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Citizens Advice Bureau worker on ‘horrific’ reality of cost of living crisis [1]

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Date: 2024-02 

I was recently working with a man whose mother was in a hospice. He couldn’t afford the bus, so every day until she died he walked a six-mile round trip from his home to see her. That’s an extreme example, but it’s indicative of the types of financial situations I’ve seen the cost-of-living crisis push people into.

I’ve worked as an adviser for Citizens Advice Newcastle for 15 years. I currently work across two projects, one in the west of the city and another in the south-east. Both deal with very different demographics, but a common denominator across both is the level of poverty, and how this has manifested into a lack of hope among people.

In the west end of Newcastle, the decline in terms of housing is absolutely chronic. Some of the stories me and my colleagues deal with are just horrific. You have landlords who don’t even see tenants as human beings. People are living in damp, unsafe properties and the pressure on the local authority to provide housing for people is just enormous. I’ve seen a number of situations where illegal evictions have been attempted. People have been told they’ve got three days to leave a property because the landlord has got somebody else lined up to move in. People are frightened and intimidated and, ultimately, there’s no quick solution in terms of moving them into social housing.

I meet a lot of people who, through no fault of their own, find themselves living in poverty, and the stress of being in that situation takes its toll on people’s mental health. It comes down to a hierarchy of needs: if people haven’t got the very basics then they’re just thinking ‘how do I feed the children’ or ‘how do I go and see my ma in hospital?’ They don’t have the space to move out of that; they’re in survival mode, constantly battling against the system.

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The government is very focused on people’s capability for work but politicians are going about it in completely the wrong way. The more you take away from people, the more difficult you make it for them.

A lot of the work I do is around disability, sickness, and benefits entitlement. Something like a Personal Independence Payment (PIP) entitlement can be really life-changing for some people. But, more often than not, we’re working with sticking plasters. The Household Support Fund, and fuel or food vouchers – that’s all these things are, sticking plasters. They’re an option for people, but they’re not solving the problem; they’re helping them get from one week to another.

It gets very frustrating for me to see the amount of support people need when there’s only so much we can do with the resources we have available. The impact of the cost-of-living crisis over the last two years is palpable. I regularly see people who can’t afford to top up their gas or electric. It’s a cliche, but the choice between heating and eating is real for hundreds, if not thousands, of people in Newcastle on a daily basis.

From my point of view, you have to focus on the person who’s in front of you. Do the best you can for them and hopefully do something that might have a bit of a longer-term impact on their quality of life. But there’s only so much you can do. We have some success, and it’s great. The best thing for me is if I never see people again.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/citizens-advice-bureau-cost-of-living-crisis/

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