Blog #6-When poverty and homelessness become a criminal matter

According to The Guardian’s latest article there is a new law against squatting. A squatter's right is a legal allowance to use the property of another in the absence of an attempt by the owner to force eviction. There are almost a million empty properties in the country, while there are countless homeless or badly housed people. House building is falling far short of meeting demand. Many property owners see their houses simply as financial assets rather than homes for people to live in, and so are content to keep them empty while their investment grows in value. The Simon Community has been living and working with poor and homeless people since 1963, and we deplore this strategy call for a more humane and effective approach to social policy.

This is morally wrong. This is only going to increase both the numbers of people experiencing homelessness and the population of our already overcrowded prisons. With this law in position the government is criminalizing poverty and homelessness. As you can see the majorities of people in this country are compassionate enough to help those in need, but would never consider imprisonment to be the answer. People are now leaving with a criminal record on their plate, which will not benefit them in any way when it comes to ever finding a job. In my opinion, if there are all these empty homes, why can’t the government buy them from property owners? Why not create house building jobs that will give the homeless population not only a house to live in but a secure job, to meet the payment requirement? According to our books on page 128, it explains that poverty is a factor for crime, but places of great poverty have not always been places of great crime. The crime rate however in the situation, is only going to raise resulting in yet another global problem for the country.


 http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/oct/02/poverty-homelessness-criminal-matter-squatting