The topic of rough sleeping gets a huge amount of media attention around Christmas time. With the Season of Goodwill drawing to a close and the coldest part of winter still to come, we must not allow complacency about homelessness to sink in. Rather, we must redouble our efforts to solve these issues once and for all.
Media Focus
Amongst the slew of articles published over the holidays was one entitled “How to help homeless people this winter” posted on the BBC’s Newsbeat platform. The article quoted pop chanteuse and Streets of London ambassador Ellie Goulding who hosted a fundraising concert just before Christmas. To date, Goulding’s benefit concerts have raised over £300,000 for the charity. The singer told Newsbeat:
"If you see someone on the street, even if you don't have any cash on you, I genuinely think the interaction is more important than anything. People on the street end up having a lack of social skills and not having friends or a connection with people. So if you don't have the money, just have a conversation."
Government Contributions
In August last year, the Secretary of State for Housing, James Brokenshire, announced that £100 million was to be spent on ending rough sleeping by 2027. With an estimated 5000 people living on the streets in the UK, this sounded like the government was finally prepared to pay to solve the problem. However, a BBC article revealed that the £100 million figure included £50 million that had already been spent (presumably ineffectively as the number of people rough sleeping has risen during this period) and £50 million to be repurposed from existing Ministry of Communities, Housing and Local Government budgets.
New Year’s Eve Announcement
On the final day of 2018, Brokenshire announced £38 million (the first release from a promised pot of £1.2 billion to tackle all forms of homelessness) will be spent over the next three years in London. The ‘Capital Letters’ scheme will encourage London boroughs to work together and aims to help 35,000 households out of homelessness. It will be interesting to track what happens to this money. If the scheme genuinely reduces the number of homeless households, all well and good. If the number of homeless households remains steady or continues to rise, while landlords profit, who should be held to account?
A Different Way of Doing Things
Governments have consistently failed to tackle the root problems of homelessness and rough sleeping, whilst charities have provided a sticking plaster where a tourniquet would be more appropriate. At Kanndoo, we want to shake things up a bit. In our opinion, homeless people themselves are best placed to decide where money intended to help them is spent.
This democratisation of funding is one radical idea and we have lots of others. Let us know what you think on Facebook and Twitter.
