There are currently 71,400 couch surfers in the United Kingdom, making it the largest form of homelessness in a country that many consider to be undergoing a housing crisis, and the experience of having unstable accommodation is having disastrous mental health impacts, a leading homelessness charity reported on Monday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd December, 2019) There are currently 71,400 couch surfers in the United Kingdom, making it the largest form of homelessness in a country that many consider to be undergoing a housing crisis, and the experience of having unstable accommodation is having disastrous mental health impacts, a leading homelessness charity reported on Monday.
Couch surfing, defined as those who sleep on a couch or a floor of a property owned or rented by someone else, has detrimental mental and physical health effects, the Crisis charity stated in a press release.
The charity conducted 114 face-to-face interviews with current or recent couch surfers. Sixty percent of respondents had moved property in the space of 12 months, while 40 percent had moved more than five times in the space of a year.
The Primary cause of the couch surfing epidemic in the United Kingdom is an ongoing issue with affordable housing. Over half of survey respondents stated that the inability to pay for housing rent led to periods spent couch surfing. Additionally, cuts to housing benefits were a factor cited by 38 percent of respondents in the report.
According to the charity, many of the respondents had applied to local housing authorities in the UK for support, yet many cases had yet to be resolved, forcing people to spend extended periods of time couch surfing.
On Wednesday, another UK homeless charity, Shelter, released a report which stated the numbers of households considered to be homeless or at the risk of becoming homeless has increased by 11.4 percent in the course of a year.
In August, Nick Roberts, project manager at the Windsor Homeless Project, told Sputnik that far-reaching policy failures and a fixation on Brexit was preventing the government from alleviating what many are calling a housing crisis.
Newly re-elected Prime Minister Boris Johnson did not include any mention of fixing the "housing crisis" during the Queen's Speech delivered in parliament on Thursday, instead only vowing to take steps to aid first-time home owners. In the Conservative Party pre-election manifesto, the Tories pledged to build over a million new homes in the United Kingdom.
