{"id":28479,"date":"2025-10-16T13:07:51","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T13:07:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=28479"},"modified":"2025-10-16T13:07:51","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T13:07:51","slug":"my-teachers-had-no-idea-i-was-homeless-people-like-me-hide-in-plain-sight-in-the-uk-isra-sulevani","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=28479","title":{"rendered":"My teachers had no idea I was homeless. People like me hide in plain sight in the UK | Isra Sulevani"},"content":{"rendered":"

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S<\/span>omething that often takes me by surprise is how people react to finding out I was homeless growing up. They have a picture of what homelessness should look like, and my family and I don\u2019t fit into it \u2013 I\u2019m at university studying medicine now. But people like me hide in plain sight. They\u2019re your neighbours until suddenly they\u2019re not. They\u2019re everywhere and nowhere, all at the same time.<\/p>\n

My family came to the UK after becoming refugees during the Iraq war, and were homeless, repeatedly, for years \u2013 moving from friends\u2019 house to friends\u2019 house, or B&B to B&B. Each new place meant a new school, a new set of friends and a new set of rules I had to get used to. Over time, I think my siblings and I became pretty immune to the anxiety you feel when starting again.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember all the places we stayed, though most of them were cold. In one, we lived above a party animal, blaring music so loud it would make my head thump as we tried to go to sleep. Others had rats \u2013 once my sister burst out of the bathroom screaming, in the middle of the night, because one had emerged when she lifted the toilet seat.<\/p>\n

In another place there were four of us in one room with all our belongings, while my siblings and I played human Tetris in bunkbeds. I remember reading to my younger brother there, doing my best to give him that normal family experience despite the chaos.<\/p>\n

Government figures published today show that there are now more than 132,000 households living in all forms of temporary accommodation in England, including more than 172,000 dependent children. It\u2019s a record high \u2013 up 8.2% on 2024\u2013 surpassing the last record set earlier this year.<\/p>\n

The conditions in temporary accommodation are often well below the standard anyone should be expected to accept \u2013 it can be cramped, or cold or dangerous. Official data recently found that temporary accommodation in England may have contributed to the deaths of 74 children in just five years.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until I was much older, during the Covid pandemic \u2013 my GCSE year \u2013 that I realised what I\u2019d experienced as a child hadn\u2019t been normal.<\/p>\n

Usually when we moved schools, we just left, without telling them. But the pandemic meant my mum and dad lost their income from their jobs and things started to get even harder, so I\u2019d had to apply for a bursary. That meant telling my school I was homeless.<\/p>\n

When I showed a teacher proof of our household income, her face just dropped. She couldn\u2019t believe the number on the paper. She had to ask me again if I was sure of the amount, because she was struggling to believe that that figure had sustained my whole family. When I saw the look on her face, I realised this was not a normal way to live.<\/p>\n

Leaving all your friends behind and starting afresh year after year just wasn\u2019t normal. No one spoke about it growing up, and I didn\u2019t even understand what was going on. When we were put in a B&B, I had thought we were on holiday. Looking back, I realised it wasn\u2019t a holiday, and it wasn\u2019t through choice, but my parents were pretty good at acting as if it was.<\/p>\n

My family are now stably housed \u2013 we\u2019re safe and happy. <\/strong>After my teacher found out about our situation, she put us on free school meals, which helped massively. I could actually think straight in lessons, I could stay after school for longer because I wasn\u2019t hungry, and teachers stopped pestering me for not having textbooks. Now I\u2019m studying medicine.<\/p>\n

But today\u2019s figures are a reminder that I\u2019m one of the lucky ones. Thousands are trapped in the same situation I experienced. The instability, the risk, the rats \u2013 and the cold.<\/p>\n

The worst thing is that we could stop this if we wanted to. We know what causes homelessness, which means we know how to end it. That means building more social homes, and it means creating a welfare system that allows people to live in dignity. That would have made all the difference for us \u2013 having an affordable, social home would have meant we could have stayed in one place, and had some stability. There are now more than 1.3m households in England alone on waiting lists for a social home, and meanwhile the Guardian has just revealed that Labour plans to slash already-low affordable housing targets for developers.<\/p>\n

When the Labour government came to power, it promised a strategy to end homelessness. Fifteen months later, we are yet to see it. The same goes for the child poverty strategy.<\/p>\n

While we wait, more people are going through what my siblings and I did.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m working with Crisis, the homelessness charity, to call on ministers to urgently deliver a strategy to end homelessness for everyone. Any meaningful plan for change must surely lead to the creation of a society where we can all thrive, because we all have access to a decent, affordable home.<\/p>\n

We moved from place to place, but none of them were home, because we didn\u2019t feel comfortable living there.<\/p>\n

I hadn\u2019t realised at the time, but you miss out on a lot, growing up in those circumstances. The milestones I imagine people my age would have cherished didn\u2019t really exist. Looking back, it kind of felt as if everyone else was making small leaps on little stones to cross a river, while my family and I had to wade through, our shoes drenched.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t normal to grow up like that, and no one else should have to.<\/p>\n