Homeless: On the Edge

We've all seen the Big Issue being sold on our streets.

And most of us think this is the closest we'll get to homelessness.

Big Issue, madam? Have a nice day.

But Wales's largest homelessness charity, Shelter Cymru,

are warning we may be closer to the problem than we first think.

This is happening to thousands of people across Wales.

It could be anyone who's homeless.

Within six months, I'd gone from earning £25,000 a year

and a company car to, you know,

having no money whatsoever

and every now and again, spending a night on a park bench.

Between 2010-11, there were over 6,000 households

officially classed as homeless in Wales.

But official figures underestimate the true scale of the problem,

hiding the numbers sleeping rough,

in temporary accommodation or on a friend's sofa.

These are the hidden homeless.

People who come to us are running out of options. They've used their savings,

borrowed off parents and friends,

used credit cards sometimes to pay off a mortgage,

and they're simply running out of options.

Now, with official numbers at a five-year high

2012 is set to be a difficult year for many.

If there's any change in interest rates

or indeed if the housing market starts picking up,

at that time, we could see an awful lot of people

suddenly finding themselves facing repossession actions.

We'll travel across Wales and discover we are all vulnerable.

We look at the traumatic affects on people's lives

and learn what each of us can do

to keep this issue from coming close to home.

It's an early start in Wales' capital.

After losing his sales job with an electrical wholesaler,

experiencing the failure of a relationship

and having little family support,

Matt suddenly found the streets of Cardiff had become his home.

After me and my wife split up, um...

that was really my home, you know what I mean?

You become used to your little job and little life,

but once one of those things goes and maybe another thing will go,

next thing you know, those things you were relying on all the time

aren't there any more.

Matt's story is not unique.

Like many cases of homelessness,

the double hit of income shock and relationship breakdown

were all he needed to tip him over the edge.

I get here between 8:30 and 9:10am every day.

I come here to buy magazines first thing in the morning

before I set off up to Radyr.

Matt is just one of many Big Issue vendors in Wales.

Running for over 20 years,

the charity helps homeless and vulnerably-housed people

earn a legitimate income.

Bringing a sense of control back into their lives.

You buy the magazines, then sell them for double the price you've paid for them.

Once you've purchased them, there's no taking them back.

You've got to make sure you're here every day, working for a long period.

Matt's now happy and has a new partner in his life.

But looking back, he never expected to be where he is now.

So I was sofa-surfing with friends, and that became a bit difficult.

I spent a few nights on the streets, which wasn't particularly nice.

Eventually, I got myself into the YMCA,

which was a great, great support.

And just very recently, through the help of the YMCA,

I've managed to get a studio flat,

which I've been in for a couple of weeks now, but that's been great.

It's so easy to fall off the edge.

By the time you've come round to the situation,

you've probably lost your home, lost your job,

you haven't got much family left around you

and you've got to start all over again.

Losing it all is bad enough in the city,

but here in rural Powys,

the most sparsely-populated area in the whole of England and Wales,

the issue can be even harder.

With fewer facilities and services than urban areas of Wales,

it can be extremely tough.

Homelessness in Mid Wales is very strange

because it's not like a town, an urban area,

where you see people lying in the streets.

We're so rural and so isolated,

it's a very hidden problem.

Charities like Phoenix throw a lifeline

to people who were once homeless,

providing much-needed furniture

to help those who have now found a place to live.

I had a chap last year in his 70s who was sleeping in a tent.

When he got a property, he had nothing to put in it at all.

Right. So we're looking for code LD55011.

I see people on home visits in really difficult situations.

People living literally in barns

and, you know, without running water.

And you can't believe it can still happen in this country.

And for Lee, living rough in the countryside was once a cold reality.

He moved from over the border into the Llandrindod area

to work for a local transport company,

but was unprepared for what was to happen.

I was a bus driver. I have been on and off for about 20 years.

I thoroughly enjoyed it.

All around the local area.

Ended up losing my job.

Became homeless for about six weeks.

It was awful. Worst experience of my life.

I was staying in a disused cottage.

It was being renovated.

It opens your eyes.

When you've been a working person all your life

and then you suddenly find yourself homeless.

Um...

It is...I wouldn't wish it on anybody.

It's difficult to describe to someone who hasn't gone through it.

You've lost all identity.

You've got no self-esteem,

you don't feel like you belong with the rest of society.

Don't ever think it couldn't happen to you

because quite simply, it could.

You know, you've got responsibilities

with any animals you've got, your children,

your priority is to have a roof over your head.

There's a lot of things I'd like to say that I can't because...

It is really difficult to talk about.

Despite terrible living conditions,

Lee wasn't eligible for support

when he approached his local authority.

Like many others, he wasn't deemed to be priority.

Councils assess cases of homelessness by need.

