Homelessness A Ticking Time Bomb For More And More Of London (Southwark Liberal Democrats)

Southwark Liberal Democrats <info@southwark-libdems.org.uk>

Homelessness A Ticking Time Bomb For More And More Of London

November 8, 2004 4:25 PM

Simon Hughes, MP for North Southwark & Bermondsey and Liberal Democrat Spokesman for London, speaking ahead of his adjournment debate tonight on homelessness in London said: "Homelessness is a ticking time bomb for more and more of London. More then 4 in 10 of the people who contact me for help in Southwark are facing a problem of housing or homelessness. Many other London MPs know of similar pressures in their boroughs.

"The statistics are serious indeed. Homelessness is the most serious crisis for a growing number of Londoners and London families.

"Government and local councils - of all political persuasions - are not winning the battle against homelessness, they are losing it.

"If we don't house people and house people properly, their health becomes worse, their ability to learn or to work is reduced and their problems escalate.

"In a capital city of increasing wealth, where one in a hundred are now without a permanent home, more and more people are getting left behind.

"Unless government responds much more urgently, they will be stoking up a set of huge social problems ahead.

"Five urgent initiatives could make an immediate difference:

1) a new drive to identify and fill empty properties;

2) the use of quick-built homes, such as those pioneered by Urban Settings, to deal with the immediate crisis;

3) additional funding for councils and the housing corporation for a massive programme of new build in London, particularly of three and four bedroom homes;

4) the urgent acquisition and conversion of hotels or other buildings in the middle of London to house the homeless and the low-paid, along the lines of the Common Ground project in the United States, and

5) the establishment of at least two one-stop shop centres for services for the homeless to deal with benefits, health and housing - one each side of the river.

"Solutions to this growing crisis are possible. But it requires the political will to implement them. London local councils cannot cope on their own. And the fact that the number of rough sleepers on the streets has gone down, does not mean that homelessness is not growing as an issue in London for more and more people every day."