The Homeless Register...

This isn't exactly a current affair, but it's of equal importance and I would like to share my disgust

My knowledge of the timescale of this issue is, I admit, sketchy, but I do not that it has been an inexplicable problem since at least September/October 2011.

Shepway's Homeless Register serves to offer Council Housing free of charge to those that they believe are entitled to it. The system works on a simple points basis, whereby the person in need of housing is allocated a given number of points according to their situation. I believe (but I am not certain) that the minimum number of points one can be allocated is 25, and the maximum 250.

Now, it baffles me how they can possibly decide which homeless person needs housing more urgently than another. Well, I do happen to know that if you are a teen mother, your chances go up tenfold (that's an exaggeration, I do not know how much they go up, but it is by a LOT). If you are either mentally or physically disabled, your chances are also increased. However, to be allocated 250 points, you must be a combination of both of these things.

Let's create a scenario here - and I am not making any stereotypical judgment on teenage parents and/or the handicapped - of two young girls, both aged 16 who are homeless due to whatever reason. One of these 16 year old girls has acted promiscuously from the age of 13 (and this is NOT unbelievable) landing her with a 9 month old baby, and no school qualifications. She's also an underage smoker and is addicted to cannabis, giving her some mental instabilities. The other is still at school, is hoping to complete A-Levels and go off to University to hopefully make something of herself one day and be successful. Now on this points allocation system, the 16 year old at school gets a minimum of 25 points, whereas the other gets the maximum of 250.

This is, quite clearly, a highly unjust system. I am not arguing that the 16 year old mother should not receive housing; I am arguing that these two girls are one and the same. They both have promising future prospects. It may not seem so, but if the first 16 year old girl was offered financial and emotional support for her baby, and a rehabilitation/counselling service for her drug addiction, assuming she took both willingly, she would then be in the same position as the second girl, and they would then both be in healthy competition to find a job/continue studying.

However, this is NOT the kind of competition which is created. The competition which this apparently effective system encourages has much more devastating effects. The second 16 year old girl, on realising that without being either pregnant or disabled, or even both, she will be forced to sleep on the roadside, enters into a much more sadistic competition. She immediately begins to practise unsafe sex in the hope that she will be landed pregnant in order to become entitled to a place to live, befriends unsafe and abusive people in order to have free access to drugs, and then becomes hooked so that she can bear the pain of her life as it is, opposed to as it was.

Now, I wonder, how can governments and councils justify this?

It's simple.

They claim to be helping those who need it most, when in fact, they are not being helped. Help is not offering these troubled youngsters places to live and then leaving them to wreak even more havoc onto themselves. Help is offering them comfort and stability, in whatever form they need. For some, like the second girl I described, this may only be a place to live, but for others, i.e. the first girl, much more is needed to ensure their safety and security.

This is why I totally disagree with the way things are worked out both in the homeless register, and in the welfare system, and in lesser institutions controlled by the governments and councils. Individuals should be treated as individuals... Not statistical data.

I would love to hear more thoughts on this, probably, rather controversial issue. Please comment!

Thanks