Renting in Greater Manchester? Shelter needs your stories!

Shelter_Ross

Hi Cakeguts, I'm sorry if you couldn't find what you were looking for on our website. We offer advice to everyone - no matter what their situation is - 365 days a year. Unfortunately we can't always offer legal representation due to eligibility criteria and legal aid cuts, and this frustrates us too. For help if you’re sleeping rough we often recommend contacting our friends at Crisis, St Mungo’s or Streetlink, who do brilliant work providing services and support for rough sleepers.

At Shelter we help millions with housing problems every year, so we know better than anyone where a change in the law could make all the difference. We campaign to get these changes made, tackling the root causes of the housing crisis so that, one day, no one will have to turn to us for help.

Our recent campaign highlighting the number of homeless children is informed by the experiences we see through our services, where too often children are hidden away in hostels; sharing kitchens and bathrooms with strangers, and sharing a bedroom with the rest of their family. Children that are homeless are more likely to be in poor health, and more likely to suffer mental health problems.

Cakeguts

Shelter_Ross wrote: »

Hi Cakeguts, I'm sorry if you couldn't find what you were looking for on our website. We offer advice to everyone - no matter what their situation is - 365 days a year. Unfortunately we can't always offer legal representation due to eligibility criteria and legal aid cuts, and this frustrates us too. For help if you’re sleeping rough we often recommend contacting our friends at Crisis, St Mungo’s or Streetlink, who do brilliant work providing services and support for rough sleepers.

At Shelter we help millions with housing problems every year, so we know better than anyone where a change in the law could make all the difference. We campaign to get these changes made, tackling the root causes of the housing crisis so that, one day, no one will have to turn to us for help.

Our recent campaign highlighting the number of homeless children is informed by the experiences we see through our services, where too often children are hidden away in hostels; sharing kitchens and bathrooms with strangers, and sharing a bedroom with the rest of their family. Children that are homeless are more likely to be in poor health, and more likely to suffer mental health problems.

In my opinion you can't do anything about the choices that parents make that cause them and their children to end up in hostels. If someone makes the choice to have a child you do not have the right to tell them not to. Once they have made that choice to have a child they are then responsible for that child not you. So basically if a child is in a hostel that is because their parent or parents have made choices that means that their child will be in this position. There is nothing that anyone can do about this because it is the choice of the parents and unless you want to dictate to people what they do in their private lives you cannot stop it.

What I object to is that you are using the choices of these people to raise money for your charity and to earn your salary. You are attempting to raise money based on something that quite honestly is actually none of your business.

What I am complaining about is that you are quite happy to raise money based on the choices that parents make for their children but you do nothing for people who are really homeless. I am not looking for accommodation for rough sleepers for myself I just want to raise awareness of housing problems of people who are disabled by mental illness. They have no choice. The mental illness isn't caused by choices they have made. You don't choose to have a genetic disorder.

You are a homeless charity you should be helping ALL homeless people not just those that make a good story.

Children whose parents have housed them in hostels are not homeless. These children are not in these hostels on their own they are there because of the choices made by their parents. You say that rough sleepers need to contact other charities for support but you are a homeless charity and you are not interested in finding homes for them? Surely if a child is in danger in a hostel it is not your job to intervene that is the job of a social worker or what are we paying social workers for? So it seems to me that you are a charity that will interfere in the choices that a parent has made for their child's life but you are not willing to help find homes for people with mental illness who have no choice?