Housing officer Darrell tells how Centrepoint helpline is 'imperative' in breaking cycle of young homelessness

Homeless helpline: Housing officer, Darrell, has backed our campaign
Ed Cumming1 February 2017

When Darrell Austin offers professional advice, you can trust him.

The Centrepoint housing officer helps young people navigate the difficulties of the system, and it is a world he knows from every angle - having found himself homeless as a young man.

Darrell, 41, is convinced that the new Young & Homeless Helpline, for which the Evening Standard has been raising money over the past three months, is “imperative” to help break the vicious cycle of homelessness.

“It’s the only thing Centrepoint’s missing,” he said.

The free helpline, which launches on February 13, will provide a single point of information on everything from housing to interview techniques and housekeeping.

Housing officer: Darrell said the helpline is 'imperative'

For those aged 16-25, it could be the difference between a successful life and falling between the cracks.

Darrell said: “If you go to the council and say you’re homeless at 16 or 17, the first thing they’ll do is tell you to go home and try to repair the relationships. But for the majority that’s where everything started to go wrong.”

Growing up in Fulham with his mother and his two younger sisters, Darrell had difficulties at home before he was a teenager.

The children shared a bedroom and their mother’s boyfriends “were not ideal role models”.

At 12 he was sent to a boarding school near Milton Keynes for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties.

“It saved me, to be honest,” he said. “Most of the kids I grew up with are serving long prison sentences.

“People think of Fulham as it is now, but it was nothing like that 25 years ago. There was drug dealing, aggravated burglary. It would have been easy for me to go down that road.”

But his temper led to him being “asked to leave” the school at 15, before exams. Back home things came to a head.

Darrell: He was homeless himself as a teen

“It got to the point where I didn’t want to give my mum the choice of ‘me or him’, so I left.”

Years of couch-surfing followed. He began a youth training course to be a chef, but the £35-a-week pay was impossible to live on. Hostels told him he was not desperate enough, or not a high enough risk.

He needed an operation on his hip, and worried that he would have nowhere to convalesce.

“Just as I thought drug dealing - which only ends up in prison or death - was going to be my only option, I met a friend who said he was in a hostel in west London. I went down there.”

From there he found his way into temporary accommodation - first alone and then with his wife and children.He stumbled into youth work, and discovered a talent for it.

He has been at Centrepoint for 18 months, and is passionate about the difference it makes.

“It’s ridiculous how many young people are homeless and can’t get access to the housing system.

"People think homelessness is just someone sleeping on a doorstep shaking a cup, but there’s so much more than that.”

The Evening Standard's Homeless Helpline appeal is raising money for the Centrepoint Helpline, a brand new support service that will save young people from ending up on the streets.

To donate please visit our Just Giving page.

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