Homeless Child on a Protest March

Photograph

By: M. McKeown

Date: December 6, 1965

Source: Photo by M. McKeown/Express/Getty Images.

About the Photographer: This photograph is part of the collection at Getty Images, a worldwide provider of visual content materials to such communications groups as advertisers, broadcasters, designers, magazines, new media organizations, newspapers, and producers. No information is available about the photographer.

INTRODUCTION

This image of a young child on a homelessness protest march in 1965 reflects the housing crisis that was taking place in the United Kingdom at that time, and which was most poignantly portrayed in the influential TV drama Cathy Come Home (1966). This told the story of a young London couple with three children, evicted from their flat after the father lost his job because of an industrial injury, who spiraled into poverty, with the wife and children eventually living in a hostel. The drama had a major impact on the British public and has been attributed with putting homelessness onto the British political agenda and leading to the establishment of charities for the homeless such as Shelter and Crisis.

The homelessness crisis of the United Kingdom in the 1960s was largely due to the effects of post-war urban renewal programs which were moving residential housing and industry out of inner city areas, and creating a lack of affordable housing in the cities. Some people moved willingly to the suburbs, while others who lost their homes were offered alternative public housing or forced onto the private rental market. The new public housing developments mainly consisted of flats in tower blocks, which soon earned a poor reputation because of bad design features and concerns about safety, particularly following the collapse of the Ronan Point tower block in East London from a gas explosion in 1968. In the private rental market, families were often at the mercy of unscrupulous landlords, such as the infamous Peree Rachman, who exploited their tenants ruthlessly, provided very poor quality housing for extortionate rents, and used tactics of intimidation to evict those whose rents were protected by earlier rent control legislation. These practices were investigated in the 1963 Milner Holland report on 'Housing in Greater London' produced for the House of Commons Committee on Housing in Greater London, which made recommendations for London's future housing and on the need for legislation to protect tenants.

Until the late 1960s, government policy treated homelessness as a welfare issue rather than a housing problem, in effect blaming homeless people for their own inadequacies. If homeless people had children, these were often taken into care, or families were broken up with wives and children given places in hostels where fathers were not allowed to stay with them. However, the increasing media interest in homelessness put pressure on the government to address homelessness as a housing issue rather than a welfare problem. Around the same time, a report by J. W. B. Douglas, entitled "The Home and the School" highlighted the adverse impact that poor housing conditions, among other factors, had on the health, education and general well-being of children, focusing even more attention on the important role of good housing in people's lives.

In 1974, it was recommended by central government that local authorities should transfer responsibility for dealing with the homeless from social services to housing authorities, but many councils did not act on the recommendations at that time. As the problems of homelessness continued, the squatting movement emerged. Activists who were frustrated at the failure of local authorities to provide housing for the homeless moved families into unoccupied houses which had been acquired by local councils for demolition as part of urban renewal programs. Aggressive attempts by local authorities to evict the squatters were widely covered in the media, and it has been claimed that these increased public support for the movement. The government tried to control the practice of squatting by passing the Criminal Law Act of 1977, which made entering and remaining on property without permission a criminal offence. However, some local authorities entered into housing co-operatives with groups of squatters which grew into successful long-standing social housing schemes.

The Housing (Homeless Persons) Act of 1977 required local authorities to house the most vulnerable homeless people, including families with children, but only if they could prove they had not intentionally made themselves homeless, and had a connection with the local area. This was later replaced by the 1996 Housing Act, still based on a system whereby homeless people have to meet specified criteria before they can be provided with public housing.

PRIMARY SOURCE

HOMELESS CHILD ON A PROTEST MARCH

See primary source image.

SIGNIFICANCE

The problems of homelessness and poor quality housing in Britain have not been completely resolved. In 2006, research was released by the charity Shelter which claimed that the number of households living in temporary "bed and breakfast" accommodation increased dramatically from 6,400 in 1976, to more than 100,000 in 2006, while the building of public and 'social' housing for low-income income families fell by eighty-seven percent over this twenty-year period.

Since the 1980s, government policies have focused on increasing private home ownership and expanding the private rental sector through the use of tax incentives, reduced spending on public housing provision and the 'Right to Buy' scheme which enabled council house tenants to buy their properties at prices below market values. However, these policies later contributed to even more homelessness as soaring interest rates on mortgages led to many house repossessions and evictions. Home prices in many areas of the United Kingdom continue to be among the most expensive in the world.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Books

Conway, Jean. Housing Policy. Gildredge, 2000.

Kahn, Alfred J. Family Change and Family Policies in Great Britain, Canada New Zealand, and the United States. Clarendon Press, 1997.

House of Commons Committee on Housing in Greater London. Housing in Greater London. HMSO, 1965.

Web sites

The Guardian. "Homeless crisis deeper 40 years after landmark TV programme." February 15, 2006. <http://society.guardian.co.uk/communities/news/0,1709912,00.html> (accessed June 3, 2006).

Resource Information Service. "homelesspages." <http://www.homelesspages.org.uk/index.asp> (accessed June 3, 2006).