We had a visit from Cllr Azad on Saturday!!

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Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has a choice to make.

Will he fail to protect renters by keeping housing benefit frozen? Or will he do what's needed?

We stand with thousands of others who have emailed their MP demanding change. With 900,000 households facing shortfalls in their rent.

Alongside 131,000 children who are homeless with their families this winter.

The more of us calling for change, the harder we are to ignore.

Dear Ms Braverman

You recently quoted Shelter as having said "no one should be punished for being homeless" yet you are campaigning to remove tents from the streets.

No one would choose to live on the streets unless they were forced to do so. The situation we have reached in this country, with little or no affordable housing, housing benefit levels that are no where near the cost of rents, and landlords setting an unrealistic acceptable income level, often too much even for people in full time work to achieve, is scandalous.

The waste of money paying £300+ a week for a temporary accommodation room, which are often sub-standard, far outweighs the monthly housing benefit allowance of £500 a month, and thousands if not millions of people are in this situation. The total waste of taxpayers money should weigh heavily on the government's conscience. Currently the beneficiaries are the temporary accommodation providers and not the homeless.   

Your party has  pledged to end homelessness.  When are we going to see any action that would make charities like ours feel that this is a serious commitment and have hope for a better future?  

Pauline Goubert

Chair of Trustees HUG

A poll of over 70 homelessness charities found that one in four feared the cost of living crisis risked their service having to shut down.  Charities point to Government figures that show rough sleeping increased by 168% between 2010 and 2017, when ministers pursued an austerity agenda.  More than 30 homelessness charities have warned the Government that services for people with nowhere to live or fleeing domestic abuse could be forced to close if their funding is not increased in line with inflation. 

In an open letter to Jeremy Hunt, and shared with 32 charities, urge the Chancellor to increase funding for homelessness and rough sleeping services when he announced his Medium-Term Fiscal Statement at the end of this month, amid warnings that Government departments will be forced to make cuts.  Instead of cutting funding for homelessness services, funding must be increased in line with inflation to ensure charities can cope with the increased demand caused by the cost of living crisis.   With inflation now in double digits, Homeless Link CEO, Rick Henderson, said charities were “simply asking for an uplift in funding to mirror rising costs and help us provide meaningful, person-centred support to all those who need it“.  He added, “If the Chancellor does not uplift the funding package, real-terms cuts to homelessness budgets today will continue to be felt years down the line,  both by those pushed into insecurity and the public purse.”