Stop Start Go charity to provide bedsit rooms for growing number of people who have jobs but still can’t afford to pay rent

Levels of homelessness among working people in Manchester are so high that a new hostel has opened with dedicated bedsits for those with jobs who find themselves out on the streets.



Stop Start Go has opened in a converted solicitors’ office in Cheetham Hill, north Manchester, following research that on average workers keep jobs for just two weeks after becoming homeless.

There are now 10 times as many homeless people in Manchester as there were in 2010.

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Michael Burns, 68, who works part-time as a cleaner at Manchester town hall, is one of them. He was the first person to move into one of Stop Start Go’s three studio flats, having been evicted from his home in Gorton, south Manchester, in late November. He only works 15 hours a week, claims no benefits or pension, and could barely afford the £45 a week he was paying for a shared house in Gorton.

He found himself in the odd position of officially declaring himself homeless at his workplace, asking for help at the town hall. He was lucky: Stop Start Go was about to open its doors and he was told that if he didn’t mind sleeping on a sofa while his room was finished he would be welcome to go straight there.

Burns was surprised to learn that you can work and still not be able to put a roof over your head. “It’s shocking, really shocking, that through no fault of your own you can end up in my position,” he said.

Getting a room at Stop Start Go was a huge relief. “It’s a really big weight off me. Every time I went to bed in my old place I would lie awake thinking how the hell do I get out of this situation?” he said.

Charities say cuts to in-work benefits, coupled with the increased cost of housing and living, have contributed to a phenomenon they say did not really exist just a few years ago.

Five years ago charities very rarely saw working homeless people, according to Amanda Croome, chief executive of the Booth Centre in Manchester: “Now we are seeing one a week.” Four out of 12 people sleeping in its night centre one night in December were in work.

These are not your stereotypical rough sleepers, she said: “What they often say to us is: ‘I’m working. I’m a normal person. I walked past people sleeping on the street and never thought in a million years that could be me, and yet suddenly it is me.’”

A law change that has made it much easier for landlords to evict tenants is now the biggest cause of homelessness, according to Croome. Section 21 orders give landlords the right to kick out renters for no reason at any time after a six-month tenancy with just two months’ notice.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Maria Marsden. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

Maria Marsden set up Stop Start Go after carrying out research into the circumstances of homeless people in Manchester’s hostels.

“I did a consultation exercise going around various agencies asking what people’s different needs were and a lot of clients were saying they worked,” she said.

Marsden realised that it was crucial to keep these people out of traditional homeless hostels, where they can often be preyed on by more entrenched rough sleepers with habits to feed. “I’ve seen it happen. People go in there clean and come out with a habit. You hear of new people being marched to the cash machine when they get paid,” she said.

Hostels are also expensive, often costing £250 a week in Manchester – normally paid for out of unemployment benefit but far out of the reach of someone earning £200 a week on minimum wage.

She asked people how long they had kept their jobs for after becoming homeless and discovered that it took on average just two weeks before they had lost them.

Croome is not surprised. “People don’t want to lose their jobs so they are hiding their rucksacks so their bosses don’t see them, going to public toilets to wash before work and struggling to stay awake after a night on the streets with no sleep.”

Stop Start Go is funded by grants from the council, the Edward Holt Trust, a local housing charity, and the Greater Manchester Mayoral Fund, led by the mayor, Andy Burnham, who donates 15% of his salary (£1,375) each month to the cause.

Figures released by the Department for Work and Pensions under the Freedom of Information Act in 2016 showed a steep rise in the number of employed people being placed in temporary or short-term accommodation. In August 2013 there were 15,520 in that position compared with 22,100 in 2015. That figure is believed to have risen sharply in the following two years.

Polly Neate, the CEO of Shelter, said: “More than 300,000 people in Britain are homeless, and the fact that many of them will be working is a shocking reminder of just how bad our housing crisis has become.

“The dearth of affordable homes combined with crippling welfare cuts means having a job is now not enough to protect people from becoming homeless.”