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All of us, to a greater or lesser extent, are concerned about the impact of the increase in the cost of living on our personal circumstances. Our supporters and concerned members of the general public are asking how this will affect people who are already at risk of homelessness and whether there is an increase in homelessness as a result.
Framework runs a variety of services supporting people living in the community. One of the most important of these is the Homelessness Prevention Service in Nottingham. The Service Manager is Taz Foster and we asked him to give us a run down on how things are at present.
Taz says we have not seen a rise in homelessness yet but that is expected to become a problem in the coming months.
The rise in rents in the past couple of years has made accessing and maintaining tenancies all the harder and this is going to get even more difficult as time goes on.
He says that the service is being approached for help by people who have not been in trouble before and are now having problems paying their rent. There is a concern that people will resort to unsafe or unaffordable borrowing to get round the problem.
We offer support to help people with their budgeting but there is a limit to how useful that is if you don’t have enough money in the first place. The stress this causes has an effect on people’s physical and mental wellbeing.
The knock on effect is an increase in demand for our services and the services provided by other agencies and the problem can only be mitigated by significant additional targeted funding.
Please watch the full video here and if you wish to support our efforts to tackle homelessness make a donation here.
