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A summer of actual hunger and absolute poverty
The plight of communities in Wales this summer highlights the need to prioritise people over policy, says Mike Owen
The first duty of a government is to protect its people. The second duty should be to feed its people.
It is hard to find the right words having watched a summer of hunger; of actual hunger in real families, living right now in Wales.
This is not about relative poverty, it is about the absolute poverty of keeping the body and soul together; poverty and hunger.
Of all the nonsense and vanity projects that housing associations do in the name of community development (and I have been as guilty as anyone), I never thought we would be handing out food parcels.
Not redistributing foodbank products, but going down to Asda with our company credits cards and buying food parcels to issue out like a United Nations food programme.
“Of all the nonsense and vanity projects that housing associations do in the name of community development... I never thought we would be handing out food parcels.”
I can remember nothing like this summer but we should have expected it when late last year the foodbank in Merthyr Tydfil nearly went out of business and closed.
We met the fabulous people who run the foodbank to see how we could help and what they needed to stay open.
I nearly cried when they said £15,000.
In housing that is nothing; most of us could cut that amount out of our consultant’s budget in two seconds but rather than just provide all the money, as we know this might be needed again in the future, we contacted the neighbouring housing associations and the local council to see if they would match our donation.
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Merthyr Tydfil Housing Association and Cynon Taf Community Housing provided the money quickly. Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council, while politically supportive, had no spare money outside of their statutory responsibilities.
They did however use money from an old environmental grant pot they allocate on behalf of an open cast mine. The foodbank was saved and continues to provide much needed support. But even a foodbank has limitations and any single household can only visit it three times a year.
This school holiday the whole house of cards came tumbling down, and any ideas that this is a civil society with values ended for me.
That was one meal of the day sorted, one hot meal at least. But children in families struggling on benefits were used to a free school meal and for many they even had a Welsh Government-provided free breakfast at a breakfast club.
“This school holiday the whole house of cards came tumbling down and any idea that this is civil society with values ended for me.”
The start of the school holidays mean free school meals end. So on an income that is already stretched beyond breaking point, a family with two children has to then find money for 20 extra meals a week which is just impossible even on a Jack Monroe ‘bootstrap’ diet.
This is made worse by the fact that lots of families had been transferred onto Universal Credit just before the school holidays.
Anticipating these poverty and hunger problems the Welsh Government had introduced a project this summer called Fit and Fed, which ran from a couple of the youth clubs that we support.
Young people did some exercise and then had a free meal made at the youth club. On the night I visited, I could not believe how popular it was.
By the second week of the holidays housing and support teams were coming back into the office with tales of hunger and real suffering.
They wanted to do something immediately, they wanted to deliver food parcels not write letters and blogs pleading for a UK government change or whinge to the Welsh Government.
Luckily when we set the budget for this year with our star chamber of tenants and employees, we incentivised all the teams to reduce the legal fees budget and switch any savings into community well-being. With that incentive our legal fees expenditure crashed through the floor and the savings were enough to provide the food parcels.
Within the teams delivering the project there was initially a degree of excitement to be doing something positive but this evaporated and actually there was little satisfaction – people cried in gratitude, it was emotionally draining.
“We incentivised all the teams to reduce the legal fees budget and switch any savings into community well-being.”
I have spent years sitting with other well-meaning colleagues saying stuff about statutory duties things like “having a housing strategy should be a statutory duty for a local authority”. Well, do you know what is not a statutory duty for either local authorities or health authorities..? Feeding the people who live in your community.
Perhaps it should also be a regulatory requirement to ensure that all your tenants are not hungry. But really, what is the point of many of the things that we do in housing if hundreds of our tenants need food parcels.
Things like four weeks rent in advance fade into insignificance when people cannot even feed their children.
Mike Owen, chief executive, Merthyr Valley Homes
