Rough sleeping in London

One problem is that without an address you can't find employment, which is a real 'catch 22'.  People can become homeless when they 'run out of money'.  We need to create a safety net to catch people in these situations.  It should be possible for people in imminent danger of homelessness (under notice or serious rent arrears) to notify the Council or other charitable organisations of their likely homelessness.  Help could then be organised before rough sleeping happens.

Some Churches offer overnight temporary accommodation as do some charities. 

I don't think that personal offers of help are practical or safe. As an OAP I do not feel able to offer help, I think help must be properly organised to keep all concerned safe.

I had a period of living rough and now getting back into work. I was ill, and my business partners had misappropriated money. Now I am in a studio, not in a tent.

 One of the chaps in this house works with a local church who was homeless, and his church supports him not drinking.

He explained  they also support homeles  people  so we gave the church some clothing that had ben left in the house. It then struck me that we have all these churches  around London, only being used a few times a week with nice parishoners able to help on big causes.

The London Mayor has the power to reach out to religious Chiefs, whose organisations can help with the homeless problem. People can donate to their local church and be promoted through social media.

This could be organised quickly as the infrastructure is already in place.

I know I may be going against the grain here, but we don't have a responsibility to help with rough sleeping.
It is a blight on the community and personal safety. 

We pay our taxes. It is a governmental problem - there is plenty of support through councils and other charities. 

If they aren't accessed, then rough sleepers should be forcibly moved on out of cities and urban areas.

Oh Firstly why are people evicted?

Some could remain depending on reasons.

Building or converting disused buildings into university style accommadation. Bedroom /storage/ sink/toilet and shower.

Need not be big. Ground floor relaxing/ eating area. Part of this to be used to get people to work or repatriate them to their home town. There needs to be professional support on site and visiting support .

Compared to the money thrown at this problem over the years this will be cheaper in the long run. Only one such building should be developed first as all the teething problems can thus be sorted.

      I know this is about London but other cities have the same problem and young men andcwomen are at risk.

One of the main reasons for the huge rise in rough sleeping is the huge lack of government funds for youth programmes. If young people are helped to feel more positive about their lives and to feel they can get work and a future AND have access to affordable housing, this will give them the chance to help themselves to a better life. 
Many homeless people fall through the net because relationships have failed them. They become homeless due to mental problems that are not addressed because there are not sufficient funds in the social services to deal with them. 
No thanks to Mrs Thatcher for closing down mental homes. 
Along with preventing future homelessness, by helping potential sufferers from a young age, the best thing the Mayor can do is set up a city wide chain of social supporters who will help rehabilitate the homeless. If properly thought out shelters can be built where the homeless are treated like humans rather than be herded into dormitories, that would help. There should be literacy schemes, counsellors and therapists to help with mental problems, chiropodists and nurses to help with general health,in order to make the homeless people feel better in themselves, plus job advisers who can help people to find work and if necessary educational help in local authority evening classes. The problem is much more than plucking people off their cardboard beds, sticking them in a shelter for a few nights and giving them soup and bread and a cup of hot tea. 
Charities like Centrepoint and the Glass Door do great work and should receive more support from city funds because they change homeless people’s lives. Ultimately this sort of scheme should be set up by the city. 
It’s not the  immigrants who make up the majority of homeless in the city, it’s ordinary citizens who have fallen on difficult times.
 

Hi. Good evening! 3 core points already listed. Education, financial contibutions in kind from researched sponsors & media iimpact of concequences.

Practical application:

Visit ccommunities, sschools, faith based groups to hhighlight cconcerns.

 Encourage ssponsors to tthink oit of the box. NO CASH but help with CV's, jobs, opening an account.

Digital media push to highlight cconcern  & actively change/prevent it. Links with other global ccities.

Londoners and we as people could do so much more by supporting   local initiatives like food banks, shelters, and community kitchens. Donating regularly or volunteering helps provide basic needs such as food, clothing, and shelter for people experiencing homelessness. I currently volunteer for 2 hours a week at the food bank, I find it very rewarding and it’s nice to see local people being helped, unlike the tales told by the tabloids these are geniue people without a home or food. 

If feel a bigger issue  that needs to be addressed is by raisiing awareness and challenge stigma around homelessness. By sharing stories, hosting campaigns, and encouraging open conversations, Londoners can help change negative perceptions and foster a more empathetic view of homelessness.

More needs to be done !

W.e need to address the lack of mental health support for young people and their families without this any programme is doomed to fail. Care in the community is not working due to lack of funds and support. CAHMs is underfunded and teenagers with problematic backgrounds are not been supported. Without this support they cannot function in society and become homeless. 

Employment loopholes need to be addressed. Zero hours contracts should be stopped completely to avoid people losing their homes because of illness or family illness. Goverment policy changes are desperately needed.

