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More than 300 mothers and their children do not have a permanent place to call home.

Another 826 women and children are bunking with friends and relatives, many of whom have inadequate accommodation themselves.

Unlike homeless people who live on the streets, mothers and children in need of housing are invisible. They are the hidden homeless — but their circumstances have more serious consequences for the society.

This snapshot of housing in Bermuda is captured in a Habitat Bermuda housing study.

Board member Sheelagh Cooper says it's "disgraceful" that in a country as wealthy as Bermuda there are so many people who are forced to live this way.

Another image is even more dramatic — there are 2,217 dwelling units lying empty, more than enough to house every family in need.

Some landlords can afford to keep their units unrented until they get the amount of rent they want, but others are registering a second car to the unoccupied units. Some have actually built a second unit just so they can own a car.

"It's an abuse of the system," said Mrs. Cooper, who released HabitatBermuda's 21st Century Housing Bermuda Challenge Phase One Report exclusively to the Bermuda Sun this week.

According to the report, there are 351 documented cases of mothers and children "who are without permanent accommodation and a further 826 who are living in overcrowded, inadequate or unsafe dwellings. Many live without hot water or electricity and some without any drinking water at all."

But the housing supply exceeds the demand and the 2217 vacant dwellings do not include 271 derelict units.

Mrs. Cooper, who is chairman of Habitat's Family Selection and Support Division, and executive director of the Coalition for the Protection of Children, said the report took 18 months to complete.

She prepared the study with help from volunteers. She relied on information contained in Government reports and cases that the Coalition has documented. There was also a series of 15 focus groups with homeless families.

She said there are an estimated 200 to 300 homeless singles in Bermuda. While such street people are the ones that first come to mind when the community thinks of the homeless, the circumstances of the invisible homeless have more profound consequences for the community.

According to the report: "Though much publicity has surrounded families living in cars, caves and tents, these are relatively few in number. The majority of homeless families lives' are defined by constant moving from relative to relative or friend to friend, moving their few belongings and sharing a room with multiple families on a daily or a weekly basis.

"The hidden nature of these temporary housing arrangements is a function of the fact that most of the friends and relatives offering assistance are themselves in borderline economic situations and are either occupying BHC (Bermuda Housing Corporation) properties or are receiving some form of financial assistance.

"In either case, assisting other families in this manner — including a mother, daughter, sister or brother — is grounds for the immediate cancellation of financial assistance or in the case of BHC housing, cause for eviction.

"This drives the most vulnerable children and their families virtually underground, looking for shelter but having to be invisible while they are there. The impact of this kind of quasi-vagabond lifestyle on children within these families is of course devastating."

The reports also said in other countries the economic forces of supply and demand would control costs for renters and landlords. In Bermuda, the opposite has happened. Rents properties have increased dramatically, with purchase prices, even for land, increasing by 13 per cent in a single year.

There are several reasons for this, but rental subsidies paid by international companies to employees they recruit from overseas are a major contributor to the high cost of housing.

"The problem therefore is not that demand exceeds the supply, but that a very significant and growing portion of the population lacks the economic capacity to pay existing market prices for available housing."

Other findings were that the gap between the rich and poor has widened between 1993 and 2004 and while there has been a 90 per cent increase in housing costs since 1994, there has only been a 62 per cent increase in the weekly income of middle-income Bermudians.

The average Bermudian pays 33 cents of every dollar on housing, while a third pays 60 per cent of their income on housing.

Black Bermudians are the hardest hit by the shortage of affordable housing — 32 per cent of black Bermudians are at or below the poverty line and 50 per cent of black female-headed households with children are poor or near poor.

The rate of homeownership in Bermuda is low in comparison with other developed countries — it's a "meager 51 per cent" as compared to 69 per cent in the U.S and 70 per cent in the UK.

Government recently said in a statement that if 330 affordable homes were added to the housing stock, the housing problem would be eliminated. But according to Habitat, that's overly optimistic.

"Our research to date suggests that the number of families without adequate affordable housing is considerably greater than that," Mrs. Cooper said.

Habitat's next step is to complete the task of identifying and documenting the hidden homeless, "whose plight is hidden from all but their closest friends and relatives."

Mrs. Cooper said Habitat, whose goal is to eliminate homelessness by 2020, currently has "a number of projects on the go" including renovating a derelict house to create three apartments.

And Habitat wants to work with Government and other agencies to achieve this goal, because it cannot do it alone.

She said Bermuda has to decide whether adequate housing is a right or a privilege.

"If we believe it's a right, we have to take a different approach," she said.[[In-content Ad]]

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