The number of people sleeping rough on London’s streets has increased in the past year and soared by comparison with 2010, according to the latest government figures. “Single night snapshots” of the situation compiled by the capital’s local authorities show that on a typical autumn night in 2014 there were 742 people sleeping rough whereas for the same period in 2013 it was 543 and 415 four years ago. The 2013 stat was slightly lower than that for 2012, but the general trend has been up, up, up. Why?
Jon Sparkes who is chief executive of Crisis, the national charity for single homeless people, thinks there are three main reasons for the rise. One is our old friend the shortage of suitable affordable housing, which Sparkes believes there’s no serious initiative to correct. Another is benefit reform, particularly the squeeze on housing benefit and sanctions against claimants. Finally, Sparkes lists the erosion of support for those who look for help. “Too often,” he says, “there’s little or none.”
Crisis has illustrated this last point with a “mystery shopping” research project called Turned Away. Researchers sought help from seven London local authorities. The resulting report says that only in one was an initial interview given followed by an assessment with a housing adviser. The other six councils were described as incorrectly preventing people from seeing an adviser by quickly judging them as not being in priority need, or else telling them their documentation was insufficient for them to be assessed. With that one up-to-scratch exception, the capital performed poorly compared with the rest of England. Yet London now has more than a quarter of the country’s rough sleepers.
The St Mungo’s Broadway homelessness charity chief executive Howard Sinclair, speaking to the Telegraph, has echoed Sparkes’s view that the help given by councils needs to be improved. While noting that higher snapshot counts might be in part a reflection of more efficient counting, he underlines that for some years a higher proportion of London’s rough sleepers have come from Central or Eastern Europe European accession countries - 31% of them in 2013/14 according to Combined Homelessness and Information Network (Chain) estimates (page 7) - and been less entitled to what help is available. Many rough sleepers are physically unwell and have mental health and drug problems. They are extremely vulnerable human beings. Sinclair describes the erosion of entitlements as “particularly concerning”.
There have been some effective schemes to address rough sleeping in London recently: among others, the No Second Night Out scheme, run on the mayor’s behalf by St Mungo’s Broadway with the aim of preventing new rough sleepers become entrenched, is well-regarded. But the London Assembly housing committee’s conclusion reached last summer that it is not enough to solve the problem seems emphatically borne out by the new data. London must do better than this.
Readers who see someone sleeping rough and want to help are advised by Crisis to phone Streetlink on 0300 500 0914.
