South Yorkshire leaders urged to help end homelessness within ten years
The charity Crisis say it can be stopped in a decade with the right policies
Last updated 12th Jun 2018
It's claimed homelessness in South Yorkshire could be completely ended in just ten years - if politicians take the right steps.
A huge report from charity Crisis says the UK knows how to sort it out, but claims leaders haven't done enough so far.
The charity thinks things like more affordable housing, benefit changes and more support could mean an end to homlessness in a decade.
South Yorkshire Housing Association helped write it - they're planning to meet with our county's mayor to get a South Yorkshire plan together to reflect the national one locally.
Tony Stacey's their CEO - he says we know how to do it...
"We know what causes homelessness, we know what sustains it and we know how to end it. The question now is whether we have the political will to actually do that. Because if we do, we don't need a whole load of new academic research - we know what works and we can do it.
"The supply of genuinely affordable homes has to be at the heart of what we do. Then we have to look at the way we provide support to people- half of the people who are sleeping on the streets at the moment have mental health problems. We have to tackle all the needs that the person has."
Crisis say making the changes they're suggesting would cost £19.3bn but would save the UK £53.9bn in the long run.
Tony says more needs be done to address homelessness across the UK:
"I think it's the kind of thing that everybody agonises about. It's what we all talk about on the buses and in the pubs and when we're with our families - in the sixth richest country in the world, why is homelessness such a problem? We're appalled by what's going on but we haven't, I don't think, given a clear enough message to the government yet that this needs sorting out.
"During the 1990s, the task force that Louise Casey set up, reduced rough sleeping by three quarters. So we do know what we need to do in order to tackle homelessness. But it's not just rough sleeping we need to tackle, it's all the sofa surfing that's going on, the overcrowding, people being evicted from the private sector."
A spokesman for the government said:
“Everyone deserves a safe place to live and we are committed to tackling homelessness and rough sleeping, working with charities such as Crisis.
“We are investing more than £1.2bn to tackle all forms of homelessness and just last week we announced £30m for councils to help boost the immediate support available to people living on the streets.
“We are also investing £9bn to build more affordable homes and are piloting the Housing First approach in three major regions to get people off the streets and into stable accommodation."