Introduction
Campaigning Organisations
Homelessness and Empowerment
Hostels
Introduction
Although homelessness had been a feature of life in Britain for centuries, its escalation during the decades after the Second World War took the phenomenon to a new scale. The 1960s witnessed huge slum clearance programmes and a declining private rented sector which caused a severe shortage of housing in cities like Birmingham, London, Liverpool and Glasgow. In addition, twenty years later the numbers of people sleeping rough increased dramatically largely as a result of inadequate institutional support for mental health patients, restrictions on benefits for young people and a lack of affordable accommodation. The problem fails to recede today as increasing numbers of refugees excluded from state support are finding themselves to be yet another group of people to be added to the category of 'the homeless.'
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Campaigning Organisations
In response to the housing crisis that began in the 1960s, a number of campaign organisations and charities were set up with the aim of challenging government policy and public opinion on the issue of homelessness. Amongst these were CHAR (Campaign Against Homelessness and Rootlessness), Crisis and Shelter. Shelter, which was launched in December 1966 (the same month as Jeremy Sandford and Ken Loach's influential television drama 'Cathy Come Home') highlighted the plight of people living in such conditions and by doing so exploded the myth that only people living on the streets were homeless. The organisation challenged the official figures of homeless people in Britain which failed to include the hundreds of thousands of people in properties 'unfit for human habitation' (The Times, 12/9/1969). Its 'Face the Facts' campaign urged the government to change its definition of homelessness from a literal one of not having a roof over one's head to one which considered more thoroughly the meaning of the word 'home.'
Campaign organisations produced many reports, magazines and poster campaigns in order to raise consciousness on the issue of poor housing and homelessness, and an important part of this involved the use of images. Documentary photographer Nick Hedges, collections of whose work can be found in the City Archives, photographed slum properties in parts of Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, East London, Bradford and Burnley between 1968 and 1971 for one of Shelter's campaigns. These images provide a stark illustration of the dilapidated and unsanitary conditions facing up to three million people in Britain which the charity claimed ought to be considered as homeless.
Whilst these photographs served as crucial evidence in the case against poor housing conditions (as illustrated in the image above), they also represented a site of struggle for the photographer. Hedges pledge to represent the real world of bad housing so that the truth would change people's attitudes (Hedges 1979:161) conflicted with the charity's strategy of selecting and presenting images of vulnerability and despair to provoke sympathy and a favourable response to its campaigns. Although such images were effective, they did conceal the fact that many homeless people were not stereotyped helpless victims but people who lived and fought against the difficult circumstances they were faced with. Amongst the photographs taken by Hedges for Shelter are images of daily struggle by people who were not defeated by the conditions in which they lived, but raised their families with pride.
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Homelessness and Empowerment
Whilst some organisations lobbied for policy change, others sought to break the cycle of homelessness by empowering homeless people. The Big Issue, a company founded in 1991, was established to enable homeless and vulnerably housed people to empower themselves by selling its magazine. Selling the magazine provided an alternative to begging and most importantly enabled homeless people to help themselves so that they would not be reliant on the charity of others. A Big Issue seller in Birmingham, whose story is one among the Millennibrum oral histories, describes how her experience of selling the magazine was a useful tool in helping her to make positive changes in her life:
"I have been selling the Big Issue now for about two years and I find that through selling the Big Issue I have met a lot of nice people. I have also had to guard myself against getting involved with not so nice people which you… when I first started doing the Big Issue I felt I was more prone to meet less desirable people. After clearing all the clutter out now, I just don’t even entertain the idea of anybody who I feel is a negative influence. I have met some very very special and wonderful people and have ended up with some good friends and a place to live and starting to get things together. I have been doing a computer course and I am hoping to carry on doing that, take it further…" [MS 2255/2/052 p16]
In 1995 the Big Issue Foundation - a charity - was launched to provide support in employment, training and health to Big Issue sellers and other homeless people across Britain. The notion of self-help is integral to the Big Issue's philosophy and has made it distinct among organisations in Britain that are designed to help homeless people. It demonstrates that homeless people have been at the forefront of shifting negative perceptions of homeless people as vagrants and have actively participated in creating solutions to improve their lives.
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Hostels
In addition to the establishing of campaigning organisations charities founded hostels for homeless people in order to plug the gap in state provision of accommodation. In Birmingham St Basil's opened the city's first night shelter in 1972 to deal with the problem of street homelessness among young men [MS 2478/B/3/27 Annual Report 1993-94]. Following the success of the shelter which became the Boot hostel, it also began to provide hostel space for women and additional support services to meet the various needs of homeless people since it was not simply accommodation that could tackle the issue of homelessness. Educational, emotional and employment support were an important part of confronting the social issues that contributed to the problem such as relationship breakdown, unemployment and drug or alcohol addiction.
Whilst hostels provided vital support for homeless people, there were many in which conditions meant that they could not provide a stable home for their residents. For many residents it could be quite a bleak experience.
An insight into the conditions at a hostel during the 1960s is provided in the duty officer's report covering events at Rowton House held in the City Archives. Rowton House, which later became the Highgate Hotel, opened in Birmingham in 1903 to provide cheap but good quality hotel accommodation for approximately 800 single homeless men seeking employment. The hotel was designed by the architect of London's Rowton Houses which were founded by Victorian philanthropist Lord Rowton. From the 1950s onwards, as the Rowton organisation turned its attention to higher class commercial hotels, the condition of its homeless hostels declined. The deplorable conditions at Highgate Hotel were reported in the national press:
"In this depressing five storey pile there were only nine baths for the 450 inmates. The WCs lacked doors and seats, and no toilet paper was provided. The corridors were dark and cavernous. Bedsheets were discoloured, and a 25p fine was imposed for bedwetting." (Sunday Times, 23/9/1978)
Entries in the report book from 1965-1967 reveal that although it provided a roof over one's head, the hostel could not provide a secure home and stable life. Violence, theft of money and belongings and illness were common occurrences that befell residents.
Nevertheless, hostels were an important resource and provided a temporary home for many people in difficult circumstances.
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Author: Sarah Dar
Main Image: Photograph by Nick Hedges [City Archives: MS 2399/1/9]
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