Britain's 80,000 homeless children
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Thank you for downloading More or Less from the BBC. This is the version of the programme first broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Here's Tim Harford.
Hello and welcome to a brand new series of More or Less, the programme which puts the statistics into Christmas. This week I'll be running my slide rule over festive football fixtures, wine and magic. But first… This Christmas morning, 80,000 children will wake up homeless in Great Britain. This is an advertisement, a Christmas appeal from Shelter, a housing charity. It certainly pulls at the heartstrings. Shelter has put a lot of effort into its campaign. There are posters everywhere. But 80,000 children seems to be an incredibly large number, something one of our listeners, Simon from Lancashire, was unsure about.
When I heard this number, I was extremely surprised, as I don't see children sleeping rough on the streets very often. Is there an explanation for this? Is this something to do with the definition of homelessness?
I think that when we think about homeless people, most of us, like Simon, first think of people who are sleeping rough. But this figure refers to something different. This is the government's definition of homeless. That's Toby Lloyd of Shelter. To be included in those figures, you have to be accepted by a local authority as being homeless. That's what's known as being statutorily homeless. Being statutorily homeless means that your local authority has a responsibility to house you. The good news then is that those officially homeless people should in theory, and usually do, have somewhere to sleep. But it may well be a hostel or low-quality bed and breakfast accommodation. So this figure of 80,000 homeless children describes children who are being housed by their local council.
What does Shelter mean by '80,000 children homeless on Christmas Day'?
I asked Toby to put the number into context. Is it rising or falling? What we saw by about 2010 is that after a prolonged push from very, very high figures in the early noughties, councils had had quite a degree of success of getting people out of temporary accommodation and into settled homes. But then in the last three years, the pressures in the housing market, the pressure on rents and housing The cutback in particularly welfare support and council budgets has meant that, once again, those numbers are rising. Are you worried that people will see the posters and will misinterpret what you're saying and will think that you're making a claim about rough sleeping? No, because we're always absolutely clear that we are talking about people in temporary accommodation here.
I think people understand that you don't see whole families with small children on the streets. It's not something that tends to happen because there is that basic safety net that protects people. But what about people who literally are sleeping on the street? The statistics here are very patchy. For the last three years, the government has asked English local authorities to do a snapshot, tell them how many people they think are sleeping rough on one night in November. On a particular night, the estimate is that there are 2,300 people sleeping rough across England, of which around 450 are in London. This is Howard Sinclair, who runs a homeless charity called Broadway in London. To make this estimate, councils can either go out and count people on the street...
or they can make an estimate and send it to the government. Which reminds me of a famous saying about statistics from Josiah Stamp, a baron and economist of the early 20th century. Never forget that every one of these figures comes in the first instance from the village watchman who just puts down what he damn pleases. I'm just saying. Ideally, we'd have a thorough rolling database where numbers of rough sleepers are constantly being spotted and recorded. Now, that does exist in London. It's called Chain, and Howard Sinclair's charity runs it. Even this system, though, won't cover everyone. What we know about the numbers are that it is an underestimate, that there are people in alleyways, in doorways, in cars, who aren't counted on a particular night, who aren't known about...
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–1:45
2
What does Shelter mean by '80,000 children homeless on Christmas Day'?
1:45–5:28
3
How does the government's definition of 'statutory homelessness' explain large homelessness figures?
5:28–12:07
4
How many people are actually sleeping rough and how reliable are rough-sleeper counts?
12:07–24:02
5
Was there really a global wine shortage and what drove the media story?
24:02–28:11