To the best of my knowledge, the homeless sector does not track how relationships cause homelessness. Yet, death in the family or divorce, among other relationship failures, does play a significant role in the cause of homelessness.
I met Nathan in Central London. He was begging for money in a Tube Station trying to keep dry from the wet weather. Nathan was looking after his mom. After she passed away from cancer, the landlord evicted Nathan, and he didn’t have anywhere to go but to sleep rough outside homeless.
A death in the family is a familiar story on this channel. Often, the person who passes away brings in the income, so after their death, the family member doesn’t have a lot of options.
This has been a real fear for me. My mother just passed away a few weeks back. For the last few years, I was her caregiver. The state came close to taking the house a few times for her healthcare, and there are zero jobs in our small town.
No matter what the crisis, we need to be able to provide a safety net for people so they don’t end up on the streets. Besides the obvious health and safety issues, homelessness is expensive for taxpayers. We need to prevent homelessness from happening in the first place, and if someone does end up sleeping rough, we need to get them the help they need as quickly as possible.
