THE WNOL ECHO
Friday November 28 2014 | wnollondon.net |Winter 2014
Homeless for Christmas 15,000 young people will spend festive season on the street
Annabelle Price
F
or most people in the UK the festive period is the perfect excuse to spend time at home with your families, drink too much alcohol and indulge in more food than your already plump bellies can handle. But for as many as 15,000 young people waking up on the streets this christmas morning, it will be just like any other day. Another 24 hours spent sleeping in the cold with no food, no money and nobody they love. Centrepoint predict that following the loss of more than 1,000 beds in safe houses this
year, the 15,000 youngsters on the street this Christmas are more vulnerable than ever before. Homeless charity Centrepoint, has revealed that 18% of people aged between 16 and 25 in the UK have slept rough in the past year. Of the 2000 young people quizzed, the youngsters spoke about sleeping on night buses, on the streets and even in cars when they had nowhere else to go. The statistics show that the number of people under the age of 25 forced to sleep rough in London has more than doubled since 2011, with 80,000 facing homelessness this year.
In one of the most prosperous and wealthy cities in the world, young people barely into adulthood are having to sleep alone on the streets. Being homeless is a terrifying and dangerous reality, especially in the coming winter months. Homeless teens are exposed to freezing cold temperatures and heavy downpours, with limited bedding and very little clothing for warmth. Those on the streets will not only have to overcome the biting winter cold and their rumbling stomachs, but they must also fight the horrifying mortality statistics that precede them.
21-year-old Alex Jones from Surrey, first became homeless at 15. After the death of her beloved mother and a few difficult years with her newly-married father, Alex packed all of her belongings into a black bag and ran away. Her years of homelessness began, as so many do, with sofa-surfing and staying with the families of friends. This was until she began to worry that her presence was intrusive; “I preferred the streets because it didn’t feel like I was taking advantage of people”. “I used to sleep at the skatepark in between staying at people’s houses, until my Continued on page 2
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