But because Lee had no dependant children,

was over 17 and not considered vulnerable,

his case for housing was turned down.

Lee's living situation had a detrimental affect on his health.

Desperate for help, he turned to the support charity Gwynfa,

who immediately organised a doctor's appointment.

And through their bond scheme,

he helped to secure a flat with a private landlord.

Somewhere he now calls home.

It was literally an empty shell. I didn't have any furniture at all.

And I was sleeping on the floor for six months.

I went to Phoenix in Llandod to get the furniture

and I'm quite comfortable now.

It makes such a difference to a person. It raises self-esteem.

And, of course, that's what starts people helping themselves

and getting back into society again.

Not only does homelessness affect every region in Wales,

it affects every age group.

Last year, over 600 16-21 year olds

were made homeless across Wales.

And the numbers aren't going unnoticed

by the charity Gisda here in North Wales.

They are tackling the issue head-on

by running homeless-prevention workshops in local schools.

So what we do, we come into schools,

we work with young people of all ages, usually Year 9 and upwards.

And we do homeless-prevention workshops,

such as what we've done today.

Most people think that homelessness is the tramps,

dirty, living on the side of the streets with dogs.

Drug, alcohol problems. It's a message to try and get them

to think that it can happen to anybody at any time.

Gisda's workshops aim to change

some of the misconceptions about homelessness.

And they hope that raising awareness

will keep a new generation from experiencing life without a home.

Prevention is a key part of their work.

A lot of the time, young people come to us and they've been kicked out

because of silly little things that have been happening at home.

Such as not helping around the house.

If they're working, they haven't been paying their way.

They're cheeky, they're fighting with their siblings.

And instead of sitting down and discussing this

and trying to come to an arrangement

of how we could try and improve this and work together,

it ends up that the parents kick them out.

And in Blaenau Ffestiniog, Gisda throws a lifeline to homeless

young people at Christmas. A very emotional time of the year.

I need to show what to do with the safe when I go home.

I might just stay around here,

and see what it actually feels like

to have Christmas in a homeless hostel.

18-year-old Liam moved into the area,

and was made homeless after a breakdown in family relationships.

He's now living in supported accommodation.

I would like to be up in Leicester

with my mum, my little brothers and my stepdad,

but unfortunately I haven't got the money to go down,

so I can't go up there.

What happened to the Christmas songs?

It's a tough time for the young people,

because, obviously, Christmas is known as to be family time.

And some of our young people don't have that relationship

with their families, to be able to spend,

you know, two or three days with them.

Some young people choose to spend the day in bed,

because they can't face it, which is understandable.

It's just a case of it being so much pressure for that day, some of them just can't cope with it.

There. Now it's on.

We have about 56 young people on our books at any one time,

and I know that we have waiting lists as well,

and they have to do a lot that maybe

we'll never have to deal with in our lives.

17-year-old Laura is now making a new start.

She is learning to take control

of her own life following a traumatic past.

When she moved to Wales from Hereford,

she wasn't prepared for what was to happen a year later.

My mum passed away in 2006, so I had to move with my dad,

which I hadn't seen my dad before that.

Basically, me and my father didn't really get on.

Laura found herself sofa surfing,

forced to spend the night on different sofas,

sharing with people she barely knew.

I was a mummy's girl, I've never really got on with my father.

I was a mummy's girl, she knew how to look after me.

How old were you when your mum passed away?

It was just before my 12th birthday.

It was a month and a half before my 12th birthday.

So, yeah...

If you think about what a home is, how important a home is

to people's lives, then being without a home

is one the most difficult situations, I would suggest,

a person or a family could actually face.

If you think about it, a home is somewhere private, secure,

healthy, somewhere you can bring up your kids.

If you haven't got that situation,

even though you may have a shelter over your head,

if you're living in temporary accommodation,

or somewhere insecure, that's not really a home.

Wales's largest homelessness charity. Shelter Cymru.

work on the frontline of homelessness, and in Wrexham,

advisers like Fiona Roberts are facing an increasing case load.

In Wrexham, some of the major issues around housing

and homelessness are to do with rent arrears.

We are now seeing more migrant workers who come over here,

had good jobs, taken up private accommodation,

and now they've lost their job.

We've been working with this client since May this year.

Previously good tenant, the landlord's happy

with the way they've kept the property, etc,

but due to the fact that he's lost his job, got another job,

then lost that job again, and had problems with benefits,

he's got into rent arrears.

If we can get the arrears cleared...

Grachan moved from Poland looking for a job,

and now lives in Wrexham with his family.

His translator and support worker, Paulina, is now helping

with his housing problems.

He does OK...

With work beginning to dry up, and growing health issues,

Grachan found himself getting behind with the rent.

He's worried that his family may be evicted from their home.

