THOUSANDS of families, and individuals, were either homeless or at risk of homelessness last winter.
The Northern Echo spoke to a woman who sees the reality of poverty on Teesside and she thinks authorities need to be doing more to help people from falling through the cracks.
Susan Gill runs a homeless café in Middlesbrough and although she is glad that an effort was made to house homeless people in the first year of the pandemic, she says the majority of homeless people were not given adequate support.
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She said: “They were housed and put into temporary accommodation but because a lot of these people are drug addicts, they needed more than just that, they needed more support, especially for mental health, so a lot of them ended up back on the streets.
“Because of the circumstances of addiction, it’s not as easy as just housing them, and problem solved, and even if that was enough, there’s not enough rehab beds out there.
“Obviously I’m happy providing meals and stuff for them but it does feel like there’s too much responsibility on charities.”
About 58 people walk through the doors of Susan’s café on Princes Road each day and Susan is used to seeing many of the same faces sitting in their usual seats.
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Homelessness is not an issue specific to Middlesbrough, as new figures show nearly 4,000 families or individuals were without a stable roof over their heads between October and December last year.
Susan said: “With the cost of living going up for everyone, I don’t know how homeless people or the ones who’ve been put into temporary accommodation are supposed to survive.
“It’s no surprise that people like this turn to crime. If you haven’t got food or a change of underwear, you'll just go shoplifting because you're that desperate.
“And then there’s the storms we’ve had. I’ve heard people say to me ‘I’ll do something bad and get locked away, because I need a bed.’”
Middlesbrough Borough Council was appraoched for comment but did not respond in time for publication.
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