Nowhere to Call Home: Britain’s Cost-of-living Crisis Puts a Fresh Generation to the Streets

A rough sleeper’s tent on the footway of New Cross Road, Lewisham. Photograph: Soham Mitra, December 2022

Alois is looking emptily at the flowing crowd. The Westminster Underground Station is overflowing with travellers. A street musician is playing merry tunes. It is Christmas Eve.

Alois Krajnc is a Slovenian immigrant. To produce music for a television network, he came to the United Kingdom a few years ago. He is one among the faceless masses of the Capital who have lost their jobs and shelters due to the cost-of-living crisis.

London has seen a sharp rise of 24 per cent in the number of people sleeping rough on the streets, according to the data released by the Combined Homelessness and Information Network (CHAIN) in October, last year.

Among them, 1844 people are living on the streets for the first time.

“Sleeping rough is more challenging than we perceive. A homeless person rarely gets a full night’s sleep. He has to stay awake to protect the belongings from getting robbed or attacked,” says David Harris, a veteran Outreach Manager in the homeless field.

He adds, “Generally, members of the public are not very nice towards them. They get a lot of bullying from the general public who just look down on the homeless but do not understand their background, or their needs. Even sometimes, light bulbs were thrown on some of my clients.”

“I had a client who lived in a tent. And someone one day set the tent on fire. Inside his tent was everything— IDs, pictures of family members etc. When he returned, found everything had turned into ashes,” David recounts.

Mandla Adebowale is surviving under the open sky at Fordham Park in Lewisham. A quilt and a backpack are his only possession.

Being homeless, he feels “reduced to a nameless creature isolated on a park bench, existing like a prisoner on a remote island”. He feels cut off from society.

People often kick deliberately, urinate on him, or abuse him verbally. If someone recognises, humiliates the most.

After getting terminated from his job as a security officer in December, he is now working part-time as a nightshift warehouse operative. The salary from the new employment only covers his food and daily expenses but not accommodation and utility bills.

Protestors at Trafalgar Square demand a cutting down of costs for everyday essentials in a national demonstration called by the People’s Assembly. Photograph: Soham Mitra, November 2022

The United Kingdom experienced an annual rate of inflation of 11.10 per cent, an unprecedented increase in four decades, last October.

Inflations increase the prices of goods and services. It makes availing sustenance even harder by costing more for the same amount of purchase.

In Great Britain, 09 in every 10 adults has reported an elevated cost of living compared to the previous year, in a survey by Office for National Statistics (ONS) in December.

Another data released by the ONS has shown the growth of inflation has outpaced the growth of wages in the Retail, Property, Finance, and Information and Communication sectors between July and September, 2022.

Dr Ariane Agunsoye, lecturer in economics at Goldsmiths, University of London, says, “There are currently two main discussions being put forward as underlying reasons for inflationary pressures.”

“One is relating to demand-pull factors where demand for goods is higher than the supply and one is relating to cost-push factors due to rising costs of production or rising profit margins which arguably, we can see now.”

She further states, the governmental policies adopted by far may curb “demand-side inflationary pressures” but would “put more pressure on the everyday person. Especially, lower-income households will suffer from further wage restraints and rising costs for borrowing”.

People are more often feeling forced to skip meals, eat cheap but unhealthy foods, and survive on donations. Compared to 2020, in 2022, a 22 per cent surge in the demand for food parcels has been observed by YMCA, a charity for the homeless young.

Individuals are also cutting expenses on essentials, e.g., winter coats, haircuts and socialising, the observation unveiled.

The cost of private renting has also ascended amidst the cost-of-living crisis, data released by the ONS confirmed.

A coffin which signifies the risk of death for the vulnerable was displayed during the national demonstration called by the People’s Assembly at Trafalgar Square. Photograph: Soham Mitra, November 2022

Research from the housing charity Shelter has found that one in 12 private renters in England is under the threat of being homeless, this winter. The total figure accounts for affecting 941,000 lives.

Polly Neate, Chief Executive of Shelter, says, “Every day our emergency helpline advisers are taking gut-wrenching calls— from the mum who’s skipping meals to pay the rent to the family terrified they will be spending Christmas in a grotty homeless hostel.”

Annika Byrne, a psychology student, has experienced the same fate. Last August, she was evicted from her rented accommodation and had to couch surf at friends’ places.

Being in the city for the previous 20 years has gifted her with that support network.

Byrne recalls, “I was homeless for two full months and went to housing offices every day saying I need help, I’m type 1 diabetic, had PTSD, am disabled and very vulnerable. And it took over two months for the council to find me a place.”

She is now being housed temporarily by a local council. But to describe the depth of the crisis, she adds, “The housing crisis in London is insane. The rents, at the moment, have gone up so much, deposits are so expensive, that there are people who look like me, sound like me, well educated, seem quite like well-off, are actually homeless.”

A gust of chilly wind pours in. Alois slips into his sleeping bag. In cold, his face has swollen and turned reddish.

Every day two homeless people die in England and Wales.

London has witnessed the maximum number of deaths of homeless people in 2021, the latest data released by the Office for National Statistics, last November, has shown.

But the price of homelessness is not solely physical. It also leaves deep mental scars.

Crisis UK, a London-based charity that contributes to curbing homelessness, reported 45 per cent of homeless people are diagnosed with a mental health problem.

The figure ascends to 80 per cent when they are sleeping rough. Social stigma around the issue adds layers of complexity to the crisis.

Emma Haddad, Chief Executive of St Mungo’s, says, “Health and homelessness are inextricably linked, and it is an awful reality that sleeping rough causes chronic illness and can lead to premature death, with the average age of death for someone living on the streets being around 30 years earlier than the general population.”

“Every single death of a person experiencing homelessness is an absolute tragedy. Each one of these people was someone’s child, sister, or brother – all with their own hopes and dreams.”

Alois Krajnc has fallen asleep.

He dreams of a postal mail from his family. He dreams of putting up a water treatment plant on the Ganges and getting rich, one day. He dreams of “a happy world” with plenty of fortune.

Meanwhile, life slips away.

Note: Alois Krajnc, Annika Byrne and Mandla Adebowale are not original names. The names have been changed to protect their identities.