Rough sleeping in London

Khan and co, how many residential development sites are enough to stop your fairy tales about lack of funds and spaces for social housing? 

Too many luxury apartments in London. What a joke. 

The issue is the cost of housing in London and the lack of affordable housing. Question? Who is living in Central London? Shell companies? Rich Russians and Arabs? No one? My daughter, 30, is still living at home with me and has zero chance to buy, rent, or even share an accommodation in London. Sorry, but a huge number of properties ought to be confiscated, as simple as that. 40% of dirty money goes through London. It is scandalous. Enough hypocrisy.

More words and inaction. There is too much demand for the housing stock driven by a growing population. As long as you're happy to concrete over the country you can drive house prices down. Reducing the demand is the only long-term solution.

Providing jobs in other parts of the country might halt some of the gravitation to London. The Mayor should stop encouraging more growth as that is part of the problem. 

This only looks at the immediate issue, the people doing the rough sleeping, stopping them rough sleep or doing so as soon as possible. Any initiative alsobneeds to look at mental health/drug and alcohol issues, and returning migrants to their own countries. It also needs to look at effects on others eg detering uses of eg stations, walkways, shop doorways etc by enforcement if necessary, to ensure public safety/security and confidence.

I just started volunteering for a homeless charity and am beginning to learn a lot about how complicated the issues are.The people I see are homeless for lots of reasons. Mental health issues and/or alcohol/drug dependency are common along with the physical health issues that run alongside these such as liver disease. Some people are homeless because they have been evicted or thrown out by a partner or their parents. Others have been granted asylum status and then asked to leave their accommodation. Some are even sent to the charity by the council which seems senseless as the charity only offers support and has no accommodation to offer. 

I've asked the people who work for the charity what they think  the solution is and again the answer is it's complicated. More support is needed for mental health and addiction problems which needs money as does housing.

I have no answers, I'm not sure anyone does but perhaps we do need to look at other cities and countries to see what they do and start coming up with long term solutions 

There is only one way to end homelessness: building new home and tax people with high wealth. 
Everything else is really a waste of money and time. Stop pretending that you are doing something. You save 1 person and other 2 become homeless.

All the volunteering, all the discussions are unfortunately totally useless in the grand scheme of solutions to solve this problem.

You need to build new concrete expensive homes under public ownership. Everything else is rubbish.

A qualified psychologist recognised by the British Council of Psychology, I asked the Job Centre for help to pay for a course to qualify as a solicitor, but the Job Centre refused.

Unemployed, I asked for Discretionary Payment assistance from 3 different councils, but they all refused for absurd reasons.

In the end, I ended homeless in temporary accommodation, which I have been in for 3 years now.

The London housing system is a game in which the system itself pushes you out onto the streets, and then comes to ask you how to reverse the mess that the system itself created.

I've been in a house for over 3 years, eating my meals on the floor, writing to you on my bed without internet, living off of you who pay your taxes.

Thanks you all. 

‘Ending rough sleeping’ reads to me as a political rhetoric; a slogan that has no credibility because it is not an achievable objective. Only an oppressive authoritarian ruler could end all rough sleeping in London. London is very expensive, has a growing population, not enough affordable housing, access to mental health services. Therefore, ending rough sleeping in London is unrealistic.

This sounds like some political elite trying to convince Londoners that he/she has virtue and cares about social issues as a means only to maintain or stay in a position of power. 

What happens to the 265000 affordable dwellings the Mayor promised if he was elected? The public has a very short memory and political elites know it. 

To me, "ending rough sleeping by 2030" means gimmicks are still the order of the day in UK Politics.

We need more housing. That's the issue. W don't need any more chat about it.

The Politicians aren't going to provide it - else they would have done it by now.

Probably they are scared of a housing "correction" which pushes lots of home-owners into negative equity.

We don't hear anything about that. - just target dates so far in the future that all concerned will be retired or in other jobs.

Hostels are not the answer.

Rent a room as a lodger is not the answer.

Send them to Rwanda ( or Aberdeen or where ever ) is not the answer.

More consultancies is not the answer.

Factory build large fully fitted 8 season ( global warming - and freezing if the gulf stream falters ) blocks, and sell them at market price to pay for the construction - so the price winds down as supply increases.

You can build a large low energy flat for  70K - crane it into a girder frame.

Find some home-owners who realise what's now about to happen to prices and who want to sell for this sort of development.