I think one of the things that's been very clear to us

in the organisation,

certainly what our housing caseworkers often talk about,

is that people come to them, and they're saying,

"I can't believe I'm actually asking Shelter Cymru for help.

"I cannot believe I'm in this situation.

"A few months ago everything was going fine to me."

And then something happens that suddenly knocks people

completely off the rails.

It's up to the landlord

whether he enforces that by going for an eviction warrant.

Rent arrears is a big issue for a lot of our clients.

From my point of view, once somebody gets two months' arrears,

they should be working with the client then to try and sort out the problem,

rather than let it accumulate to three, four, five thousand pounds,

which we do see in some cases.

The number of people who come to our service, I think,

who are in a state of shock apart from anything else,

actually, we could argue that we're all three pay cheques away from losing our home.

Every part of Wales is touched by housing difficulties.

Even the most affluent parts of the country.

I didn't think that I would ever be the person that would become homeless.

I was working, I had a home, the bills were all paid,

and...one thing leads to another, you just...

and everything's gone in a flash, I suppose.

Carla's marriage broke down,

and the upheaval meant she was forced to finish work.

I was having time off work to go and try and sort out debts,

I'd become in debt with council tax arrears, trying to bring up three children,

so I ended up losing my job, which was hard,

especially since I've worked since I've left school,

and this is probably the first time that I've been out of work.

It was horrible. It got to the stage where I was just...

I wasn't opening the letters, I was putting the bills to one side, not even opening them.

You just dread the post coming to the door, then.

You just...bury your head in the sand, I suppose.

We had letters saying that we were going to lose the house,

obviously repossession because we couldn't keep up with mortgage payments.

It was just really worrying, especially with three young children,

it's like, we didn't know where we were going to end up.

It could have been on the streets. We just didn't know what was going to happen, basically.

And of course, it's not just the adults that are affected.

Mum told us what was going on from the start, she wanted to be honest with us

and let us know what was going on, so, like, we wouldn't have any surprises,

or be shocked if we were to leave or anything like that.

If we didn't know what was going on, it would be more confusing,

we wouldn't really understand the situation better.

There was a stage, obviously, when I was boxing everything up,

and there was boxes everywhere, and you just couldn't move.

It didn't feel like mine anymore, because we didn't know what was happening.

At that time, we didn't know where to turn. We didn't know that there was support out there.

My dad was extremely worried, so was my mum. If they could help, they would.

You know, they're - both of them are pensioners,

so they couldn't come and pay the mortgage or pay my debts for me, even though they wanted to.

My dad was really worried.

Erm...And unfortunately, he died at the end of August,

so, yeah, it was really hard, tough.

Carla eventually went for help.

Support and care organisation Gwalia helped her to get in touch with creditors

and restructure her debts and mortgage.

She is still hoping to stay in the property,

but has 12 months to find a job, or she could potentially see her home repossessed.

Last year, Blaenau Gwent was revealed to be Wales's repossession hotspot.

Meanwhile, social housing and spending cuts are also proving to be challenging

as councils throughout Wales struggle to meet their responsibilities.

But most worryingly for homeless charities in Wales,

nearly 4,000 young people are seeing their housing benefit drop by a third -

an average reduction of £26 per week.

This could lead to a significant rise in homelessness in 2012.

And debt, one of the major contributors to homelessness,

is the number one concern for the people of Wales.

Access to easy credit once provided warm comfort,

but now the cold is beginning to bite,

as homeowner Adrian from Crosskeys is now finding out.

I've lived in this house now for coming up to seven years.

I first purchased it in June 2005.

I love my house.

I love my house!

It's sad to think that it could be taken away.

Adrian bought his house at the height of a boom.

And like many other mortgage holders,

he borrowed money on the strength of his property value

to fund renovations, a new car and holidays.

Well, I was a bit reckless at the time, you know, spending too much here, a bit there,

but the house was done, and then they'd always let us have another ten grand, say.

We had to get a new kitchen, new bathroom, plastering,

it was a lot of money at the time.

But the credit-fuelled party was about to end,

along with the relationship with his partner.

Fixed term finished in 2007, I think it was,

and the mortgage had shot up by three, four hundred pound then.

When I first bought this house, I was with somebody, as well,

so I wasn't expecting to, er...

To be supporting myself in a year on my own, like.

Now off sick because of the stress,

Adrian is struggling to pay the bills.

His statutory sick pay isn't enough to meet all his payments.

Adrian admits himself that he didn't prepare for the difficult times that have now hit him.

I felt like I'd buried my head.

Wouldn't pay one bill one month, and then pay it a couple of months later,

and then fall behind again on it.

Unfortunately, with the mortgage, it, er...was just too much for me.

With his mortgage now months in arrears, the bank is threatening repossession.

