‘There is no way to move forward from a hostel to normal life’

THE first time Maya entered her temporary accommodation she says she was pinned against a wall by another resident, who accused her of stealing her room.

She found her new hostel in Hounslow so hostile she barely left her room for two weeks, and said it was almost worse than being on the street.

With thousands of West Londoners in short-term and emergency accommodation, and councils forking out tens of millions to private landlords to house them there, Maya is not alone.

She remembers: “This woman was a bit twisted in the head.

“She sort of wedged herself into me and pushed me into a corner.

“She showed me a bunch of text messages she had sent to the building manager, saying ‘this room was supposed to be my room – you took my room.’”

Maya, who the Local Democracy Service has chosen not to name to protect her from reprisals, said it was a sign of things to come.

Within a couple of weeks Maya witnessed a police raid, seeing three people hauled away.

She regularly sees people smoking marijuana in the corridors, and has had possessions stolen after leaving them for a moment in the communal areas.

She said: “You can’t confront those people, because you don’t know what you’re dealing with. The biggest rule of a hostel is keep yourself to yourself.”

Maya, now 27, said many of the residents leave first thing in the morning and only return late at night to avoid the people they live around.

Maya first became homeless in April last year after suffering side effects from medication for epilepsy She had suffered with migraines for years, but the medication left her with symptoms of depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety and light sensitivity.

Before that she said she was a “normal person”, and about to start her PHD, but before long she was taking 17 pills a day and sleeping in parks. It took until October, roughly five months after losing any kind of steady accommodation, for Maya to be housed.

“Every time I went in by myself in the council my case was rejected. They tried to get me into YMCA – it was rejected.”

She said it was not until she found a solicitor that she was taken seriously.

While the temporary digs have given her much-needed shelter, Maya said it did not offer any security or a base to work from.

“You don’t have a way to move forward from a hostel back into a normal lifestyle,” she said.

This has been Rayma’s experience as well. She has been in a hostel for almost a year and was threatened with homelessness after her marriage broke down.

Rayma, 28, remembers the night she spent in Ealing Underground Station before the council found her a room.

“I was sitting there all night and I just wanted to jump in front of the train. Somehow I just got a text reminder for one of my appointments.

“It was a Friday morning and I thought maybe I’ll try one more time and they’ll be able to help me.”

At that appointment, her therapist called an ambulance and Rayma found a bed at a hospital for a few days before being moved into the hostel. Before that, Rayma said, the council did not really take notice of her situation.

She says the hostel is always dirty, loud music plays into the night and she is too nervous to cook in the communal kitchen, instead surviving on cornflakes and takeaway sandwiches.

She said: “Till today I have never said anything, at least I’ve got these walls and this roof. If I’m fussy, they would probably throw me out.”

According to Quddous Ahmed, Maya’s and Rayma’s experiences are not unusual. Mr Ahmed runs the Hounslow Soup Kitchen and has heard similar stories from the people he helps.

He said the system today lacked humanity, treating the needy as cases not people, and said there needed to be a new focus on helping people rebuild themselves.

Mr Ahmed said temporary accommodation often became a hub for the homeless and more effort should be taken to use these for outreach.

“What I would say to local authorities is to have more of a presence in the places they are managing.”

There are thousands of people across Hillingdon, Hounslow and Ealing currently in temporary accommodation.

According to figures provided under the Freedom of Information Act, Ealing was housing 2,173 residents in temporary accommodation at the end of March. Of these, 302 were housed in B&Bs, 114 were in hostels, 1,279 were in other private sector properties, 305 were in licensed annexes to the council and 173 were in their own homes.

At the same time, Hillingdon recorded 460 households in temporary accommodation and Hounslow reported having 643 households at the start of June.

Council payments to private landlords to house residents also stretches into the tens of millions.

Ealing paid out more than £37 million to private providers to house those in need of emergency accommodation in the 2018/19 year. Hillingdon spent more than £3.6m and Hounslow spent £439,481 in 2017/18, after the recovery of some costs.

However, this last figure does not take into account other types of emergency accommodation, which the council classes separately.

With accommodation such as bed and breakfasts, private sector leases and private licence agreement taken into account, Hounslow’s spending jumps to more than £8m.

For all three boroughs, spending to private landlords has dropped in recent years, with Hillingdon cutting their payments almost in half.

Hounslow Council claims in their draft Housing Strategy 20192024 to have reduced rough sleeping from 32 in the 2014 rough sleeping count to 18 in November last year.

Mr Ahmed however said these figures were not accurate and that they down-played the problem.

A recent report from the Combined Homelessness and Information Network (CHAIN) also paints a far grimmer picture.

The report, focused on Ealing, said 382 people were seen rough sleeping by outreach teams in the borough between April 2018 and March this year.

This represented a 7% increase compared to the year before. More than half of these people (57%) were new homeless, while 29% had been recorded as homeless before, and 14% were returners.

Of the new homeless, CHAIN reported 70% were seen rough sleeping just once.

The most common reason