Snow storm

Before he became Jon Snow, presenter of Channel 4 News - the one with the colourful ties who interviews world leaders every evening - Mr Snow led a very different life. Rewind 40 years and he was working as full-time director of New Horizon, a day centre for homeless young people in London.

The 62-year-old news anchor took his first job in 1970 after getting ‘kicked out of university because of politics’. ‘A sit-in over apartheid,’ he expands.

Four decades later, Mr Snow is still heavily involved with New Horizon Youth Centre, located between King’s Cross and Euston train stations. As chair of the charity he is not a mere celebrity figurehead - he drops into the day centre at least every couple of weeks, before cycling to the Channel 4 studios on nearby Gray’s Inn Road. Mr Snow is simply ‘Jon’ to New Horizon’s 34 staff, only using his high-profile when it will add clout; he personally presented one of the charity’s recent bids for funding, for example.

He has been a familiar face around the run-down Grade II listed building since the charity moved in 16 years ago, but Mr Snow’s fortnightly visits are about to change. After making do with poor facilities and hand-me-down furniture, the centre is finally getting a £1.5 million facelift. And Mr Snow is keen to show it off.

When Inside Housing arrives on the construction site, the news presenter is finishing a phone call. It’s three days after the devastating earthquake struck Haiti, and he’s just been told he’s to fly out to report from the Caribbean island in a matter of hours. Although Mr Snow is about to embark upon what he will later call, ‘the toughest and most harrowing assignment I have ever known’, he still gives the tour he promised.

By the time this article is published, it will be Poverty and Homelessness Action week, and we discuss the problems facing homeless youth as we walk.

Mr Snow is obviously passionate about the problems affecting homeless young people. ‘He’s absolutely and rightly dedicated,’ says Jenny Edwards, chief executive of Homeless Link, the umbrella body for homelessness organisations, adding that the news reader was one of the first to congratulate her when she moved into housing from the arts six years ago. ‘He pressed upon me the importance of the work the homelessness sector can do.’ Perhaps that explains how willingly he signs up to House Proud, Inside Housing’s campaign to raise housing’s profile.

New Horizon works with up to 70 vulnerable and homeless 16 to 21-year-olds every day, and although its facilities have moved on since the early 1970s, Mr Snow suggests not everything has changed with the decades.

‘The ingredients that bring people here are still very much the same,’ he states as he swaps his luminous cycling jacket for a builder’s vest and hard hat. It’s still a consequence of bad family housing, of poverty, of a breakdown in the care system.’

And the shabby conditions his charity and its users were used to would have remained that way had it not been awarded £1.5 million in Myplace funding in 2008 by the Department of Children, Schools and Families - Big Lottery Fund money assigned to youth centres in deprived communities.

‘We had no money, no money at all,’ says Mr Snow, explaining why renovations were not done before now. Why, if New Horizon deals specifically with homeless young people, did funding not come from a housing-related source?

‘Do you know something,’ he answers quickly. ‘One thing you learn in exposure to this problem is that [council] housing departments have absolutely no interest whatsoever in homeless young people.’

He seems a bit stunned by his own statement. ‘Wow, that’s a strong thing to say,’ he adds on reflection.

Indeed, figures published just last month in Sobering facts a report by the Conservative Party’s homelessness foundation, reveal that some councils have a considerable way to go when it comes to helping young vulnerable people.

It shows that a total of 13,872 people classified as having no fixed abode were admitted to hospital over the past five years for drug or alcohol misuse. More than 10 per cent of these patients were young people, and in some areas up to 40 per cent of those admitted were under 25.

Some local authorities are finding innovative ways to prevent homelessness among young people.

Lambeth Council in south London, for example, is funding a project called Time Out. With supported housing provider Look Ahead Housing and Care, it intervenes early in situations where 16 to 19-year-olds are at risk of becoming homeless, providing them with accommodation for around seven weeks while they receive mediation services.

The New Horizon day centre is in the London borough of Camden, which launched its Hostels Pathway programme in 2007 through which it provides specialised accommodation for homeless people that suits their individual needs. A spokesperson for Camden Council said it had ‘reduced the number of rough sleepers in the borough from 56 in 2000 to five at the last count in November 2009’.

While Mr Snow acknowledges there have been ‘big moves to try to get homeless people off the streets in this area,’ his specific concern is for the welfare of New Horizon’s service users - 16 to 21-year-olds, who he clearly feels are getting a raw deal.

Funding difficulties

Indeed, homeless organisations which work with a particular age bracket can struggle to access funding available to those that serve a broader range of people. Despite the centre’s outward signs of improvement, the charity received a blow this year. Because New Horizon only works with 16-to-21 year olds it is no longer eligible to bid for the £80,000 annual payment from Camden’s housing department which previously funded its outreach work.

Above the builders’ noise, Mr Snow stresses the importance of the outreach programme, which remains in place while the charity seeks alternative funding. ‘Very often the young people we work with here have never established a trusting relationship with an adult before. This is often the first time someone has reached out to them,’ he says.

Back at the centre New Horizon staff must find accommodation for around seven young people daily. Mr Snow says that ‘the benefits system doesn’t provide for young people of this age in such a way that they can afford even a housing association rent’.

Often New Horizon service users are trying to move far away from home, some fleeing gangs and violence, others are immigrants who have not settled. When the day centre closes at 4pm, there are usually one or two young people who are left waiting for an emergency bed.

As we continue our walk around the new and improved facility, Mr Snow, an architecture aficionado and honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, sees part of the renovation for the first time. ‘What a lovely, lovely colour,’ he remarks of a particularly striking yellow paint job.
‘We got used to living in an absolute slum,’ he says, explaining his enthusiasm. ‘We’re going to have state-of-the- art everything: kitchen, showers, laundry… we can do so much more now.’

Although finding young people somewhere to live is New Horizon’s top priority, it also provides a range of services including an education programme, a counselling service, and an onsite nurse - last month winning £25,000 through the independent charitable organisation, the King’s Fund, for health care work.

But Mr Snow stresses that in order for the charity’s service users to move forward with their lives, they need suitable housing. ‘These young people have got to find their feet,’ he exclaims. ‘They’re living such disjointed lives that they’re not able to meet the obligations of the workplace. We have got to try to help them find a routine. That’s what we try to achieve here.’

Mr Snow leads the way upstairs. ‘You must come up and see this state-of-the-art performance area,’ he announces as his six-foot-four frame disappears out of view.

‘The idea is we’ll share this with the local community,’ he says of the large, open space, which is being fitted with acoustic wall panels as we speak. ‘It’s not the easiest project to inflict on a community. They’ve been fantastically good about it.’ Some residents living above the centre are so enthusiastic about the charity’s work, they’ve joined its volunteer programme.

Throughout the tour, Mr Snow has been intermittently checking his phone for updates about the aid flight he’s hoping to catch to Haiti. Finally a call comes through - and it’s time to go. He answers some final questions while changing back into his cycling gear - reflective jacket, ankle straps, gloves and helmet - and instead of his trademark colourful tie, a brightly striped scarf.

‘I’m offski,’ he announces. His mind no doubt set on what lies in store more than 4,000 miles away, he picks up his bike and cycles towards the Euston Road.

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