Nerve 24 - Tackling Homelessness

Tackling Homelessness

By Judith Varley
Photograph from the Self Build Research Project

For 25 years, the Community Self Build Agency (CSBA) has proved an effective antidote to the trauma, isolation and despair of homelessness, simultaneously addressing the employment skills shortages ignored by so many politicians and big businesses. This comment is from a self builder:

'I was encouraged by the local council to apply for the CSBA scheme. I rang them and said 'I'm disabled, unemployed, on benefits and I know nothing of building.' They said, “You fit all the criteria.” I've never looked back.'

CSBA works with ordinary people/families desperate for homes but short of capital. Unskilled people can do much of the work on a building site; those with some skills, and learning additional skills to expand current ones, can do more. The contract with each builder involves one day a week release to attend building college. Furthermore, people improve their skills by sharing expertise amongst the group, and that all helps its members' cohesion. All work, 'sweat equity', is reflected in reducing the eventual cost of the homes. Over 140 projects have been successfully completed across the south from east of London to Cornwall. The only northern CSBA project is in Leeds.

Building and self recovery

One CSBA builder was about 30 and showed me his keys. 'This is the first home I've had; it's the real start to my life.'

He was abandoned as a baby to an orphanage. No-one cared about his progress at school, and he'd truanted, eventually leaving school with no ideas for his future. Aged 16, his bed went to a younger child, and he became homeless, living on the street. He dealt in street drugs, augmented with thefts, and served several short prison sentences.

Whist there, realising his future was a revolving prison door, unless he could break the cycle, he took action. So he used his last prison sentence to improve his numeracy and literacy, and achieved a handful of GCSEs. Then, soon after discharge, he joined a CSBA scheme. As well as being busy with the practical work on the building site, working alongside his fellow builders, this guy chose and became a qualified electrician - immediately useful in putting a roof over his own and his colleagues' heads, and thereafter enabling him to earn a legitimate living.

A recent project in Bristol was for men discharged from military service. Military regimes can institutionalise people so they forget how to run their own lives. Consequently, after discharge they are unfamiliar with managing independence, cooking, home, health, money, and the endless paperwork of modern lives.

In addition, they may be traumatised by their past experiences. So, without a supportive family / friends, it’s all too easy for them to drift into excessive drinking to drown the isolated reality of ‘civi – street’. Debts, street drugs, and homelessness frequently result. As with young people leaving orphanages or other institutional situations, long term hospitalisations, psychiatric wards, prisons etc., these are all vulnerable adults.

Building homes for a better life

Every CSBA project is individually detailed, its finances, supervision and support worked out, but all have had some financial support and commitment from local authorities. Once the sweat equity contribution has been accounted for and any funding provided by the builders themselves and support from various charities, foundations and trusts added, a conventional mortgage, or a shared ownership scheme with a local housing association, or a social housing rent is set up to cover the shortfall. The homes themselves may be flats or houses, they may be new build or refurbish, often small in number in any one development, typically 10 - 20 homes.

Some CSBA builders are in paid work, building in their spare time, others are unemployed; some are families, some single parents. Some builders have some money they can contribute and others none. Some builders already know each other, but many do not. For all groups, however they arise, the process creates both homes and community. It really works.

What exactly does CSBA do?

CSBA facilitates every aspect of the building projects, trouble-shooting or circumventing the practical hazards, often before the builders are aware of them or their potential to block or jeopardise the whole project. Many projects would falter, even fail, without that experienced input.

CSBA is an inspired approach to a pressing problem and has made a huge and lasting difference to hundreds of lives. Here are some more quotations from CSBA self builders themselves:

A roof over your head is fundamental to everything else.
As the self build grew, my self esteem grew. As my home grew, I grew. Each brick was like a building block in my new life. Brick by brick, our new lives have been built.
After military service I found myself back in Bristol without a job and a home and all the things I’d taken for granted in the army. Mentally it was tough. I was mixed up with the wrong people and turning to drink and drugs to prop me up … spending some time in prison for minor offences. I was homeless for 10 years and my health deteriorated, sleeping rough. Luckily, I met representatives from CSBA who offered me the chance of a lifetime, building my own home and learning new skills that would get me a job. Their motto is building homes to build people’s lives and this was the case for me… now clean and tidy, off drugs and alcohol and looking forward to being someone who contributes to the community. I am starting my own painting and decorating business.
The only way for me is up and I hope other ex-service personnel who have become homeless or disadvantaged get the same opportunity.

Investing in human lives

The annual cost to the state of homelessness is £26,000 per person/annum (2009 figures); youth unemployment runs at £4.8 billion (2007 figures from the Prince's Trust), and a young offender's place costs £60,000 /annum (2009 figure). All these costs are substantially reduced by CSBA and its activities.

For more information see www.communityselfbuildagency.org.uk

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