Adrian has to regularly attend court to try and keep his home.

Dealing with the mortgage company is tough.

Especially when he believes there is now little sympathy

from an institution that was once happy to shower him with money.

I... You just...beat yourself up about actually ringing them, don't you?

Really? I mean, you just...

You put it off until tomorrow, until tomorrow, and it's always, tomorrow never comes, really.

I'd phoned them this week, on Monday, to make a payment, and they were literally telling me not to.

I said to them, "What's the best thing for me to do?"

She said, "We're going for the eviction date, and we're going to get you out of here."

Adrian is desperate to get off the sick and get back to work to avoid losing his home.

I do miss the routine of being able to get up and go, go to work.

I enjoyed my job, I enjoyed chatting with customers,

helping the customers, um...

I'm just...

Adrian faces an uncertain future.

He hopes he can hold onto his property and avoid being made homeless.

But the clock is ticking, and none of us can predict the future.

We only need to look at the news to see we are living in tough times,

and for some people, the headlines have come very close to home.

-TV:

-'Good afternoon.

'More than 200 people at the Cardiff headquarters of the clothing retailer Peacocks

'have been told they'll be made redundant.'

Someone's just posted here from 16 minutes ago, saying,

"It's official, I'm out of my job and my heart has been broken."

Which, obviously, is quite hard to hear,

especially when I don't know if I'm still employed or not.

After four years with Peacocks, in a career he loved,

Matt is now facing redundancy.

He could potentially lose his Cardiff Bay flat.

But official news of his own job is not coming through fast.

My main source of information currently is Facebook, really,

which is quite strange.

-TV:

-'Everyone is gutted. Absolutely gutted.

'And everyone's looking for jobs, so...'

It is at the back of my mind,

I'm thinking, "Will I be able to pay my rent, will I have enough money for my bills?"

"Am I going to get paid this month?"

I am waiting for that one phone call.

It's clearly going to be a long day for Matt as he waits for news.

I've seen the news report that 249 jobs have gone from Peacocks,

and I don't know if I'm one of them.

And Matt's worst fears are realised later that day.

It's now 9:30pm at night.

I've just found out I've lost my job.

Contemplating his future,

Matt takes a trip to see his former work colleague, Vicky,

who has just had the news that she has also been dreading for some time.

The house I've got, I rent, um... My rent is due next Monday,

and as of now I don't know if I'm going to be able to pay it.

Obviously, if I can't keep up with my rent payments, I'm going to have to move out.

It's been a quick learning curve for Vicky.

She has already visited her local council,

and is helping Matt get to grips with benefits.

She has also found out that her housing benefit is unlikely to cover her current rent.

It's quite easy to see now, being in the situations, how easy it is for people to become homeless.

So with the help of a Shelter Cymru caseworker,

the two are discovering more about their individual housing rights.

But the fine detail of Matt's tenancy agreement is worrying.

The two situations are slightly different,

because you've got slightly different rights.

Matt, the moment your fixed-term tenancy ends,

the landlord can at any time now, until another fixed term's signed,

-give you a two-month notice.

-Mm-hmm.

He can the apply to court for an order to evict you.

He has actually already given you a notice that says the tenancy is to be terminated.

I've got a couple of concerns about whether the notice he's given is actually legally valid.

The impact on you, if this doesn't get sorted,

is that he could just look to evict you.

The future may look bleak and uncertain for Matt and Vicky,

but back in the centre of Cardiff,

Big Issue's Matt is making the most of his situation.

I've just been given a Vendor of the Month award,

I've been overjoyed at the fact that I managed to get it,

and the amount of effort I put in, I wasn't expecting anything, really,

and for it to happen has been brilliant.

This really can happen to anyone,

and you really should take five minutes to speak to someone, to find out what their story is,

because, you know, anyone who thinks they're too big or too proud that it could happen to them,

you know, it really can.

You should make the most of every day you've got, really.

I think education's a really important aspect of tackling homelessness,

and raising awareness of housing problems.

Trying to move people away from those kind of stereotypical ideas

that people have of people who might become homeless.

It's trying to break down myths and stereotypes,

that idea that there's a feckless group of people who almost make themselves homeless on purpose,

that is, in our experience.

It's clear we all have a lot to learn,

and often the people best placed to give advice are those who have been through it themselves.

Get advice, seek advice, really.

As much as possible.

Everybody says about opening your mail,

I think there was times I'd have a bag full of mail.

Don't be afraid.

I feel stronger now, looking through them, than what I did before,

because I know that I'm actually dealing with the situation,

and I'm not leaving it, like I was.

I'd advise other people to get help straight away,

um...deal with it as and when it comes.

Don't leave it.

And it's not worth the worry, just try and sort it,

you'll feel a lot better.

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