making Britain great again' or taking back control to Westminster. It was a cynical ploy by High Tories in the ERG to make sure that they could avoid the tough new controls being planned in Brussels and if possible weaken existing measures even more, so that London could continue to profit from its role as clearing-house for corrupt parties the world over and so that their own considerable offshore millions would remain beyond the reach of the tax man.

Prior to Brexit and the arrival of the Covid pandemic, campaigning journalist Oliver Bullough and his friends organised what they called the London Kleptocracy Tour, a bus journey through the capital on which the guides "point out the properties owned by ex-Soviet oligarchs, the scions of Middle Eastern political dynasties, Nigerian regional governors, and all the other people who have made fortunes in countries that score low" for ethical governance and financial transparency. 

Post Covid and post Brexit, the skewing of Britain's housing market by the powerful forces of 'offshore' is only going to get worse. The gap between rich and poor is widening. The problem is endemic. One oligarch's empty luxury mansion equates to a dozen impoverished young men and women sleeping on doorsteps. People need to realise the connection and wise up to the fact that it is unacceptable - not that the current government is going to do a thing to redress the iniquity, not with the likes of Rishi Sunak (whose father-in-law is the billionaire owner of Infosys) as chancellor of the exchequer and prime-minister-in-waiting. We're all being conned, and if we want as a just society to rise to the doorstep challenge of homelessness and rough sleeping, we need to call out the issue and demand a fair political solution to a growing social problem.

Okay, rant over for now - but bookmark the information. It's time to lighten the mood. It's not often I attempt 'comic' poetry but I thought I might have a go at a bit of nonsense this week. Consequently, here freshly milked and unpasteurised from the imaginarium is my latest composition. I'm not sure if this is its finished form, but for now I deliver up this tongue-in-cheek poem as tribute to the fine milkmen of Harlech. You don't believe me?

Milkmen of Harlech, stop your dreaming, Every Cambrian cow is creaming, Can't you see those bottles gleaming? Time to man your floats...

Milkmen Of Harlech (Friday Variant!)

Geraint 'the Pint' (I know, you couldn't make it up)  

was king of a whole estate's quiet pre-dawn streets,

delivering a floatload, then back between the sheets

and dreaming of dairymaids before the world woke

just like twin brother Gwilym 'the Cream' (really!)

on the other side of town, job done and head down

as sleepy housewives climbed into dressing-gowns,

lit fires, boiled kettles, fetched bottles from the step

and rousted up the menfolk to another working day

before the kids all tumbling, grumbling and hungry

from their beds demanded to be fed, flashing angry

as siblings will when they get into each other's way.

Followed the quiet of mid-morning, broken only by 

the bristling industry of doorstep scrubbing, women

marking time before their milkman's second coming

on Friday afternoon, the weekly settling of accounts

from Thursday's wage. When 'the Pint' or 'the Cream'

rang bells, rapped knockers, coins and cheery chatter

were exchanged and the artful milkmen would flatter

with a happy swagger as was expected on this round

of door-to-door amassing of florins and half-crowns

and if a housewife was finding times tight, 'the Pint'

or 'the Cream' might wink, and give the subtlest hint  

there might be other ways to pay, though just in jest

for the Milkmen of Harlech are the Lord's very best,

will not take advantage where lesser milkmen might.

Flirting is mere harmless fun but adultery's not right, 

moreover Harlech wives were known to never yield.

'Moneyland' (sub-titled Why Thieves & Crooks Now Rule the World & How to Take it Back ) is by Oliver Bullough and is published by Profile Books - £10 well spent, in my opinion.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)