5th largest economy in the world, senior member of the G20, Over £1 Trillion in taxes raised from the people of the UK every year, and we have one of the worst homeless records in Europe. Why?
Here is an excellent article from theconversation.com that attempts to understand why we have a homeless problem.
I’m personally interested because when I was 18 one of my first jobs was as a civil servant and I was responsible for tracking homeless people as they moved around the country from reception centre to centre. ‘Clients’, we didn’t call them clients then, we called them vagrants, would visit a reception centre, sign in, have their vitals recorded, spend the night, be fed dinner breakfast and given a packed lunch and washed and then move on the next day as they could only stay for one night.
I collected the dockets the clients completed and filed them away and as far as I know, that’s where they stayed.
The Labour Party scrapped the scheme as it was expensive to support the centres and it was felt that the clients were being encouraged to not seek work, but to ‘sponge off the state’.
As is common, and all governments do this, the Labour government didn’t replace it with any new system, process and procedure and clients were left to fend for themselves.
They were set up just after the war and since then Homelessness has been a sore in the backside of every government and never properly dealt with. Why not?
But figures released by the Department for Communities and Local Government, based on nightly head counts undertaken in the autumn of 2015, revealed 3,569 rough sleepers. This is double the number recorded in 2010, and nearly five times the figure quoted 50 years ago.
Services have not expanded to cope. The NAB counted 34,596 available places in hostel accommodation in 1966. The charity Homeless Link recorded 36,540 in 2014.
In the report they identify 2 main problems:
Lack of responsibility for the problem
Shortage of accommodation
I don’t know if you follow those three great housing programs presented by George Clarke, Kevin McLeod and Nick Knowles. They are big champions of small, eco-friendly, sustainable and affordable housing.
Why doesn’t the PM put them in charge of an overhaul of our planning and housing laws. With he best will in the world, you wouldn’t hire a master plumber and expect them to also do carpentry. The people in charge of planning and housing are professional civil servants and professional politicians and we expect them to effect social change in the midst of the worst economic period we have ever experienced.
Amid this darkening outlook, some hope rests with the Homelessness Reduction Bill, which is currently being debated in parliament. As it stands, the bill will oblige local authorities to assist all homeless people by assessing their situation, helping to prevent their homelessness where possible, or providing temporary accommodation for up to 56 days.
It’s another issue that affects a vulnerable segment of our society that needs help. That’s what we should do HELP. Even a return to the reception centres is better than what we have now.