After attending the event ‘Homelessness in London: why youth homelessness needs its own solution’ (full recording here) organised by London School of Economics on the 7th November, I wanted to share how it went. The event consisted of a presentation of different facts and statistics revolving around youth homelessness and then moved to a Q&A session which was open to the audience.
Many important topics were discussed such as the staggering numbers of youth homelessness as around 136,000 young people (#PlanForThe136k) faced homelessness last year in the UK as well as highlighting the lack of awareness that is being brought to this issue. The group of speakers which included Ellie Benton, Meghan Roach, Alicia Walker and the chair, Dr Tania Burchardt all seemed genuinely passionate about solving the issue of youth homelessness within the UK. This deeply resonated with me as I am a member of the ‘Young Residents in Partnership’ project, supported by Partnership for Young London in collaboration with MTVH, Hyde and Clarion, and the aim of this project is to advocate for young people’s voices to be heard within housing policy.
Me and other peer researchers from Partnership for Young London managed to speak with one of the speakers, Alicia Walker, who is the Assistant Director of Activism and Advocacy at Shelter. She made an interesting point about homelessness being a political issue as she explained how during Covid, the government were able to house rough sleepers in hotels showing that they have the resources to house rough sleepers but choose not to. This is why more awareness needs to be brought to such important issues, and it will encourage major stakeholders to take more actions against issues such as youth homelessness.
One thing that stood out to me was that collaboration was essential, and I agree as for this project, we not only have to collaborate with the Housing Associations (HAs) but also other organisations such as New Horizon Youth Centre to help us understand what HAs could be doing better when it comes to listening to young people’s voices within the housing sector. If HAs and local authorities can’t listen to young people’s voices when it comes to an issue as big as homelessness, why would they listen when it comes to housing policy. This is why collaboration is the main idea I took away from the event.
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