"You can’t help the homeless if you don’t build the homes" - Healey responds to Crisis/JRF research

John Healey MP, Labour’s Shadow Housing Secretary, responding to new research by Crisis and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation showing that 70% of councils in England are struggling to find housing for homeless people, said:

“After eight years of failure, the Conservatives have no plan to tackle the scandal of rising homelessness or build the low-cost homes the country needs.

“You can’t help the homeless if you don’t build the homes, and the number of new social rented homes being built has fallen from 40,000 with Labour to fewer than 1,000 last year.

“A Labour government will build at least 100,000 genuinely affordable homes to rent and buy a year by the end of the next Parliament, including the biggest council housebuilding programme in more than thirty years.”

Ends

Notes to editors

• ·         The Crisis and Joseph Rowntree Foundation Homelessness Monitor is published tomorrow (Thursday). It includes information from a survey of English councils which shows that the majority (70%) are struggling to find any stable housing for homeless people in their area, leaving them forced to place more people in unstable temporary accommodation. The report suggests that, on current trends, more than 100,000 such households will be trapped in temporary accommodation by 2020.

• ·         The number of new social rented homes being started has fallen by 98% since 2010: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/662763/Live_Table_1012.xlsx

• ·         Labour’s plan to fix the housing crisis is available here: https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Housing-Mini-Manifesto.pdf