Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Street sleepers
Has this problem got out of control? Is there anything the council can do?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Charlotte A on
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What do you suggest doing about it?
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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Shalom on
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that is why i raised this, to find out what can be done
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Permalink Reply by Betty Careless on
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Harringey has very few homelessness services compared to neighboring boroughs - for instance the only Day Centre provision is North London action for the Homeless who only open two days a week. We have also seen vicious cuts to the borough's drug and alcohol support services. I guess one proactive thing people could do would be to lobby the council and/or to help fundraise for services like NLAH to enable them to help more people. The council's Rough Sleepers Strategy only goes up to 2012 so maybe a bit of prompting may help them focus on renewing it
As much as the general public don't like to see people sleeping out or using on the streets it takes a brave Councillor (and particularity clear sighted) to argue for funding for drug services when children's services etc. that the vocal and voting electorate use and support, are being cut. Once people are in a position where they are addicted and chaotic it is very easy to 'other' them, and get to a position where homeless people are not like 'us' and are undeserving of our help.
Sadly this problem isn't unique to Haringey - we've seen a 63% increase in rough sleeping since 2012/13 whilst the increase across the whole of London is 80%. Annual figures can be found on CHAIN
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I agree with you on a lot of what you have said here but you are wrong about provision for homeless people in Haringey. There is several projects for rough sleepers in Haringey. I will put up a list later.
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That would be really useful Con - there are very few Harringey services on the Homeless London website or in the Pavement listings
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Unfortunately this is a visible sympton of the housing crisis we have in London. Unless we tackle the issue of affordability and security of tenure we will continue to see increasing amounts of rough sleepers. This is a problem that has been left untackled for a generation.
Councils are in a bind. They effectively have to ration social housing as they don't have enough housing for people and end up "gatekeeping". Basically doing all they can to discourage people from making a homeless application. Even if you are accepted as homeless the council will do nothing unless you are priority need. i.e vulnerable in some way, with children etc. single people have absolutely no chance of getting any assistance from the council beyond a list of private rentals at exorbitant prices.
The answer seems glaringly obvious. Scrap the right to buy and allow councils to borrow the money for a mass social house building programme for rent. we need to build hundreds of thousands of new homes in London at genuinely affordable rents with permanent tenancies. The private sector cannot provide this only LA's can. Andthe housing needs to be of good quality, bring back the Parker Morris standards. There is no point building hundreds of thousands of tichy, badly designed boxes that we're stuck with for the next hundred years.
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There is an element to this that I failed to mention and that is that possibly one of the reasons you see so many "hardcore homeless" on the streets of Haringey is that neighbouring boroughs Hackney and Islington are clamping down on aggressive begging as well as issuing ASBOs to homeless people that make a nuisance of themselves. Is there something utterly perverse about prosecuting homeless people for begging and then issuing them with fines that they can't pay without going begging to pay for them? Yes there is. But has it reduced the number of aggressive beggars in their boroughs. Yes it has. To our detriment. So are Islington and Hackney doing the right thing by serving the needs of the majority over the needs of a handful of people who have made spectacular mess-ups of their own lives? I honestly don't know. But I feel much happier walking the streets of Islington than I do Green Lanes.
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I'm more concerned that myself and my street dwelling friends and neighbours have had to put up with some pretty 'hardcore' supercilious and patronising bourgeoisie in green lanes over the last few years with their aggressive petitions and sponsorship forms, it seems neighbouring areas - Islington, crouch end, muswell hill have been drivingthese ppeople out and we've got too now put up with them to our ddetriment , with their buy to let's and their loft conversions. Can't the council do something, give them asbos?
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It's really bad at the moment. In my view the new influx of beggars is caused by the unchallenged drugs trade in Manor House and near Barclays on green lanes that has moved from kings x/Caledonian rd since the regeneration. Obviously this is linked to the large number of street sleepers in the area. Quite a strange place to sleep rough considering other parts of London but makes sense if that's where the dealers are.
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So I'm curious...what have you done to assist your "neighbours" in their plight? Anything?
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Have i wandered into the charles dickens characters room by mistake ?
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Am I meant to assist them in some way? Why do they need assistance from me?
Throughout this thread homeless people are associated with drugs, being hardcore, aggressive, a nuisance, detrimental, an influx. One person even complains this iissue of homeless people never came up when they were researching the area! They are spoken of as almost sub human, not like us proper respectable people
Jesus, just have some empathy and humanity, stop ttalking as if they are the problem. Homelessness is a symptom of a failed housing policy. They are not responsible for the lack of housing and it's unaffordability. Give them a break
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