They identify the cause of homelessness then ignore it to solve it
As we’ve pointed out a number of times before homelessness - in the sense of rough sleeping - is not, in fact, a problem of not enough housing. Which is something made clear here:
As the light fades in Christchurch Gardens, a man, hooded with a soiled blanket hanging across his shoulders, rummages through a bin. Another is having a violent argument with an invisible enemy under a streetlamp. A drunk retches loudly into a flowerbed.
Welcome to Westminster, the gilded backdrop for a crisis that mixes mental health, drug and alcohol abuse, migration and homelessness into a horror show for tourists.
Yes, obviously, these people are homeless. But it’s not all caused by the lack of homes.
Between April and June this year, there were 752 rough sleepers in Westminster, up 39pc compared to a year earlier, according to the Combined Homelessness and Information Network (Chain).
And?
Between April and June, there were 624 people in Greater London who were classed as living on the streets, according to the Chain. Nearly one in four of them, a total of 143, were in Westminster.
There are a number who pass through such rough sleeping, there are those who remain in it. Those passing through obviously have had a problem but there is also some system that aids them in coming out the other side. Which is good, obviously.
A quarter of rough sleepers in Westminster have problems with alcohol and 29pc have drug problems. More than half (51pc) have mental health issues while 29pc have previously been in prison and 13pc have been in the care system.
Note that we’ve more than 100% there. There are those with more than one problem. But the problem of those rough sleepers is those problems, not housing itself. From other reports we know that at least some of them have already been placed in sheltered accommodation and then left it again. It’s the inability to cope that is the problem, not housing itself.
OK, so what might we do about it?
It is a problem that Labour is desperate to fix, with a promise to boost social housebuilding,
That’s the wrong answer, isn’t it?
“I haven’t seen the Government actually making the commitment to social rent that is really needed,” says Lord Best, chairman of the Affordable Housing Commission.
Not addressing the cause of the problem in the slightest.
Housebuilders have warned Labour’s target of 1.5m homes over five years will be impossible to achieve and the housing associations who build the vast bulk of social rent homes have warned they do not have the money to ramp up development.
Without a cash injection, local authorities will be unable to fulfil their existing homelessness duties, adds Jasmine Basran, head of policy and campaigns at Crisis.
We had rough sleepers before we had a shortage of housing, we’ll have rough sleepers after we don’t have a shortage of housing. For housing itself isn’t the problem being suffered.
What the actual and correct solution is is another matter - perhaps devolving mental health and addiction care to the community of the fresh night air wasn’t the right decision - but as ever we can only solve a problem if we divine and define it correctly in the first place. That hard core of hundreds of rough sleepers is not caused by a lack of housing. Therefore more housing won’t cure it.
Tim Worstall