The governments answer? Temporary accommodation, but this can never be a solution, only a aid to buy more time to solve the problem, yet there doesn’t seem to be any real progress in permanently solving the problem. So many lives are destroyed on a problem that could so easily be prevented yet is currently vast.
People’s reasons for living on the streets vary, whether forced or there because they do not feel safe in their current accommodation, no case should be ignored, obviously there are priorities yet because someone has a home they could return to it doesn’t mean they’ll be safe there. The reasons seem to be ignored, im certain that if more time went into trying to stop people leaving or being made to leave their homes in the first place then there wouldn’t even be need for this letter. Abuse, relationship breakdowns, mortgages, debt, pressure, stress, loss of income and sexual abuse are just a few of the many motives for people to leave home, none of them are impossible to overcome.
Leaving an abusive background to go and live on the streets is just as bad, young people living on the streets face depression, serious illnesses, poverty, prostitution and mental, physical and sexual abuse. Death rates during the winter months are the worst; can you imagine being on your own over the festive season? Nobody to share Christmas or new years with, no presents or feasts? I know I and many others could never begin to understand such a cruel fate yet you can help change this, by building more shelters, giving more money towards benefits, changing the laws about homelessness, encouraging open mindedness about employing people who are homeless and better training schemes for school leavers, by doing this the numbers would drop and self pity would give way to hope and confidence.
I travel down to Cardiff my local city twice a week to help as much as possible, buying hot drinks for the homeless and talking to them; sometimes loneliness is as much of a killer as the bitter temperatures. I have become close friends with nineteen-year-old Jeremy Jenkins, who I met lying on a thin cardboard box, and got to know over a period of months, his insight into his lifestyle has opened my eyes to the real problems facing him everyday. At the age of thirteen he ran away from home due to his father’s violence, his instincts led him to Cardiff where he learnt to live, if it can be classed as living, scrounging for money to buy food and hoping every night that the next day will be better. He said “People say I should help myself, they don’t understand, its hard to try and get a job when you hardly have the energy to stand because you haven’t ate properly for days upon days, where am I supposed to summon the strength from to get rejected? I wish I could tell people how I feel, I here mothers shout at their children ‘Don’t give that dirty lazy good for nothing money, he’s probably got a nice car parked round the corner and a huge home really’ It upsets me to think I have no real existence anymore, if I die nobody will know” How can that statement be ignored? Surely anybody with a heart couldn’t.
So I ask of you, have a heart; don’t dismiss homelessness as being less of a priority than other problems that face our modern society, technology has advanced greatly, please help to advance peoples opinions.
Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to read this letter, I understand that you must get a lot of letters demanding changes, I demand nothing, I just pray that you think about the people you would help.
Thanks again,
Yours sincerely,
Laura Obradovic