Homeless not being ignored Howard said - But they are!

Back in the early 1990s housing was a real issue on the Isle of Man - you could say nothing has changed. The issue wasn’t really a TGWU matter but we literally had people turning up at Transport House because there was nowhere else to go. I once even had a couple in the foyer on one occasion with one of them threatening to commit suicide.

We harangued the DHSS and the Local Government Department and used the few decent contacts we had in the Keys to elicit action. Give the government of the day its due it responded and both social housing and first time buyer initiatives including cheap ‘build your own plots’ were made available with government laying the services on the sites it eased the crisis.

I was never very pleasant when dealing with government on the issue but then I’m not a pleasant man when I see injustice. In that vein when I saw this heading for a Manx Radio story today I thought are some of the Islands charities a bit to… well ‘nice’:

https://www.manxradio.com/news/isle-of-man-news/growing-demand-for-housi...

Let's be blunt housing and homeless charities have been saying the same thing for years:

https://www.manxradio.com/news/isle-of-man-news/charity-not-surprised-by...
https://www.manxradio.com/news/isle-of-man-news/youth-homelessness-incre...
https://www.manxradio.com/news/isle-of-man-news/island-faces-growing-pro...
https://www.manxradio.com/news/isle-of-man-news/plans-for-homeless-shelter/

Two years ago I pressed the DOI for statistics which they didn’t have (link):

https://www.celticleague.net/news/food-and-fuel-poverty-now-homelessness...

Of course the government say it wants to do something see link to comment from the Chief Minister where he said a year ago it wasn’t being ignored. However like fuel poverty and food poverty and homelessness it is being ignored..

https://www.manxradio.com/news/isle-of-man-news/islands-homeless-not-bei...

Its shameful that for almost three decades these problems have been allowed to fester and grow and to be honest only direct action similar to that which housing groups in Dublin now are taking is going to change things. If Housing Matters wants to organise a sit in at the Chief Ministers Office I’m with them but quite frankly just saying there's a problem as has been said over and over again is p….. In the wind.

Anyway people don’t need CHARITY they need HOMES and as long as we encourage the type of imbalanced society we have deprivation in housing and of other basics will be tolerated, To a certain extent the business community is part of the problem perhaps the Chamber of Commerce have a view or is their interest only self-interest.

Image: What is needed is more social housing NOW!

Bernard Moffatt