I used to be homeless, and let me tell you – the Tories’ pledge to end rough sleeping is as hollow as it comes

Cuts to social care, a lack of social housing, and a broken safety net for teenage care leavers; Tory austerity has presided over a huge increase in homelessness. When they’re the architects of the problem in the first place, how on earth can they be trusted to fix it?

The unprecedented levels of homelessness and rough sleeping in this country have been caused by this government’s penurious social policies (Getty)

“Nobody should have to sleep rough, and that’s why we must do all we can to help the most vulnerable in our society to get the support they need,” Theresa May said as the Prime Minister unveiled plans to end rough sleeping by 2027.

This is more than a little bit confusing: the former home secretary has endorsed policies throughout her seven year spell in government that have seen homelessness rise in the UK by 169 per cent. The government’s own statistics show that 4,751 slept rough in 2017, an increase of 15 per cent on the year before. The biggest increase in England is in the North West where rough sleeping increased by 39 per cent, quadrupling since 2010.

Never mind all that though, because the government have found £100 million to eradicate rough sleeping in the next decade. It’s telling that the Tories have made it a priority to tackle rough sleeping, the part of this crisis that can’t be hidden from the public, and thus the most embarrassing for them. The homelessness that the public can see for themselves in the doorways and public squares of our towns and cities is all this callous government cares about. The only thing the Tories have ever really cared about is staying in power: they have little time for the poor, let alone people roughing it on the streets.

Despite May’s commitment to help the most vulnerable she can’t hide her party’s contempt for the homeless. In January the Conservative leader of Windsor council, Simon Dudley, wanted to enact vagrancy laws to remove the town’s rough sleepers ahead of the royal wedding. Despite the Tories’ blushes, most homeless people are not found on the streets. According to Shelter, 307,000 people were homeless last year, that’s one in every 200 people in the UK. This problem will require more than roughly £11m a year over the next decade, which by the way only half of is new money, the other half being “re-prioritised” funds from separate budgets within the housing department.

The reasons people become homeless are very complex and differ from individual to individual. For some, alcohol and substance abuse lead to them losing their home, for others it could be a divorce, a sacking, problems with mental health or all of the above. When I became homeless in 2013, I was just another care leaver who followed an all too familiar deleterious path to the streets. An estimated 74,000 of us are homeless in the UK. This has much to do with the lack of support services available to care leavers and the fact many must transition to independent living when they’re 18 years old to fend for themselves – an arbitrary marker when everyone develops at a different pace and has different needs. It’s also attributable to the fact that social care in this country is on the brink of collapse.

Since 2010 social care funding has shrunk by £7bn and English councils plan on taking £700m out of the system by the end of the year. For those of you not paying attention, a funding gap of £7bn, with £700m more to be cut is a lot more than the measly £100m the government thinks can solve the country’s homelessness crisis.

This shortfall in funds has exacerbated homelessness because many social care services that help prevent homelessness, such as mental health trusts and drug and alcohol prevention services, have been deprived of their resources to tackle this problem.

But the funding gap in social care services does not tell the whole story. A lack of social housing and affordable homes is another major reason why people find themselves on the streets. In London and other cities, tenants pay extortionate amounts of money for box rooms which they often have to share with others. Due to the lack of housing rights, tenants increasingly have to tolerate appalling living conditions and unscrupulous landlords. A lack of social housing means more and more people are languishing on council house waiting lists; sometimes for up to a decade. With over one million people on social housing waiting lists, it will require tens of billions of pounds to provide them all with homes. That task needn’t have been so arduous if the Tories, and New Labour before them, had committed to building enough social houses in the first place.

The unprecedented levels of homelessness and rough sleeping in this country have been caused by this government’s penurious social policies. They say they that no one should have to sleep rough and they want to eradicate this problem. I’d believe them if everything they’d done in government for the last seven years didn’t directly contradict that.