Homeless people to be fined up to £1,000 for sleeping rough.

suddenly im reminded of the yee old word

*fee fi fo fum I smell the blud of un English mun , bee he alive or bee he dead , ill grind hes bones to make my bread*

giants !

funbox

I want to see homeless and all good people stand together and chase the coppers off and then stand outside city hall and not leave until they do.

Anyway, their fines are toilet paper, probably literally.

Hackney and London is no part of my world, but I guarantee if my local council even dreamed of pulling something like this the I and many others would be protesting outside the town hall and shaming them into changing their cruel mindset.

All council budgets have been cut through 'austerity' and last year ours tried to slash the funding of our homeless hostel. The outcry was impressive and the council eventually had to back down. They found another way to save money instead, fortnightly rubbish collection instead of weekly.
I prefer that to vulnerable people sleeping on the streets, and it was nice to see that my community cares about others less fortunate than ourselves.
If the people of Hackney don't want it then they should tell their council, if they care.

Lol, "homeless" people get fined for stuff al the time: Loitering, trespassing, open container, blah blah. They muse at that, mostly. If they had the money to sleep indoors they would. Becuase they are stuck outdoors and everything associated with that is illegal these days, they get a load of tickets for this and that. Once the fines and failure to appears build up to "atrocious levels" they are thrown in jail for a time to "pay off" the fines.

I knew a guy who used to tell them, you mean you're going to take me to jail, give me a shower, hot meals and a cot?

"Lets go!"

The system is a bureaucratically fuzzy barrier when it comes to "less thans". The Policy (enforced by the police) is grey area and tends to depend on officers moods. Waking people up in the night and telling them to move on, take it somewhere else and not on my beat is the usual approach. They have to sleep nights, too.

Ticketing them and then serving warrants when they can't pay is a joke. But hey, "outdoors" living being what it is, warm up the grey bar hotel, get the clean sheets and showers ready, here comes another transient, vagrant, derelict, bummy, homeless person.

ha! do they really expect the homeless to carry 1k on them? this is priceless.

a reply to: andy06shake

Incredible idea. Some cities are about to make a ton of loot. It's like fining a toddler ten thousand bucks for pissing themselves.

a reply to: Legman

Bastard should have been potty trained

Yet another case of the demonization and marginalisation of the most needy and vulnerable in our society.

I was in the unfortunate position to be homeless for a relatively short period of time in the mid-80's - it wasn't a pleasant experience.
People find themselves in such positions for a multitude of reasons and its typical of the current mindset that society seeks to punish and ostracise them rather addressing the core reasons of why people find themselves homeless and adrift from society.

Its further confirmation that we are regressing towards something akin to a Victorian like society along with all the social injustices and inequalities that went with that time.

originally posted by: Freeborn
Its further confirmation that we are regressing towards something akin to a Victorian like society along with all the social injustices and inequalities that went with that time.

I guess it depends on where you live. There are excellent council funded homeless hostel and outreach services where I am. The council did try to slash the funding last year but there was local outcry by us council taxpayers and they were forced to back down, and cut our bin collections instead.

Councils can only get away with whatever the people allow. If Hackney council forges ahead with this then it is the people of Hackney who have allowed it. It is a reflection of the local taxpayers as much as their council.
Apathy, and 'I'm alright Jack' by the community is just as distasteful to me as the council bringing out this new bye-law.

How can you fine a homeless person £1000 when they can't afford to home themselves in the first place?

Sounds daft to me!

a reply to: Nova937

Being homeless does not stop UK citizens receiving benefits for food and the like. Single person aged 18-24 will get £57.90 per week, and aged 25+ it is £73.10 per week.
The council will slap the £100 penalty, then when it is not paid, apply for an attachment of benefits order with the Dept of Work and Pensions who pay the benefit to the homeless person. This will be deducted from the benefit automatically and transferred to the council at a rate typically £5.00 per week.
The benefit recipient will have no way to avoid this deduction.

a reply to: ShayneJUK

Can you imagine if lots of homeless folk turn up in the area in order to get arrested , great no money to pay the fine so of to prison , three meals a day warm bed to sleep in and a roof over their heads , and when released they will get help to find accommodation , find work and financial help until they start work .

