Housing developers are raking in cash while young people sleep in parks – it has to stop

I started experiencing hallucinations at the age of 10 and, along with my obsessive compulsive disorder, this led to lots of scary intrusive thoughts. I would get fixated on things and lose touch with what was real. This only got worse over the course of the following few years.

My teachers started noticing and alerted the local child and adolescent mental health services. The strain on these services at the time was intense and despite my rapid deterioration, and multiple referrals, I kept being told my condition wasn’t serious enough. 

Instead I was referred to an emotional support service – one that is aimed at treating young people with less complex issues. But when I’d speak to an assessor, tapping away quietly on a keyboard on the other side of the phone line, they’d reject my case, explaining it was “too complex”. 

A game of referral ping-pong carried on for the best part of a year. Ping… My life would land on the desk of a new assessor. Tap tap tap, they’d note down the intimate details of my mental distress. Pong. My life would be bounced onto the desk of yet another faceless assessor. Tap tap tap… until I couldn’t go on anymore.

After attempting to take my life at 13, I was immediately hospitalised. 

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My time at the mental health ward still haunts me. I have autism, which means that change and spending time surrounded by other people for most of the day is really challenging for me. The inpatient environment is really counterproductive for me.In fact, the National Autistic Society recommends autistic people are not treated in inpatient settings. 

The understaffing of my ward didn’t help. I was overstimulated and scared but my meltdowns were managed through forced restraint and medical sedation multiple times a day. It’s made me terrified of hospitals and doctors, even today. Out of the terror of being treated like that again, last year I even ran away from hospital, resulting in the police being tasked with detaining me.

The thing with poor mental health is that it really impacts all other aspects of your life. And when your education is impacted, your friendships and housing are also negatively impacted. When these foundations are knocked, your mental health deteriorates even more.

Despite my early struggles, in 2023, I got a place to study biomedical sciences at university. It felt like a new page had turned but with a dip in my mental health, the cycle started again. 

When my fellow students saw the police come to our shared house – they were looking for me following my escape from hospital – they thought I might be a danger to them, and not just myself. That wasn’t the case but with stigma comes fear and they asked me to move out immediately.

Without support from my university, I had to sleep rough for a few nights before my parents found out. I ended up having to move five hours away from university, leaving my friends and education far behind. Another institution meant to help young people reach for a bright future had left me out in the cold. 

It took me many more months to find a suitable home and left my mental health in tatters. It’s not a nice feeling to know I’m among the majority of young people whose mental health has been negatively affected by housing costs. 

I’m doing much better now – I have a safe place to live and I’m focusing on advocating for other young people like me. But I can’t help wondering: how can one of the richest countries in the world be failing young people so miserably?

In 2023, around one in five children and young people in England had a probable mental disorder and while it’s clear there needs to be better funding for treatment, we also need to look at the root causes. 

Housing is not treated like the human right that it is in the UK. Instead a small number of corporations have been lobbying aggressively to ensure the commodification of housing. That has resulted in profits for property developers, and grim, unsafe, insecure and unaffordable housing for millions of young people.

How can we solve the crisis in young people’s mental health without solving the housing crisis? As I quickly found out, when you don’t have a safe place to sleep, your mental wellbeing can spiral into crisis. With an estimated 17.5 million people in the UK affected by the housing emergency, is it any wonder so many are suffering?

But property developers are not the only corporate profiteers responsible for the youth mental health crisis. How can teens feel well, when we see the effects of the climate crisis in every natural disaster, all while the oil and gas industry laughs all the way to the bank? When private healthcare company bosses are rubbing their hands together, waiting for a chance to turn us into their new clients because the NHS can’t cope?

One thing I’ve come to understand through my campaigning with Just Treatment is that there’s always someone profiting from our “madness”. Housing developments are raking in cash, while young people sleep in parks. 

This has to stop. It’s time to put young people above profits and point the finger at the companies making, and keeping, us sick. I’m proud to be campaigning with Mad Youth Organise to make this a reality, and young people need to get involved now. 

Jacob is a member of young person’s campaign group Mad Youth Organise.

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