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Labour's £200m plan to end rough sleeping
Paul Waugh, Deputy Political Editor18.11.08
MORE than £200million is to be spent on new measures to end all street homelessness by 2012, housing minister Margaret Beckett announced today.
She said the plan, described as the boldest ever bid to wipe out "rough sleeping", would be spent on getting people off the streets and into hostels, work training and rented homes.
The cash will fund "rescue support teams" run by charities, while also seeking to prevent people losing their homes in the first place.
Half of all those sleeping rough in Britain are in central London, with many spending the night near The Strand, Embankment and Westminster Cathedral. Mrs Beckett's "ambition" to eradicate street homelessness across the whole of Britain, a claim that has never been made before by either Labour or Tory governments, is likely to face scepticism from experts who believe a certain amount of "rough sleeping" is inevitable.
But she and junior communities minister Ian Wright said that Labour had shown in the past decade that it could get the numbers down and wanted to work with the voluntary sector to "end rough sleeping for good". Some 238 of the 483 rough sleepers in Britain this year were in London.
The plan includes moves to offer special support to single people at risk of rough sleeping, with help with deposits for renting a home and more supported lodgings. There will also be a 24-hour phone line for members of the public to get them help, as well as a new emphasis on providing good healthcare to those on the streets.
Charities will work with those on the streets and those coming off to put together personal achievable action plans, to help them back into housing and employment. The voluntary sector, businesses and Government will work together to help rough sleepers into employment.
Whitehall will have to provide more "joined up government". For example, a rough sleeper should only be discharged from hospital when housing services are available.
Mrs Beckett said: "We have achieved much in tackling homelessness over the last 10 years, but it's time for us all to say rough sleeping in 21st century Britain is unacceptable."
Homelessness minister Mr Wright said: "When we walk down a street and see a figure in a sleeping bag huddled in a doorway, it reminds us there is more to do."
Reader views (13)
Here's a sample of the latest views published.
£200m won't just cover 483 individuals but would help prime-pump more longr term initiatives. However, albeit a grand (and good) gesture, we all know rough-sleeping results from a multitude of circumstances and / or decisions / "choice". Targets would be better set around minimising the length of time someone is on the street AND accepting that rough sleeping does not necessarilly constitute or promote criminal or social offence(s).
- Richard, Exeter, UK
It is not £200 million for 483 rough sleepers. A few thousand are helped off the streets every year. A large majority of the comments here are way of the mark. If you don't know the subject properly, don't comment. It just makes you look silly. I suggest you do a bit of research and then write your comment.
- Anon, London
Once again they go for the compassion thing to look good. Compassion is something that can tug on the hardest of hearts and they know it. The trouble is that they are ignoring other hard realities that need seeing to in the meantime. They are choosing manipulation at the gut level rather than practicality. They are trying to look good more, I strongly suspect, for political survival than to do what is right.
I may be cynical for me to state this, but how much more cynical are they who perpetrate this time wasting on people who will, while taking anything they can get for nothing, not appreciate these efforts in the least?
A hardline question needs be asked too - make it easier to opt out of social responsibility and how many more will choose to just drop out as many of these people have?
- Rogan, Irving
Spending £ 200.000.000 on 483 rough sleepers? That works out at more than £ 41.000 per person? Seems a lot to me. Also many for many of these rough sleepers it is a chosen lifestyle.
- Paul, London UK
This is a big step. Let the result get historical by succeeding with your goals. Sure, there are lots of other things to do - LOTS,- but this could be a start to really change society. Money are often spent in a real bad way - also the taxincome the goverment spend. This is something that gives many of us hope and keep on with various voulontere jobs for a better world. YAY
- Juni, stockholm sweden
More waste. A study in Toronto a decade ago showed that even if you offer the homeless excellent accommodation and everything else they want, there are a great many (about a third) of those sleeping rough who simply like sleeping 'in the open'. They like the outdoors, and no inducement will convince to move inside. And that study was done in the winter months when the temperature in Toronto was dipping to -20C and lower.
This is not a problem that money can solve. What is needed is for the police to enforce the vagrancy laws. Use the money to hire more police to enforce existing laws. Labour's answer is always to spend money on such problems rather than treat them as a proper law-and-order matter. This 'go-softly' approach not only wastes money, but brings the law into disrepute. The law says that people can't sleep in public places. Why isn't it being enforced?
- Phil Jones, London UK
Thousands and thousands of empty properties.One flat in South London has been left empty by a council for eleven years.No wonder there is a homeless problem.
- E.Smith, London UK
Why would street people be "trained" and told to go find jobs when millions of "home sleepers" are on the dole? Some for generations?
- Trunk, US
What a cynically despicably time to do this. As people arrive for the Olympics our streets will be clear of the homeless. Make it 2009. It is possible and while I am typing whyn is it that Cambridge has been a begging hotspot for years. If the government wants our country to look good in 2012 get rid of them too, and arrest people for drunkeness' swaring and general threatening behavour. Our streets are a disgrace.
- S, Essex UK
Perhaps they could provide a better transition to civilian life for people leaving the Armed Forces, given they make up about half of people sleeping rough in the UK - instead of shipping them back from a war-zone and expecting them just to fit in nicely in a packing job in a factory and pretend their military career never happened.
- Roz, Chamonix, France
here we go again, take as much money out of my pocket and give it to local authority staff so they can feel all warm about their goody-two-shoes jobs. My money was hard enough to earn without wasting it on wasters.
The £200 milion would be better spent on free drugs, maybe then all the OD's would cut the numbers of "rough sleepers" (eg junkies) down to those who actually need help such as those with mental health problems.
- Ben, London, W1
Wouldn't it be easier to stop giving any social housing flats to asylum seekers, refugees etc?
- P I Staker, London
Most homeless people are there by choice. Spending £200mn to help 438 people will surpass even the idiotic amounts being spent by London councils to house other "homeless" people (ie £414,000 per person), who almost always seem to be foreign with large families and of course with no job. Funny how they are still able to afford cars and from the picture of the Nigerian with the large family and house, buy large quantities of goods from M&S. And since when are nigerians allowed to claim asylum in this country? The cars of course are probably not insured though, as most "asylum seekers" take no notice of UK law until it comes time to complain about their human rights. In the present economic environment, does Beckett really think most of us really care that a bunch of alcoholics and drug addicts sleep on the street. Get your priorities right.
- Jon, london
