As the Government launches its new national plan to tackle homelessness,Greater Manchester’s Mayor Andy Burnham said that the strategy isn’t radical enough, and called for a return of the “everyone in” policy from the pandemic
The Government has announced £3.5 billion in investment over three years, aimed at halving the number of long-term rough sleepers and preventing households from becoming homeless in the first place
The Housing Secretary Steve Reed says that today’s strategy will ‘build a future where homelessness is rare, brief, and not repeated’.
Speaking to ITV news Burnham also criticized the chancellor’s decision to freeze housing benefit levels and the Home Office’s policy of evicting asylum-seekers from accommodation once given status to remain as “policies that actually create” homelessness.
The Mayor said that Greater Manchester’s ‘Bed Every Night’ policy is providing 600 rooms each night for rough sleepers, but nationally, there wasn’t funding to sustain it.
“I really feel the right thing to do as we go into the next phase of this Labour government is to go back to ‘everyone in’,” he said adding
“That’s what a ‘Bed Every Night is’, or what it’s trying to be, it’s harder for us to sustain it, though, when there isn’t funding in homelessness across the whole of the country. We’ve had some funding, but not enough.”
