Dangerous overcrowding in London homes

An enforcement team targeting overcrowding, discovered twenty-six bunk beds in a four-bedroom house in Wembley. Those living there were mostly migrants. They say that despite the appalling conditions, it's the only way they can afford to live in the capital.



It’s a four-bedroom house, and a team of enforcement officers have arrived at dawn to look inside. What they find is shocking. There are 26 beds.
How many people live in this room, sir? 1, 2, 3 bunk beds, six sleeping spaces…
Another four more in this tiny room.
You pay £55…
65.
£65 per week each.
It was time for the enforcement team to do some maths. What might the landlord earn from this one property in Wembley?
We think there are up to 26 people living in this property, paying somewhere between £60 and £65 a week so we’re looking at an income on this property of around £1,500 a week, which is around £80,000 a year income.
But there was even more to come. Outside, inspectors found a shack, and inside, two more beds and a woman living here, who wasn’t happy with the conditions.
So you can’t stand the mice and the rats scurrying around midnight.
Dreadful, isn’t it, to think that somebody can be exploited to living in what isn’t even a shed, it’s a lean-to.
So how many people might be living in conditions like this across London? Well, Brent Council has a ready prosecuted 30 landlord in a year, and taking in other councils there have been at least 300 raids in 12 months. This house in Kingsbury has now been boarded up. Inside, inspectors found 17 beds. The men living here, thought to be Romanian, have now moved on. In Harrow, there's another four-bedroomed house, not quite so crowded. Until recently 13 people, mainly from Hungary, had been living here, but they are not happy. One of the tenants has armed himself with a baseball bat.
Because I’m gonna protect ourselves.
The tenants here claim their landlord gave them just two weeks’ notice to get out and when they objected, two strange men turned up outside the property.
Walking up and down, punching in the air.
Just jumping around, preparing to the fight.
Harrow Council has now warned the landlord to respect tenants rights. He’s declined to comment, saying it’s going to court. The tenants say they have no choice but to live in conditions like these.
I think because this is the cheapest where you can find a room.
And back at that Wembley house with 26 beds, Bagarald told us he lives here because his job as a carer for the elderly pays so little.
I’m paid twenty pounds per day.
Meish works as a casual builder and downs sixty to eighty pounds a day but says even living here his life is better than back home in India.
This country is money. Our conditions is money.
The landlord here now faces prosecution, but without alternative very cheap accommodation, many thousands of low-paid workers may continue to live in similar conditions.
Gareth Furby, BBC London News.

Extensive listening: Poverty isn't a lack of character; it's a lack of cash

"Ideas can and do change the world," says historian Rutger Bregman, sharing his case for a provocative one: guaranteed basic income.

Learn more about the idea's 500-year history and a forgotten modern experiment where it actually worked — and imagine how much energy and talent we would unleash if we got rid of poverty once and for all.

Rutger Bregman is one of Europe’s most prominent young thinkers. The 28-year-old historian and author has published four books on history, philosophy and economics. His History of Progress was awarded the Belgian Liberales prize for best nonfiction book of 2013. The Dutch edition of Utopia for Realists became a national bestseller and will be translated in 16 languages this year. Bregman has twice been nominated for the prestigious European Press Prize for his journalism work at The Correspondent. His work has been featured in The Washington Post and The Guardian and on the BBC.

You can read a full transcript here.

Baltimore: This is what poverty in the US looks like

Ian Pannell reports from the city of Baltimore, where 25% of the population lives in poverty.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and say whether the statements below are true or false.



1. The poor of Baltimore are given shelter at Manor House.
2. There is a lot of business activity in Baltimore.
3. The crime rate in Baltimore is very high.
4. America became a richer country with President Obama and poverty diminished.
5. Marcus Allsop repairs the city's homes.
6. Marcus Allsop says some families have been living in poverty for two or three generations.
7. The Stewards have $30 a day to live on.
8. The Stewards argue and fight all the time.

