Responding to the Government's Homelessness Minister
saying she doesn't know why rough sleeping has
risen, Labour's Shadow Housing Secretary, MP said:
"If Ministers seriously don't know why rough sleeping has
risen then they don't know how to fix the
problem either.
"The truth is the national shame of rising rough sleeping
is the direct result of decisions made by Conservative
Ministers: cuts to council services and housing benefit, a
lack of action to help private renters and a sharp fall in the
number of genuinely affordable homes.
"A Labour Government will act on all these fronts and
end rough sleeping within our first five years in Government."
ENDS
Notes
MP, the Minister with
responsibility for homelessness, was asked by the Guardian
why rough sleeping had risen. She replied: “In truth, I
don’t know." https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/18/homelessness-minister-heather-wheeler-rough-sleeping-housing-first?CMP=twt_gu
Regarding provision of housing for homeless people in Scotland,
the Minister also remarked "I find it fascinating that there is
no private-sector rental used at all to place people up here –
it’s all local authority and housing association, because you
have supply” - seemingly unaware that this was the case in
England too until the Conservatives changed the law in 2011 to
allow discharge of councils' homelessness duties into the private
rented sector.
The Ministers also says that, to tackle rising homelessness,
it is important to "sort out supply of affordable housing". The
number of Government-funded social rented homes being started
each year has fallen from almost 40,000 in 2009/10 to fewer than
1,000 last year - a fall of 98%: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/662763/Live_Table_1012.xlsx
