• last year
Transcript
00:00 How do you feel not knowing what's going to happen next?
00:03 I'm worried and I'm getting depressed.
00:07 I'm getting depressed because I don't know what to do.
00:12 How long could your family cope in one room?
00:16 That is a question that a 74-year-old grandmother
00:19 who lives in the South London Travelodge behind me
00:22 is asking herself every day.
00:25 She lives here with her two teenage grandsons,
00:28 sharing a room where they have nowhere to cook food.
00:32 They have been here since December when they became homeless.
00:36 That's over two months, which is past the legal six-week limit
00:39 for this sort of accommodation.
00:41 What's going on?
00:43 They are just one of over 100,000 households in England
00:47 who are currently homeless and stuck in temporary accommodation
00:51 because there is simply nowhere else for them to go.
00:54 Jeanette and her grandsons were placed in the Travelodge
00:57 by their local council, Lambeth.
01:00 Lambeth is one of the hardest-hit councils by the temporary accommodation crisis.
01:04 That's because it has a shortage of social housing
01:07 and a high number of people who, like Jeanette,
01:10 urgently need somewhere safe and affordable to live.
01:14 You're living in this room in a Travelodge with your two teenage grandsons.
01:20 There isn't a lot of space here. How are you finding it?
01:24 We are finding it difficult, so difficult.
01:28 We don't have some place to cook, no kitchen here.
01:34 We don't have a fridge.
01:36 I have to buy food outside every day for three of us, and no privacy.
01:44 And the boys, too, they don't have a space to learn.
01:49 And one of the boys is having his hair done.
01:52 They are worried. They are too worried.
01:56 Because we live here about getting to two months here.
02:01 We buy food outside all the time, and it's so difficult for us.
02:07 How do you feel not knowing what's going to happen next?
02:12 I don't know. I don't know.
02:16 And I'm worried. And I'm getting depressed.
02:20 I'm getting depressed because I don't know what to do.
02:25 Do you think living in this room with your two grandsons has impacted your health?
02:31 Yeah. As I told you, I'm getting depressed because I'm thinking all the time.
02:38 And, you know, the 17-year-old boy is grown up.
02:43 And all the time, if I'm dressing up, he's here looking at me.
02:50 And it makes me think.
02:55 I don't know what to say because it's getting bad.
03:00 It's getting too bad.
03:03 The one thing I said, the 17-year-old boy is all the time.
03:07 He wants his privacy because he's growing up.
03:11 So he don't want his brother to live in the same room.
03:18 And this is very, very, very serious.
03:22 Are you worried about the impact that living like this is having on your grandsons?
03:27 Yes, I'm very, very worried. I'm very, very worried.
03:31 That's why I'm getting depressed because I'm thinking about this situation we are in now.
03:38 If you could say one thing to the people in charge about what it's like to live in one room,
03:45 three growing people like this, what would it be?
03:49 It would be very, very, very bad.
03:54 It's not good enough.
03:57 [♪♪]
04:01 [♪♪]
04:04 [MUSIC PLAYING]

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