The situation of homelessness is getting worse by the day. Lot of lip service is given by the government of tackling it but no resources are put in to address the issue.
Also people want to know who are these unfortunate homeless persons and why they are in such a dire situation that they have to sleep rough. A majority of the people found sleeping rough were from the United Kingdom, with people from the central and eastern Europe being the second largest. According to statistic the breakdown of rough sleepers is White 62.7%, Black 13.0%, Gypsy/Romany/ Irish Traveller 6.8%, Asian 6.5%, Other 3.2%, Mixed 2.2%, Arab 0.7%, Chinese 0.1%
The shortage of affordable housing which has been going for decades with each government giving empty promising of building more housing to meet rising demand but nothing is done. It is really a great shame the world’s fifth largest economy in the world is unable to provide the much needed housing to the poorer section of its community. Government has to stop the cuts and austerity policy and embark on a positive and urgent action to solve this perennial problem. Ministers and MPs should give homelessness support to reverse the scandal of mounting homelessness.
PM Boris Johnson and his Chancellor of the Exchequer Javid Sajid are embroiled in the Brexit issue and have also launched their general election campaign but there is no mention of important homelessness issue. It is time this issue is tackled as a matter of urgency.
Baldev Sharma
Rayners Lane, Harrow