Construction of Purpose build homeless accommodation( similar to student accommodation) as a temporary measure while people can train and get a job to support themselves, support for mental health. A lot of luxury developments have been built lately and sold at ridiculous prices to benefit corporate UK, can’t they recycle more of these developers profits for a higher percentage of social housing?

More soup kitchens in winter supported by the councils or government during high cost of living. I’m sure a lot of volunteers will be able to support the running of these if the council can provide the premises.

More action required to clamp down on professional beggars and clear the pavements by compulsory rehousing.

How come the Mayor is only now tackling rough sleepers after years in office? 

Less regulation in housing and rental not more intervention which drives up costs.

There’s loads of building work going on across London. You cannot breathe for building work taking place yet, a lot of these properties are for first time buyers. They also get bought by people to let or by rich people from abroad. Only a small percentage are set aside specifically for social housing people. If more of these properties were made available for homeless people and, being homeless includes those in temp accommodation, hotels as well as rough sleepers, this will help reduce the homelessness figures. There are also rumours that these local new properties are unaffordable to local people in their own areas forcing them to look elsewhere to move to therefore these new homes are not really for local people. 

The Mayor should prosecute the soup kitchens and similar organisations for corporate manslaughter. They are making it easier for rough sleepers to stay out on the streets, where they are much more likely to die earlier than they would if they could be brought in.  The funding and efforts that are expended on this should be redirected to schemes that get people off the street instead.

House prices are through the roof but still there are thousands (if not tens of thousands) of homes sitting empty, all purchased by foreign investors who do not have a single tie to the UK or London. They need to be prevented from buying British property. 

Red tape also needs to be cut to allow for houses to be built. What use is all these grey and brown sites all around the capital. Planning permission needs to be given within a month and building needs to start asap to increase housing supply. 

I worked in social housing for almost 40 years and at a time when rough sleeping was a tiny problem. Government has successively closed off access to social housing by bringing in the right to buy, ending 100% housing association grant, starving local authorities of funding for social housing, closing down the G.L.C. Criminalising squatting of empty homes, abolishing the fair rent system and drastically reducing the number and variety of social housing providers by forcing mergers and closures and bringing in a regime where only the most financially astute and solvent associations could survive. IS IT ANY WONDER that the streets at night are littered with the poor souls who for various reasons are unable to afford the very high cost of the worst of private rented housing? Governments have successively sold off almost everything in public ownership to private enterprise, so there is nothing to fall back on but increasing taxes that they are terrified of doing. Increasing tax on the wealthy, again they are not willing to do. One answer would be to properly equalise the council tax system so that the bands reflected the true size and value of housing. We have a situation in London where the wealthy are tearing down completely sound houses and re-building them to include large basement gymnasiums, media rooms and swimming pools because they have so much personal wealth that they are able to indulge in this way. This is obscene when others are sleeping on the streets.

See my answer to a question on the previous survey, which, I assume, has been retained. Rough sleeping cannot be ended without a total reformation of housing policy. In short, reliance on the market is the problem. Housing has to be seen as a source of social utility, not as a means of private investment. Rents have to be set according to people's incomes, not according to the demands of finance capitalism. Conditions of tenure should be pro tenant not pro landlord. If necessary, empty properties should be sequestered by the state and put to immediate use. I think the emphasis should be on putting to use housing stock that presently exists, rather than the frentic building of new stock which is of dubious value. Licensed squatting should be reintroduced. Some councils did practise this from the late 1960's through to the early 1980's. I doubt whether the current cohort of councillors are aware of it, but Lewisham Council was a pioneer in this respect. It resulted from the initiative of a Chair of Housing who was a genuine One Nation Tory. Now where did they go ?

I'm fortunate to have spent a lot of my leisure time sailing small yachts. So I know it's perfectly possible to fit living, sleeping, sanitary and cooking provisions into a hull 20 feet long and pointed at one end and tapering at the other. It must therefore be possible to conceive and construct secure self-contained accommodation units within the footprint of a, say, a 20 foot shipping container (no, I'm not advocating converting shipping containers into mini homes, but building mini-homes that are 20 feet long, 8 feet wide and 8 feet high). These could be industrially constructed at relatively low cost (hello Ikea!) and trucked to where they are needed, with onsite utility hook-ups. Add in a common social and care space and you could provide first-foot-on-the-ladder accommodation to the homeless and to rough sleepers and begin to address the problem. Of course, the root causes of the individuals' situation (unemployment, injury, illness,  divorce, substance abuse, lack of skills, etc) would need to be tackled in tandem.

I was homeless last year livinging a tent and got put into a hostel and now in temp housing, with private landlord. My business failed and I had medical issues.