BORIS Johnson has missed his own rough sleeping targets, even though the number of people living on the street has fallen according to latest figures.
The Prime Minister has committed to ending rough sleeping on the streets by 2024 as new figures show that there were an estimated 4,266 people living rough last year.
That was only a reduction of 411 from 2018 far short of the 780 needed each year to hit the government targets, although it is the second year in a row the figures have dropped.
The figures come as the Prime minister visited a homeless shelter and announced 236 million to end homelessness and rough sleeping.
Earlier Boris Johnson vowed to end rough sleeping “once and for all” as he appointed a homelessness tsar who conquered the scourge twenty years ago.
Dame Louise Casey will take up the same role she had two decades ago which saw a relentless drive by then PM Tony Blair manage to cut homelessness by two thirds and rough sleeping by three quarters.
Speaking at Connection at St Martins in the Fields, London he said: I think that the homelessness crisis, the rough sleeping crisis, is totally unacceptable.
The numbers of people sleeping rough in our country as a whole are way too high. Now, It is true they have been coming down in the last year or so.
“But we want to drive that forward now. We really want to put a make a big, big dent in thosenumbers.
Rough sleeping, as you would have seen this morning from listening to those people, its so complex.
Issues come together in peoples lives and make them feel they can’t cope
“These are amazing people – they can turn their lives around if they are given a bit of help, encouragement and support.
The Lib Dems Layla Moran said: Having a target to eliminate rough sleeping by 2024 is all well and good, but the data shows just how off track the Government is. We need actions, not just words.
Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, said: Its good news if fewer people are facing the trauma of sleeping on the streets.
But a word of warning, the number of people sleeping rough remains well over double what it was in 2010.
The Prime Minister rightly wants to end rough sleeping before the end of the parliament, but unless his government tackles the drought of genuinely affordable homes, homelessness isnt going anywhere.
You cant put a plaster on a gaping wound. Serious investment in social housing is whats needed.
The upcoming budget is the perfect opportunity to champion a new generation of social homes and increase housing benefit, so it covers the basic cost of private rents.
Helen Barnard, from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, added: The problem is that the underlying factors which pull people into homelessness arent being addressed people are stuck in expensive private rented properties because there arent enough social homes, and housing benefit has stopped being an anchor to help people cope with high housing costs.
Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick MP added: Todays figures show that we are making promising progress, building on last years achievement which saw the first fall in the number of people sleeping rough for the first time in eight years.
It is a moral scandal that in 2020 so many people continue to sleep rough on the streets, and that is why I am determined to end the blight of rough sleeping by the end of this Parliament.