Say hello to Jackson, a citizen of the wealthiest country the world has ever known, and yet he's clothed in handouts. His parents can’t find work. They have no home of their own and every morning they come to the Manor House charity where the poor of Baltimore meet for a little food, warmth and compassion.
What is your message to President Trump?
Come and help us. Instead of critiquing us, come help us and you will see we need help… bad.
Like much of America, this is a story of two worlds. Baltimore is actually something of a boom town these days, but it doesn't feel like it in many parts of the city. In this economy, there is no trickle down.
Gun crime is surging here. Baltimore was even more violent than Chicago last year, driven by gang tuft wars. For some of its residents, this is a city where selling your body or selling drugs is the only job available.
If you want to know what poverty in America looks like, well, this is it. Incredibly, this entire block here is pretty much made up of dilapidated, abandoned houses. Incredibly, some people are still living in between this, though. Under President Obama poverty grew in America and President Trump says he’s going to fix it. He's going to deal what he calls the carnage in America of crime, of drugs, of gangs, of violence and of poverty. Well, there are few places better to try and do that than Baltimore.
Marcus Allsop has lived here for 40 years, he repairs the city's homes, an eyewitness to the worst Baltimore has to offer.
The poor living are in the single houses, the real houses in Baltimore city where they're generally rat-infested regardless of what you do as a person living there. Roaches, mice, I mean, an epidemic in bed bugs. I mean, the neighbourhoods are falling apart, not because the people are bad people, we're underpaid, undereducated and so many of us have been living like this for the second and third generation until we don't even know how to change. Despair is the way of living.
And this is where it resides, on a bleak row of abandoned homes. This is the end of the line for Americans gripped by poverty. Here we met the last family living on the block. Three generations of the Stewart family are crammed in here. They're months behind on the rent, unpaid bills are piling up. Not surprising, when they have just $30 a day to survive.
I love you, be careful. Have a good day.
They've been evicted before, forced to live in one of Baltimore's many abandoned homes.
It hurts, it hurts that they have to stay wrapped up in blankets every day because they are cold. They don't want to get out of bed because there's no heating to keep them warm. People talk about us. They get bullied in school because of it. It hurts. They got to where they didn't even want to show their faces outside, but we had no choice but to live there because of the economy.
I'm struggling for seven years, seven, hard years.
What pressure does that put on your relationship together?
Oh, we argue and fight all the time, all the time. I love this woman to death, she's my best friend, but to see her go through the things she goes through, it hurts me, it hurts me.
For so many people, this is no longer a land of opportunity. Hope has given way to despair. And the children who clamour for charity handouts have no American dream. It will be perhaps the greatest
challenge for the new President.
Ian Pannell, BBC News, Baltimore.

KEY:
1F 2T 3T 4F 5T 6T 7T 8T

South Sudan First famine declared since 2011

A famine has been declared in parts of South Sudan, the first to be announced in any part of the world in six years. The government and the United Nations report that some 100,000 people are facing starvation, with a million more on the brink of famine.

A combination of civil war and an economic collapse have been blamed. There have been warnings of famine in Yemen, Somalia and north-eastern Nigeria, but South Sudan is the first to declare one.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.



1. What are some of the symptoms of malnourishment in children?
2. How many people live in Unity State?
3. What is the real tragedy of the situation?
4. How long has the fighting been going on in the country?
5. How many people have been forced out of their homes by the fighting?
6. How many people have left the country?
7. How many people have escaped to Uganda in six months?

When famine hits, the smallest suffer. In a hospital ward in the capital city, children are severely malnourished. A distended belly and a painful skin condition are obvious symptoms of hunger.
Malnutrition is really bad, because it has increased here for some years, but this year, it has really increased. The rate it has increased.
This is Unity State, where 100,000 people are now feeling the effects of famine. Some aid has been delivered to this worst affected region, but people are dying of starvation every day. Civil war means many are out of reach, and aren’t getting this type of help.
The real tragedy is that this is largely man-made. We do have famine and food insecurity, and it has
worsened in many parts of this country, largely because of this unfortunate conflict. It’s really because of the fighting, it’s also because of access challenges that humanitarians have indeed had in parts of this
country.
A clash between former Vice President, Riek Machar, and President, Salva Kiir, in the hat, sparked civil War. For more than three years, there’s been fighting across the country, largely along ethnic lines. Last year, a peace deal dramatically collapsed, bringing violence to a wider area. Economic crisis and hyperinflation has priced food beyond the reach of most.
Well over 3 million people have been forced from their homes by the fighting. Hundreds of thousands of them are in camps set up by the United Nations across the country for their own protection. 1.5 million have fled to neighbouring countries, creating one of the worst refugees crises in the world.
Towns like this have emptied as the violence has spread to the food growing south of the country. In just six
months, 450,000 people have fled to Uganda. Thousands still cross the border every day, and describe atrocities, rape and murder, by soldiers from both sides along ethnic lines. The UN has warned of the potential for genocide, and now a deepening famine, unless the war is stopped.

Key:
1 a distended belly and a painful skin condition
2 100,000
3 it is man-made
4 for more than three years
5 over three million
6 1.5 million
7 450,000