This week, Mayor Khan announced plans further to his manifesto pledge of ending rough sleeping in London by 2030, including changing rules to prevent having to sleep rough to access housing, and making 500 homes available. It’s hard to argue with the merits of this plan – although, an article by The Standard [1] does try.
Supporting people with need isn’t just good for politicians, it’s good for society and it’s good for business: there’s plenty of research (especially in my earlier posts) that articulates the cost savings and revenue boosts generated by ‘activating’ the potential of people who, through no fault of their own, have found themselves in a situation which, frankly, shouldn’t exist in a developed nation like the UK.
While I can’t argue with the merits of the plan, I also can’t say it sits all that well with me.
I’m on the same page as John Glenton at Riverside, who, in the article, puts it well: in short, it’s good, but it’s not enough. 500 homes and £17m… is that it?
And thinking about the goal, ending rough sleeping is great, but rough sleeping makes up around 2% of the total number of people affected by homelessness [based on 7,524 rough sleepers (gov.uk report) within a population of 354,000 (shelter.org.uk press release)
We can think bigger; we need to think bigger: we can end homelessness totally.
References:
1: “500 empty homes to be given to homeless Londoners under Sadiq Khan’s plan to eradicate rough sleeping by 2030“, Evening Standard, 20 May 2025
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