When the prisons are over flowing with homeless people i think they will have to rethink their stupid laws .

a reply to: tom.farnhill

It won't happen. The civil penalty is not a criminal fine, it becomes a crime if you refuse to provide your details to the enforcement officer, and/or if you refuse to pay it. As most homeless folk will be in receipt of a welfare benefit the council will go straight for a weekly deduction from their benefits as I mentioned above.

Regarding arrest of homeless people, the police will only do it as a last resort, and the person will be back on the streets within hours. Prison is not dished out here in the UK as in the US, and as far as rehab on release, nope, there is very little help finding accommodation for released prisoners here.

The typical cycle is homeless on street-commit crime-arrested-released-job centre to claim benefits again-homeless on the street.

a reply to: tom.farnhill

Dont be so sure about that. Our prison system is already buckling under the weight of all the drug dependent junkies never mind the other mentally ill people who should be receiving psychiatric care rather than serving jail time. I dont think they have the space to accommodate our homeless population, criminalized or otherwise.

originally posted by: zazzafrazz
It's so the can get them into jail due to non fine payment.....

100% accurate.

Homelessness is a crime, and they'll do what it takes to get these people off the street and locked up into a system that makes the rich richer.

Just one more step on the road we've been traveling for so long.

originally posted by: andy06shake
a reply to: tom.farnhill

Dont be so sure about that. Our prison system is already buckling under the weight of all the drug dependent junkies never mind the other mentally ill people who should be receiving psychiatric care rather than serving jail time. I dont think they have the space to accommodate our homeless population, criminalized or otherwise.

You really think they'll let that stop them?

"The prison systems are full!" they'll cry. The proposed solution won't be to stop arresting people for no reason, it will be to raise the taxes or borrow more money from your local puppetmasters to build more prisons.

a reply to: lordcomac

I dont think it will stop them in anyway. They will simply build more private prisons to accommodate more inmates, after all correctional facilities are a growth industry, just look at our American cousins across the pond. In the short term however our current HMPs will be forced to house anyone unfortunate enough to receive prison time.

a reply to: andy06shake

Totally agree.
I'm actually wondering have the police been ignoring homeless folk in Hackney due to being under resourced, so the council have dreamed up this civil penalty which will force the police to attend if one of their 'enforcement officers' calls them.
The council guaranteed to get their £100 through deductions in the homeless persons benefits, and it is likely the person will leave Hackney to an area without such penalties. One less for Hackney to deal with.

I understand there has been a petition which has been supported quite well there, but if it's just the classic facebook type protest where nobody does anything other than click a button, I can't see it will change much.

When my local council tried to slash the funding for our homeless hostel and outreach services I was one of many hundreds after work and weekends shouting 'scum' outside the town hall. We had a 'real' petition signed by people, and the local media supported the people. The people won.

If Hackney council get away with this then it is as much a reflection of the people of Hackney as it is the council itself.

a reply to: grainofsand
By cutting bin collections that will mean ppl will be made redundant. Redundancy is one of the main contributing factors to homelessness. So indirectly, the funding of that hostel could well be increasing the homeless population. This is the problem with funding such ventures, it has a knock on affect. You would be distraught if your job security was jeopardised to fund people, who 90% of them, have made poor choices throughout life.

a reply to: grainofsand
The people of hackney don't want homeless people on the street, like every other town.

People forget we are creatures of habit. You provide for people they will keep coming like stray cats. Like the benefit culture we have in britain, why make better of the situation when food shelter and running water are available rent free with no worries about bills.There is a vast network of homeless people in the loop of current events ( often through the big issue avenues). They will tell over homeless people of these shelters where eventually they will be operating beyond capacity. Once that fails you have a larger homeless population in the area to begin with.

These hostels are often public funded, and in deprived areas like hackney people need all the money they need due to high living costs in london