Stop having endless consulations.

Untill you have lived rought in London, you will not understand. I suggest you speak to the chaps at the Passage, in Longmore street Sw1. They deal with homeless people every day .

They got me off the streets and now getting back into work, but some have drug and alcohol, issues.

Mayor should be prioritising rough sleepers into habitual and needy sleepers and then mske sure needy sleepers are tackled first and then worry about habitual sleepers.

There should be better facilities for drug rehabilitation and weaning programme which does not feature in any of Mayor’s programmes.

IMPLEMENT HOUSING FIRST, NOT GIMMICKY 'INITIATIVES' WITH LOFTY AIMS...

StreetLink is a joke.  A rough sleeping alert service that asks people to report when they see someone rough sleeping - nice idea, but you kind of have to have the reporting line open after 6pm when people are actually likely to be sleeping.  Only possible to make a referral online after that time and having done easily more than 50-100 referrals over the course of the last four years (both in a personal and in a professional capacity), I know of only two times that the outreach teams have successfully located the person and taken them to the NSNO hub.  

NSNO - Don't get me started on that one either.  Again, nice idea, but in London it's completely mismanaged and entirely dysfunctional ending up placing people at risk of greater harm, greater risk and zero dignity. The NSNO hubs don't even have any beds and people taken there are made to sleep on the hard floor of a single big open hall in whatever grotty stuff they've managed to bring with them.  If people knew the abusive and degrading way that the homeless are treated by these services day in day out, they wouldn't give them a penny.

Implement the HOUSING FIRST model but do it properly and don't try cutting corners and doing it on the cheap because it won't work.  The support must be there and the accommodation must have no hoops to jump through and no conditions to being provided. Only then will people be able to work on their other issues.  

I don't think the proposed definition equals 'ending' rough sleeping as it will (inevitably) still occur

It would be better to say 'minimising rough sleeping'

Nothing is missing from the definition, except realism about what's achievable

It means nothing, as it cannot be done

I do not believe it is possible to end rough sleeping. The statment appears to promise something it can not deliver. There are illegal iimmigrants on the streets that should be deported as they are more of a burden on our society. There are people who choose to live on the streets and you can not force them into accomodation.

I wish that everyone could have a warm safe home, but reality is different.

It is also very expensive for everyone to maintain a home, many can not keep up with the bills so have no choice but to move on to the streets.

It’s not tough enough: Rough sleeping puts our most vulnerable at risk of death, of early death or imminent death. Ending rough sleeping today - as we did in Covid19 - is what must be done. Do as Finland does: house people & then work on their problems. 

I work as a Welfare Rights Adviser at a Food Bank, I come across people who are street homeless, during Xmas time I came across people who were street homeless and was excited that I could signpost them to SWEP. However, when calling the SWEP number client were told that client should call the number after 5 but no one answered the phone, in the end none of my clients found a place to sleep, they ended up on night buses and bus stands for shelter. I felt SWEP was not implemented by councils effectively. 

If it is correct that London has over 500,000 illegal immigrants, most arrived in the last few years, then the credible only way forward is to convert increasingly empty office blocks, beginning with those  that are council (GLA, Borough etc.) owned. using the opportunity to train "work fare" volunteers from among the homeless and draw them onto welfare to work paths.

There's only one solution to homelessness caused by a housing shortage, and that is building more properties - which will bring the price down to something near the cost of a property not the cost of scarcity.

This means that it will never happen, because ALL politicians will steer round the issue of negative equity which will result from the price of properties dropping.

The best that could come up with between them over the last 30+years was to build unacceptable housing (too small) and rename it as affordable.

If there is enough property available then it will be affordable.

Now we have another idiot initiative to ask for more ideas.
 

Factory build 8 season (global warming/coolin/energy-efficiancy)low energy fully fitted ( long life repairable washing machine/cooker/heating/Internet) large flats and crane them into position.

Sell them at the market. The price will come down as you build more. 

You will not loose money unless the quality is low.

I suspect we will need a new Political party to do this . . .

The draft definition at the top of the post is ineffective. It essentially says "Ending rough sleeping in London means ending rough sleeping if we can". OK that means I have to come up with a definition and its not going to be perfect. I think the definition needs to reflect how we help rough sleepers and how success would also benefit other Londoners. Here goes: “Ending rough sleeping in London means taking vulnerable individuals off the streets of our urban centres and into sustainable sheltered accommodation with access to support services.”