Speech Debelle on what it is like being homeless
Speech Debelle: My homeless years
Looking back, I really didn't have a clue where all this was leading. I felt rootless, lost and depressed. I didn't have anywhere I wanted to go, nor anywhere I wanted to be.
I got into trouble at school and the more trouble I got into, the more rocky things got between me and my mum. ... started moving from hostel to hostel. There was one day I remember, in another women-only hostel, when I started to re-think my situation.
As a result of the current strain on rental properties, emergency housing in the UK is in short supply.
London rapper Speech Debelle, who was homeless herself for three years, has been speaking to some of Britain's 'hidden' homeless people, who are struggling to find accommodation and employment.
Speech, whose real name is Corynne Elliot, revisits the hostel she stayed in and explains how it inspired her music.
When she was 19, Mercury Prize-winning rap artist Speech Debelle walked out of her family home and became homeless for three years. In this moving documentary, she shows that being homeless isn't just about down and outs sleeping in cardboard boxes, but is a problem which affects more and more young people in Britain today. Speech gets to know four young people from very different backgrounds - all of them sofa surfing or sleeping rough - as they try to find a more permanent roof over their heads. She discovers that councils and charities are struggling to cope with this growing crisis and she investigates the impact on young people's lives.
"2am in my hostel bed, my eyes them red, my belly ain't fed / I got butter but I ain't got bread and I'm smoking on my last cigarette / I ain't got creds I can't make calls / Got no papers I got no jewels / Got debts up to my eyeballs / Christmas soon come and I got no funds but what's Christmas if you ain't at Mum's?"
"Too many vulnerable young people in this country are beginning their adult lives thinking about day-to-day survival rather than their own futures”
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