22/09/2019
The last few days have seen a few news stories abut the use of shipping containers and disused office blocks. Today, I have read further abut the conditions these people are being exposed to.
I'm sure that a few people will look at the above picture and suggest that the living spaces don't look too unpleasant and that the residents should be happy to have been provided with somewhere to live.
However, I'm pretty sure most of these people would refuse to live in such conditions themselves.
According to the information I have read today, these very small and ill-equipped 'homes' cost the council about £35,000 each. That's a lot of money for a converted shipping container that doesn't provide adequate living space or suitable conditions.
Lulu Abu Baker is a 38 year old single mother who has lived in her two bedroom container home with her four children for nine months. Their living area includes a small kitchen and has no furniture aside from a small table and one chair. The kitchen are contains just a single hob, a fridge, a freezer and a microwave. There is no oven and, with such restricted tools for food preparation, "a quick egg or tuna sandwich" is frequently classed as an evening meal.
The council has apparently stressed that most of its container homes do have ovens. Most! So, this means they openly admit that Lulu is not alone in having to create meals for her young children without suitable facilities.
How on earth can the council have failed to ensure a basic minimum service level for its tenants? These young children are being failed; their nutritional health is being put at risk.
The inadequate facilities also mean the residents share washroom facilities, sometimes with antisocial behaviour being forced on them. A mother and her young vulnerable children having to share facilities with drug-taking youths is not an appropriate solution to the housing crisis.
Then there's fact that a container is not a suitable thing to turn into a home. The physical attributes of containers mean that they are unbearably on hot summer days and far too cold during the winter. The council's answer to this is to offer residents extra fans in the summer months, and extra heaters in the winter. This is a completely inadequate response to the problem.
Instead, the council should be providing more suitable accommodation.
Ealing Council runs three sites, with over 100 container homes, and has plans to build a fourth. This means even more people being put in inappropriate accommodation.
I'm sure, additionally, there will be people saying this is all down to a Conservative government. And yet, Ealing is a council with a significant Labour majority; 57 Labour councillors, eight Tories and four Liberal Democrats.
I could be wrong, but I would offer the opinion that this would not actually happen in a council that had a LibDem majority.
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